For the better part of a half-century, and some would say it was not the better part, my grandmother filled the candy dish in her home with assorted types of candies. During the winter, in honor of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I suppose, it was hard candies, not wrapped, with little pictures on them, like snowmen and evergreen trees, or autumn colors, black, brown, orange, white, swirled around, which often went untouched by human hand for many months.
It was tradition, though, just like the aluminum tree, all the branches of which were the same length, whether at the bottom or the top, making it a cylindrical, aluminum Christmas tree, along with the light with the rotating color wheel. Every year, the candies coalesced into a large chunk; and, eventually, my grandmother cleaned out the two-sided, glazed, ceramic candy dish with the braided handle and filled it in the Spring with wrapped candies.
She was a Brach's candy woman, I guess, because she'd fill the dish with inch-long flavored caramels with different colors in the middle in wrappers twisted at the ends and round red-and-white peppermints. From time-to-time, however, she got the coconut things, the sticky pink, white, and brown coconut things, onto which the clear wrappers always stuck. I'd get most of the wrapper off, and then it would rip; and I could never be sure if I got all of it off. And it wasn't unusual that accompanying the coconut things in the dish were white things contaminated with tiny, colored, Dot-like, jelly things, which didn't seem to have much of a taste. The coconut things were my favorites, which was one of the reasons I could tolerate involuntarily going to my grandparents' house every Sunday.
After my grandfather died, my grandmother moved to an assisted-living place. That worked well for her for a long time, long enough that when her money ran out, the owner was enamored with her to the extent that he waived any fees above and beyond what her monthly social security and retirement covered; and she passed away a few years ago. She loved it there, but she didn't take the candy dish with her.
Yesterday, I was wandering around a grocery store that I had never visited before ... and I don't know about you, but I have to check a new grocery store out before I get anything. I saw the bulk candy display, and in one of the bins I spied the coconut things.
They have a name ... Neapolitan Coconut Sundaes. The wrapper still sticks. And they still taste the same.
Posted by Bill at August 28, 2006 11:10 AMThank you for the candy memories Bill! Hope you will continue with the candy posts. They are a wonderful deviation from the crazy stuff we deal with daily in our lives! I love the read! What a great tribute to your grandmother also.
Posted by: Trace at August 28, 2006 12:21 PMMy grandmother kept her hard candies in a glass dish that had a top shaped like a rooster. I now have that rooster dish...but alas no hard candies. Perhaps I should go shopping...
Posted by: daisy at August 28, 2006 01:43 PMMy grandmother baked with cinnamon red hots. I ate them in lieu of the dish of candies. And drank tea. And learned to gamble playing card games like "31" for money. She even took me to the bingo hall where I won the cover-all and took home all the old people's money. A brown sack filled with dollar bills and coins totaling $284 and some change. I was the only winner of that round. And the old people were not pleased.
She would take me to the grocery store on nights I stayed over and let me pick out any tv dinner that I wanted (hey, she'd have fixed me a seven course meal but I could have home-cooking at home - only grandma let me eat the crap that was in a tv dinner!) and I could sit in her living room and eat it at a tv tray watching television. It was truly a vacation going to grandma's house. No rules. Staying up half the night watching tv all by myself with nobody telling me what I could or could not watch. Mem'rieeeeeeees...
Posted by: Keri at August 28, 2006 09:39 PMI bet your grndmother was looking down and smiling as you tried that first one.
Posted by: Vito at August 29, 2006 02:37 PM