Question of the day! What kid snacks did you eat?

My brothers and sisters and I were "free range" kids. Most kids in the 50s, 60s and 70s were. One of our favorite "ranges" was the corner store where Mom sent us with bottles to hand in for pennies or nickels. That was the recycling program of the time!

We took those nickels and pressed our fingers against the glass case where tri-colored coconut candies, candy necklaces, gumdrops, chocolate drops, wax lips, Necco wafers, chewy fruit slices, lay out on trays. "2 for 1c" or "1 for 1 c", (my keyboard no longer has the slashed "c" symbol that stood for a penny), OR, be still my greedy little soul, "3 for 1c" - at those prices, empty bottles bought us a paper bag of treasure!

Then we moved, much too far to walk to a corner store, too far from any store. So, we foraged for our snacks. Mulberries, wild raspberries, honeysuckle, - spring and summer was a veritable smorgasbord of stuff. Once, we even savored "onion" grass - wild onions with baby bulbs at the end. Once was enough for that snack.

In the Fall we ate the wild pears. So grainy! But still sweet enough for us to enjoy. In the winter, we ate crackers spread with jelly. On Bridge Club nights and the days after, we had pretzels, chips and candy! Popcorn! Oh, we loved popping corn on the stove. And Dad made us a treat he called a Black Cow - root beer and milk - yum! And Mom made an eggless, milkless chocolate cake that we adored. I still make it. Some people call it Wacky cake or Depression cake. I call it delicious.

I loved the fruit slices -Chuckles! - that came 4 or 5 to a pack - gummy candies liberally covered in sugar. I even liked the licorice slice that was always included. Next to that I loved the wild raspberries that will ripen soon.

 So the question of the day is this: What was your favorite kid snack? 

https://cdiannezweig.blogspot.com/2010/11/1950s-retro-candy-from-hometown.html

 

 

Confession

I do not want to read books written for teens.  I do not want to read new books.  I want to snuggle down with Winnie-the-Pooh and Uncle Wiggily.

 I want to revisit the flood in which Piglet is entirely surrounded by water and the boat made of an overturned umbrella.

I can not get interested in road trips made by fledgling adults, or the struggles of young people whose best friends have all moved away.  I want to to find Goldbug on every page.  I want to meet Anne Shirley again for the first time.

And I want to sail on the pirate ship with Obadiah, the Bold, chant "Not I!" with the dog and the mouse and the cat - or is it a rooster?

It is the waning of summer, a time of nostalgia and I want to go back, go back, go back to the first time I opened Little Men.

This, too, shall pass.  Toddlers turn to school children.  Tigers turn to butter and I will turn to new books some time.

But not right now.

Talking Donuts, Superheroes and Melancholy Lions

Years ago, when I was a young mother and babysitter, I rode the bus with my son and my young charge - everywhere.  What else do you do with two five-year-old boys with endless imagination and energy?  We rode downtown, to libraries, to parks, to the next town over, to visit friends.  We also walked and later, in the summer, we rode bikes.

Everywhere we went, we told stories.  After reading William Steig's The Amazing Bone, we came up with a story about a talking donut.  Every bus trip for a month or so, we added adventures about the donut and King Rupert, the donut's best friend. 

And then there were the tales of Llewellyn the Lion, who worked as a late night radio host and rarely went out in the day.  He rode a motorcycle and had a tab at the butcher's.  He lived in fear that people would realize that he was not just a gravelly voiced, hairy recluse but a lion - a real lion.  As time went on, Llewellyn told us of his friends - all graduates of the Philadelphia Zoo's secret Animal Intelligence project - and we met Llewellyn's teacher, Professor Freeman.  The animals were tricked into a reunion and were drugged and kidnapped to become stars in a traveling animal act.  Fortunately, one of Llewellyn's friends was a dainty gorilla.  Along with the Jaguar, ocelot, rhinoceros, several lions, a seal and a rhinoceros, they all managed to escape.

I wrote that story up and shoved it into the glove compartment of my old black Impala.  When the car broke down and we had it hauled to the junk yard, the story was lost forever.  The rhinoceros - or was it the seal? - was a poet and some of her poems were in that story.  They were haunting and surprised me.  Stories can be pieced together.  Poems evaporate.

And then there was Super Anders and his sidekick Critter Man.  These stories were made up bit by bit of the things that my boys suggested, cartoon characters that they enjoyed. Danny Dunn and his friends got tossed in there, too, since we read every Danny Dunn book we could find.  I liked these stories best of all.  The boys were always trying to save Little Annie, the Orphan Apple Selling Girl from danger.  But Little Annie just as often had to save our heroes.

I miss Llewellyn and his friends.  I miss Critter Man, who ba-a-a-a-rked!  And I miss King Rupert and his talking donut. 

Perhaps, I will ride the bus for nostalgia sake and remember small boys, stories and a time when I was young.

Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli

Ahhhhhh!!!  Wow!  Whoooaaa!  Sigh.  (Grabs a tissue)  Oh my!

Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli is a fantasy that ties up all the best things in a boy's childhood - bikes, cartoons, battles with girls, best buddies, Little Kids, Big Kids with some of the worst things in anyone's childhood - being bullied, getting hurt, fear, - all in the land of Hokey Pokey.

The care that adults give is relegated to the Hokey Pokey man and Snuggle Stop and safe havens for Tantrums and a "Don't" sign.  In Hokey Pokey all there are, are kids - who play and ride and have wonderful adventures.

Jack is our hero.  His wild mustang bike, Scramjet, is stolen while he sleeps.  By a girl.  No, by THE girl.  And he calls his Amigos to help him reclaim it.  But even before that happens, even before he wakes up, something is different.

This is an ode to what we remember of childhoods in our happiest dreams.  Racing down hills with the wind in our hair, jumping in puddles, laughing and screeching and twirling in abandon.   And it is an ode to that day when our childhoods begin to change.

And when the book is done, adult readers will go  "Ahhhh!  Wow! Whoooaaa!  Sigh."  The more sentimental of us will grab a tissue.  Read Hokey Pokey by Jerry Spinelli.

P.S.  Kids will like it, too.  Because even when kids are happiest, they yearn to be bigger.  And the adventures Jack and Dusty and LaJo have are awesome.