Penny Candy and Other Summer Memories

Remember how the corner store had that magical smell of red licorice and malt balls? It was a sweet mixture that greeted you as you stepped inside and the little bell jingled behind you. Hardly a day went by when we weren't passing by the corner store, stopping in, or dreaming of it. Delicacies such as "Necco wafers", or red licorice whips, or even those wonderful chewy "Kits" taffys cost only a penny, or three cents (in the case of Neccos). Some eventually rose to a nickel.

The penny candy however thrived; it lived on, and scratched its legacy long into the marbled walls of the seventies. It was often fun for us to load up with twenty cents worth of penny candy, then save it for the midnight monster movie that was always featured by channels 2 and 12. Many a time my friends and I chewed taffy, pulled licorice, and winced at atomic fireballs while watching a multitude of marvelous films such as "The Invisible Man" or "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein", or "The Werewolf of London."

Remember these?

There were candy bars that only cost a nickel apiece. Among the giants, were all sorts of less popular bars like BIG TIME, HOLLYWOOD, and MILK SHAKE. I recall that MILK SHAKE bars later gained notoriety as being the ultimate freezer candy bar. I also loved IDAHO SPUD, ROCKY ROAD, BIG HUNK, and MOUNTAIN BARS.

Now, everybody has returned bottles to the store; it was the all-American sport. It was also a guaranteed way to have money to spend at the store. If I was resourceful enough, I could make my fortune along the gutters, garages, and forgotten fields of the neighborhood.

The old "stubby" beer bottles were only worth a penny, but they were everywhere. Pop bottles were worth 3 cents apiece as were the quart beer bottles. Quart pop bottles were the biggies; they started off at a nickel, then rose to a dime, but when the strange phenomenon known as "recyling" fell upon us, they soon rose to a quarter!

It was a time of clotheslines and fresh vegetables from the ground. Well, actually, I was so excited about our summer garden that I couldn't wait for the things to grow. I used to pull up carrots long before their time, but it was still a great garden. I worked with my Mom, and together, we raked and hoed the dirt to a fine powder.

In our house on Francis street during the summer of 1964, we had three fruit trees; an apple, pear, and plum tree. There was nothing like fruit from the vine. It was adventuresome; earned, and worked for. You had to climb up for that fattest pear, and shake the branches for the plums to fall. I recall our apple tree, and searching out the best greenies that spotted the summer grass.

My friend had a chestnut tree in his yard that we used to sit under to read comic books. Swapping a Superboy for a Green Lantern, or vice versa, was common business between Jerry and I. Cracking nuts with a rock was also a summer ritual. Nothing tasted better than nuts that we cracked open ourselves. There was such an honesty to the harvesting of food even in the most simplistic of ways.

I used to call these dandelion puffs "wishers" because the tradition was that you make a wish and blow on them. All the tiny particles would soon be airborne, and in theory, your wish was supposed to be granted.

In reality, all it did was make more dandelions.

There was a time, circa 1961, when the Milk Man paid regular visits to our houses, leaving those magnificent white bottles stacked inside of our milk box. I was always in awe of his truck, and the box of ice he kept inside next to the driver's seat.

Each time he came, he would let us kids scoop our hands into the ice and take some. I can recall that it tasted so cold and fresh, and had a certain steely-fresh scent from being in a chilled compartment. On those scorching summer days, the Ice Man / Milk Man was a most welcome friend. He'd also let us ride on the running board of his truck as he cruised at probably 3 mph from house to house. For a six year-old, that was pretty hot stuff. There wasn't anything better than riding on things like running boards. The garbage man used to ride on a little step next to the truck. I always thought he was the luckiest guy in the world.

I really miss those days of having milk delivered to the house. I miss the concept of refreshments in glass, such as milk and pop in pop bottles. He used to also deliver orange juice. Those big glass milk bottles were the best.

In the summer we used to always go swimming at the neighborhood pool whether it be indoor, or outdoor. Usually, the high schools opened up their pools for the general public, but having our choice, it was an outdoor pool everytime.

Some of these rituals are gone forever, never to return again, such as rolling up your bathing suit in a towel and tying it to the cross-bar of your bike. I can vividly recall the ambiance of outdoor swimming pools, and the many sensoral textures. There were Blue skies and the smell of chlorine; the feel of scorching blacktop on our bare feet as we tap danced our way toward a cool wet spot of freshly splashed pool water.

It seems such a pleasant thought now; the chorale of youthful shouts echoing joy, splashing and thrashing the surface of the water.

I also remember the wading pools in many of the parks. I was always fascinated with them. They started off ankle-shallow, then gradually got deeper the further toward the center you ventured. The bigger kids usually hung out around the center, or near the cement area outside.

It was literally "Journey to the Center of the Pool" as I wandered further, cold water rising up over my knees and to my thighs. My mom used to call out to me not to go too far, but the water called to me everytime.

Those park wading pools were a special treat during a very special time. I was delighted by the sun-rippled reflections in the inches-deep water, and how the water waved further toward the center. The wading pools were full of kids. It was indeed, the place to be.

There was one Saturday afternoon when my brother Aaron (always a casualty), was swimming at Creston Pool on Powell Blvd. One of the older kids threw a giant rat into the pool as a joke to scare the girls. Aaron was the one to be the hero and pull it out of the water. He carried it by the tail all the way to the cyclone fence near the perimeter of the pool. Just as he was about to toss it over, it curled up and bit him. I was playing over at a friend's house when it happened. When I came home, I saw bloody towels everywhere. It was really a bizarre feeling to find nobody at home, no parents, no brothers, and a bunch of bloody towels. This was in the early 60's when rabies was a giant scare. Aaron had to go through the long series of painful rabies shots into his stomach as a safeguard. As it turned out, the rat did not have rabies. A park janitor found it dead and called my parents, who then took it and had it tested.

Not far from our street-within a long walk actually, was a mountain called "Kelly Butte". One day, the Forest Service was up there burning debris. With my imagination fully locked and loaded, it wasn't long before I had the two neighbor boys next door believing absolutely that the smoke from the fire was actually the smoke from a crashed UFO, and that the "Martians" were on their way down to get us all. I worked this story; I nurtured it from a mere seed, to a fully-blown epic. Now, something like this doesn't come easily. It took about an hour to convince them that I knew something that nobody else knew. How did I do this? Simple; I lied. I said that I had witnessed the crash only moments before they had come out to play.

Well, all good things must come to an end, and come to my end they did- courtesy of Dad's belt. The boys' mother came over, very angry because her boys had been terrified and were in tears thinking that "Martians" were coming after them. Furthermore, she testified that I had been the one to relate such a story. I pleaded guilty to a lesser sentence: just a couple belt-whacks and no grounding. This was, the end of my story-telling period.

My moral of the story: "Where there's smoke, there's only fire, and no UFO's!