How sweet it was! - Glimpses of the Past with Karen Webster

A few years ago, my grandsons and I were shopping when they encouraged me to buy a type of candy called War Heads. “You will really like them,” encouraged the guys, “Try one.” Well, those little nuggets went way off the sour scale and the kids sure had a laugh on grandma. In fact, even though they are now in their late teens, they still kid me about that incident. I don’t remember any candy being so uninviting in my childhood.

 

A trip to Petrie’s General Store in Port Albert gave youngsters of the 1950s a chance to ponder the choices in the candy section. All the candy was loose in boxes and Mr. Petrie would give you a small paper bag in which to hold your loot. One of my favourites was the Jaw Breaker which was a multi-layered hard candy that started with a black licorice-flavoured layer then progressed inward in different rainbow colours as it was being sucked. Of course, from time to time, one might remove the sticky ball from their mouth to see what hue had been revealed next.

 

At that time, smoking was not discouraged, in fact, it may have seemed “cool” and, as a result, one could buy a box of white candy sticks with red colouring on one end and thus go around pretending to be smoking. Fake cigars were in vogue as well. They were represented by a curved chunk of black licorice with red sprinkles decorating the “lit” end.

 

Pixie sticks were a paper straw filled with flavoured coloured sugar that stained the tongue and mouth. I remember one candy that looked like a small yellow harmonica. It was made of a flavoured wax-like substance that could be chewed but hardly ever swallowed. There were several choices of gum available from the paper-wrapped Wrigley’s stick gum through to the small hard bubble gum that cost one cent for three. A cousin of mine was thrilled as a youngster to buy some Thrills gum, a purple chiclet-styled gum that was available in only a few places. There was also Bazooka gum that took a lot of fortitude to get it to the point of being able to blow bubbles with it.

 

Gumdrops came in all sizes and flavours, but I think my favourites were the ones that looked like a slice of an orange. I believe there were yellow slices as well.

 

One could also buy a small red white and blue box of Cracker Jack, a type of coated popcorn with the added attraction of a prize in every box.

 

Something that my parents called candy (but I sure didn’t) was a dark, almost transparent hard chunk called horehound. It seemed to have medicinal properties as we were enticed to suck on it when we had a tickly cough.

 

I associate Life Savers with my paternal grandmother. She always had a roll of the round candies, with a hole in the centre, in the flavour of cloves in her purse when we went to church. In fact, every Christmas, one of the gifts we gave her looked like a little book but in reality was a pack of rolls of Life Savers.

 

When Halloween rolled around, homemade caramel popcorn was a popular treat. Also available were molasses candies that were wrapped in orange and black waxed paper twists. I haven’t seen any of those “kisses” for years but remember that they stuck to the teeth.

 

At Christmas time, after the school concert, Santa would arrive with presents and plastic bags of treats. In that bag would be an orange, a candy cane, red, green and white gumdrops, peanuts in the shell and pretty pastel-coloured sugar candies. Because these bags had been stored in the cold outside until they were delivered, condensation occurred when they were exposed to the warmer air indoors. One had to be quick to separate the pieces before they became one sticky mess.

 

Not all treats came from a store. A Saturday night ritual in some homes was the making of fudge. Many flavours were possible, but chocolate usually won out. For a fun time, people could endeavour to pull taffy. This involved boiling sugar, vinegar and cream of tartar until it reached a temperature of 250°F. Butter was then added and the mixture was poured out into a buttered bowl. When the candy had cooled enough so that hands were not burned, participants could lightly butter their washed hands and then grasp the ends of a piece of taffy, pull and stretch and then fold it back upon itself. This was repeated until the taffy was light in colour and anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour’s effort may have been needed. Once the taffy reached that stage, it could be cut into pieces and wrapped in wax paper twists for later use.

 

I was lucky to have a father who made maple syrup each spring and from this sweet liquid came two delicious treats. In the process of making maple syrup, when a temperature of 219°F is attained, the syrup is ready to be bottled up. However, if the syrup goes to higher temperatures, candy is one of the results. When there is a layer of clean snow available, hot syrup that has reached 235-245°F can be poured on it in a thin line. The resulting taffy is springtime ambrosia. Another product is achieved when the syrup reaches 235°F degrees and has been left to cool 10 degrees. It can then be poured into moulds to make candies or stirred to make maple sugar.

 

Unfortunately, these memories are of a time before fluoride was routinely added to drinking water and toothpaste, making generations of kids more susceptible to cavities than are experienced by today’s children.

 

I have probably missed some other folks’ favourite candies from the past. Which ones do you remember?