Candy and verse

Worshiping in the temple of sugar, writing poems for strangers

The sweet life

I love sweets. I don’t just have a sweet tooth, I have a sweet jaw.

My obsession with sugar goes far, far back. My father was hypoglycemic, a diagnosis that in the 1950s meant no sugar in his diet. My mom remembered how a visiting clergyman gamely choked down a slice of her sugarless berry pie.

My palate starved for sweets, I lived for candy as a child. My weekly allowance in those days was 35 cents. I never thought of spending it on anything by candy. I could buy one 5-cent candy bar every day. A Mr. Goodbar cost just 3 cents, but I wasn’t crazy about peanuts.

Candy bounty at a Plaid Pantry. Fran Gardner photo

I’ve written about candy before, about Fanny Farmer, candy dots, Valentine hearts and Necco wafers, but I’ve been inspired to write more widely about candy after encountering the book Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover, by Sarah Perry. It just popped off a library shelf into my hand.

Perry’s trip through Candyland is a fun read. She riffs from the tastes of candy to the memories—people, places, situations, relationships—they spark in her. She can be crotchety; you’ll have to excuse her for liking Dove milk chocolates and preferring Twizzlers to Red Vines.

Perry arranges her candy discussions by color, not always a useful trope. In the “red” section, for instance, she discusses LifeSavers based on the red candies (cherry) in the five-fruit pack (can you name the other four? One of them is pineapple). Under “white,” she discusses Wint-O-Green Mints. But she never gets to the best LifeSaver flavor of all, Butter Rum. Also, no discussion of Boston Baked Beans (candy coated peanuts). As I said, I’m not much for peanuts, but baked beans are classic.

Candy bars

In 1921, Babe Ruth, the Yankees slugger, set the single-season home run record for the third straight year and was on his way to setting an all-time record of 714. His record stood for 39 years, until Hank Aaron hit 715 homers in 1974. I remember Aaron’s feat. It seems like it was yesterday, but it was 51 years ago.

In Chicago, though, 1921 wasn’t quite as good a year. The Cubs struggled through the season, as did the Curtiss Candy Co. The Cubs may have been a lost cause, but Otto Schnering at Curtiss had a turnaround plan for his candy company. He reformulated his Kandy Kake—milk chocolate, peanuts and a pudding center—into a chocolate-covered bar with peanuts, caramel and nougat. He named it Baby Ruth.

The Curtiss Candy Co. was just a few blocks from Wrigley Field, itself named for a man who made chewing gum. The bar was probably named for Ruth, but when Ruth tried to start his own candy company, Curtiss sued for copyright infringement and won. After that, the company swore the candy was named for Baby Ruth, the oldest child of President Grover Cleveland, even though she had died of diphtheria at 12 years old, 17 years before the candy was introduced.

Another eponymous bar

The writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) wasn’t around for the birth of the candy bar “Oh Henry!” either. He died in 1920. Which is okay, because the candy, introduced by the Williamson Candy Co., also in Chicago, also in 1920, was not named for him. Evidently the young ladies in a Williamson candy shop referred to a persistent suitor as “Oh, Henry!” Oh Henry! bars, like Baby Ruth, are relatively hard to find these days, although as I don’t buy candy anymore, I haven’t been paying attention. I mostly know what I see at the checkout at Safeway, and I don’t see them there.

A lot of vintage bars are still widely available: Butterfinger, Snickers, Milky Way, Payday, Mounds (a favorite of Lois Lowry’s eponymous—there’s that big word again—Anastasia Krupnik), KitKat and mint patties: Pearson’s or York, take your pick.

About Mounds, everyone seems to remember the advertising jingle, “Sometimes you feel like a nut.”

Not available anymore

I really liked the Seven Up candy bar, made by Pearson’s of St. Paul, Minn. It was like a miniature box of chocolates. Seven tiny chambers held rotating different fillings like coconut, butterscotch, caramel, buttercream, fudge, Brazil nut, cherry cream and orange jelly. The candy was discontinued in 1979.

The best candy bar ever was the Mars bar—nougat, caramel and whole toasted almonds coated with milk chocolate. Mars bars were discontinued in 2002, and M&M Mars replaced them with Snickers with Almonds. That bar has little pieces of nuts and is not as satisfying as the Mars bar.

Still available, but why?

Bonomo Turkish Taffy: I remember this confection being touted in commercials on our new television set in the mid-50s. You could strike the bar on a hard surface and it would satisfyingly smash into shards. It just didn’t taste very exciting. You can buy it online today. Why anyone would do that is a mystery.

Also a mystery is the continued popularity of Three Musketeers. I always found the bars boring, just the whipped egg white center and a chocolate coating. Right up there with chalky candy Easter eggs as a non-favorite. Here’s a creepy video of Three Musketeers being touted on the “Howdy Doody Show,” appallingly with a chorus of children singing “big. Big. BIG!”

I’m out of time and space

I could go on about candy. About boxed chocolates like See’s and Whitman’s. About hard little candies like Jolly Ranchers, starlight mints and cinnamon hearts. About softies like pastel mints and saltwater taffy. Oh, the dreams I have of sugar past!

Of course, I want to hear about your candy favorites. Just add them to the comments.

As for me, I can’t tolerate sugar anymore. Being pre-diabetic, I don’t want to develop diabetes. I’m not overweight, but my blood glucose climbs if I eat any carbs.

So I content myself with dreaming about the candy of the past. Full confession: I even like cotton candy. Marshmallows, OTOH, are not candy at all.

Here are a couple of polls.

That’s enough polls, although I do wonder how people feel about M&Ms versus Peanut M&Ms and Reese’s Pieces.

Poems for strangers

I did it again. I found a place to park my wheelchair, put on my “Let me write you a poem. It’s free” placard, and wrote a poem for anyone who asked for one.

The Meet Your Maker Market met a week ago along Foster Road. Dozens of tables blossomed on the sidewalks for several blocks near Southeast 62nd. It was loosely organized; there was no vendor fee, and the only requirement was that what you sold had to be something you made.

There was a great variety of things on offer, from the usual postcards and jewelry to all manner of crocheted items—toys and phone holders, key fobs and funky chickens. One woman was making chain mail, clipping together metal rings to turn into heavy-duty bracelets and necklaces.

Start with chicks

The first place I stopped was a business, Left Field Garden Supply, where half a dozen baby chicks were waiting in a warm tub for their new owners to pick them up. This is a welbar chick, a breed so rare that it’s considered “forgotten.” When she’s all grown up, this hen will lay eggs that are so dark brown they appear terra cotta.

Fran Gardner photo

Back on the sidewalk, I parked and donned my placard. And unlike my recent experiences with farmers markets at Portland State and Hillsboro, many people here asked me to write for them. I was out of practice, and the first few poems were rough, but after that I fell into rhythm and the words flowed like candy.

I wrote so many, in fact, that I could not include them all.

Jennifer, one of the vendors, owns a gecko

Lizards

Warm. Rocks. Sun.
Sand. Sandstone. Nails.
Red-rimmed rocks,
Moon on the desert,
Spines and scales.
Iridescent colors,
Splitting and spitting,
Lizards and geckos
Soaking up sun.

Tristen asked for something to make her smile.

Pigeons are funny.

Plethora of pigeons

Pickers and peckers
Always in flight or just
Poking the ground.
They sit on phone wires
And poop at our feet
Sometimes on our heads, too—
So watch where you stand!

Cipri asked of a poem about grief

Grieving

Spring’s for renewal, autumn for sorrow.
Our grief knows no season, no better tomorrow.
Only the present can bring us our living,
Time still for memory, for loving, forgiving.
When will our grief end? Never, we know it.
Tilling our garden of memories, we grow it,
Listen for birdsong, nurture the seeds.
Harvest the best times, remember our needs.

The topic for Cipri’s roommate, Alida, was heartbreak

Heart heavy

My heart cracked this morning,
Broke into pieces,
Each of them a little pebble
Lodged in my throat.
I can’t sing past it, 
The rock of my hurting.
When will it ever, if ever 
        Dissolve?

For Stephen and Jennifer

Music, Stephen said, write about flowers and banjos.

Music in Bloom

Banjo girl! Flower man!
What do you bring me?
A chance to write poetry, in love with my pen.
My wish for you, happy couple, is vast chords of felicity
And blossom on blossom of roses.

Roses and thorns, they are all of a package.
To make a couple, you know it takes work.
But music! And flowers! Breathing together—
The best spirit offers, laid out for you now.

Emily sells jewelry and cards

Summer trees

Spring green mellows in the forest
To deep green, a color we love.
Breezes soften the shade—
A place to drink iced tea,
A place to remember,
To be authentic,
Original
Of our own self.

Full-leaved and thriving,
Warm sun through the branches
Hearts full of longing—

Oh, summer trees,
Companions of heat.

I ran into Lisa by coincidence

I was looking for the person who arranged the event and first person I asked “where is Lisa?” was . . . Lisa.

Coincidence?

You were the first, Lisa,
The first one I asked.
You whom I sought
Were right there before me!

The Universe leads us,
We who still think
We’re the ones leading,
In charge of our lives.

We make decisions,
Yes, but Spirit still smiles.
That we think we’re really
Alone in our lives.

Another go-around

The next Meet Your Maker Market will be Sunday, June 22, at the Heist food cart pod, Southeast 48 and Woodstock Boulevard. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

More Bus Therapy

On May 5, I have a long, deep, satisfying bus adventure involving eight! buses and a train—lines 14, 10, 17, 73, 20, the orange MAX line, 19, 75 and 14 again. I’m out for about six hours. Such experiences are therapeutic. They make my world right.

Long story short (too late!) I start by riding the 14-Hawthorne to visit the gym (where I take a short spin on the seated elliptical), then take the 10-Harold bus to photograph a massive tree I passed by a few days earlier on Harold Street. It turns out to be a huge pine with multiple, twining trunks.

Fran Gardner photo

From there, I take another bus, the 17-Holgate, to 122nd Avenue, where I switch to the 73 going north, getting off at Stark for a taco lunch at Victorico’s Mexican Food (which I recommend).

Then it’s onto the 20-Burnside bus heading downtown. I get off at the west end of the Burnside Bridge, start off toward the Cinco de Mayo celebration at the waterfront, change my mind, start looking for a coffee shop, and end up at the Capital One Cafe over by Pioneer Courthouse Square. Coffee drinks are free there on Mondays to folks like me who have a Cap One credit card. There I do some writing and watch flocks of pigeons dip and whirl over the square.

Train time

With a good writing session under my belt, I feel like riding a train, so, at the Pioneer Square stop, I pick up the MAX Orange Line heading to Milwaukie. I ride it to Bybee Boulevard, a stop that is new to me. I watch the geese on the Eastmoreland Golf Course while I wait 17 minutes for the 19-Woodstock bus going east.

I should go home. I’m tired. So I wheel off the 19 to catch the 75 going north on César Chávez. Then I transfer to the 14 bus on Hawthorne to finally make it home.

So much vision and distraction in my journeying this day, so many images and ideas. At the same time, I am able to relax and let the scenery slip past. It’s very Zenlike. It’s Bus Therapy of the highest order.

Housekeeping

I haven’t reminded you recently that paid options are available for Becoming. The posts are free to read, but a considerable number of people show their appreciation of what I write by paying $50 a year. Occasionally, someone tips me $5 at PayPal.

This week, I dropped in on one of my favorite coffee houses to discover that a bus driver—who didn’t leave her name, but I think I know who she is—had bought me a gift certificate. Thank you, Carrie!

—Fran