Mixed Up Candy

My love affair with candy began as a toddler walking down rickety wooden steps of the recently aquired printing company of my father and his brother in law. I distinctly remember holding his hand, he being on the left of me and me placing one foot down on the step and bringing the second foot down beside. I was singing, my father told me it was "I wuv you, a bushen ana peck". (A girl's gotta sing!) At the bottom of the stairs, directly in front of me were wall to wall, ceiling to floor shelves filled with large boxes. My father pulled back the flap of one to reveal a trove of suckers, every color, every flavor. "You can have two" he told me. Hmmmmm and ummmmm.....I can see my chubby right hand reaching in and grabbing a red and purple one! It was like a pirate unearthing the ever elusive treasure chest, or discovering the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. (I was, afterall, only two.)

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Every Saturday we "kids" would receive an allowance...a nickle or dime if you were little, and as you approached your teen years, you got a quarter! No sooner did we grab our money, when we would run to Goodies Grocery Store and stand in front of the glass counter filled with opened boxes of every conceivable penny candy with many being two or three a penny. There I was, eyes opened wide trying to decide what to spend my nickle on. The clerk looking down at me impatiently as I tried to decide. Out I blurted, "I'll have ten cents worth of mixed up candy please"! This being much safer than Jean's, "I'll have two of those, gimme three of these...". How does one know when they've reached their limit? Would the candyman laugh at me for over spending? I wouldn't want to appear to be too eager! Ron never seemed to have a problem filling HIS bag to the brim, he knew EXACTLY what HE wanted!! Ours hand tightly wrapped around our loot bags, we'd walk back home, eating along the way. Rustle rustle...what should I eat next?!

Do you remember?
*Lucky suckers (the size of our palm & with a horseshoe)?
*Milk Bottle candies? (kinda like Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk)?
*Chocolate Kraft Caramels?
*MacIntosh Toffee (before they ruined it)?
*Red licorice whistles?
*Black or Red licorice bars?
*Orange and licorice swirled bats (toffee sucker)?
*Candy hats (Jujubes shaped as men's hats)?
*Nielson's Peppermint Rolls (like Rolos but peppermint)?
*Smith Brothers Cough Drops?


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