Perhaps it’s a net positive that my readership largely tilts toward the aged rather than the young — that few college kids these days read weekly newspapers — because that older population is more likely not to notice when I repeat myself. This is “Shipwreck Rose” number 379, more or less; I’ve messed up the count repeatedly, but in any case it’s been a lot, and, almost every week, I have to go back into my own archive to crosscheck how many times before I have revisited favorite topics: blue whales, lilacs and daffodils, Walt Whitman, the etiquette of the sidewalk, champagne cocktails, nostalgia for the American songbook and the stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood (Rudolph Valentino and Robert Mitchum in particular), nostalgia for the dirty 1970s, cigarettes, travel brochures, historic hotels, and how specters from my own punk-rock youth haunt my dreams.
This morning, I conducted such a double-check and discovered that I have returned to the subject of my sentimental attachment to Hershey’s Chocolate bars three times since July of 2021.
Oh, well. Time to talk about candy again!
It’s very amusing to me that I have washed ashore with an administrative job at the Presbyterian Church and find myself, to my perpetual surprise, working a desk job that involves not just an actual desk, corkboard, beige filing cabinets, and a wonky 1990s extension telephone, but a desk with a candy dish on it. I am the church lady with a candy dish. How did this happen?
I keep my candy dish filled with two kinds of sweets, at minimum. Some weeks, I have three kinds on tempting display. I have just acquired an extra cut-glass candy dish at the church tag sale this past Saturday, the kind of prissy diamonded-and-etched cut glass that is excruciatingly out of fashion but that is perfect for church ladies pushing butterscotches and caramels.
This week, on my desk here at Presbyterian Church HQ, I have York Peppermint Patties (“Get the Sensation!”) and Sour Cherry Drops from Cavendish and Harvey, which are the best sour-cherry drops available, as far as I know. If you can recommend superior sour-cherry hard candies, do please let me know. I might try Simpkins (“Established 1921,” the “Original Manufacturer of Travel Sweets”) Citrus Lemon and Sour Cherry Drops next. Cavendish and Harvey is a candy company founded in London in 1977 — in apparent imitation of Simpkins, mimicking the gold-colored candy-tin presentation — but now operating out of North Germany, and prone to slightly silly marketing slogans: “The Art of Bringing Fruity Moments to Life” and “Fruit Up Your Moment.” I’m with you, Cavendish and Harvey: Life is hard enough without abstemiousness when it comes to all things tutti-frutti and bad for your molars. Let’s get fruity!
I fill my church-office candy dishes up in the morning, conduct my work and make many phone calls on important church business (there are moles in the lawn and a cellphone tower in the belfry), depart for my second job in midafternoon, and by morning, mysteriously, the elves — or perhaps it is the church mice, wearing little woolen waistcoats and aprons, like Beatrix Potter’s “Two Bad Mice” — have eaten all the Peppermint Patties and Walker’s Creamy English Toffees, and I have to fill the dishes up again. My conclusion: Presbyterians like candy but feel sheepish about helping themselves in front of the church lady when she is present as witness, sitting satisfied behind her desk, typing and passing judgement. Last month, I had Reed’s Butterscotches, which proved popular only with aficionados; Reed’s disappeared more slowly overnight.
Where have all the chocolate-covered almonds gone? The Ferrara-Pan Chocolate Covered Almonds that they used to sell at the concession stand at the East Hampton Cinema, before it was a Regal? The ones in the box with the cellophane window that allowed you to peek at the almonds before consuming, to admire their gloss? There seems to have been a purge of alternative movie-concession candy brands around 10 years ago; now we only get those associated with the Hershey conglomerate. Where have the Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews gone? Where are the Sno-Caps? I distinctly remember buying Good and Plenty — the pink, white, and black licorice candies in the very 1950s pink, white, and black box, the Elvis of movie-theater candies — at the old United Artists theater. You could definitely buy not just rainbow-assorted Dots but rainbow-assorted and sugar-dusted Chuckles at the cinema of my childhood.
To me, the offering of candy is a sign of benevolence, an open candy dish akin to the open heart: It’s kindness. Nutritionists and moms who offer cashews and tangerines as treats may disagree — knowing, quite rightly, that too much refined sugar is bad for teeth and liver, not to mention avoirdupois — but I know I’m right on a more, shall we say, spiritual level. On the scale of “mean” (in the old-fashioned sense of pinching and miserly) to profligate and extravagant, I’d much rather err on the side of the Joyva Vanilla Marshmallow Twists. Candy shouldn’t be a sin; children will eat it, even if their parents claim to be raising little human beings who love crudités and hummus more. No need to force them to be sneaky about it, or to become secret hoarders. I’ve raised two fit and healthy teenagers, none the worse for wear from having a mom inclined to conflate love with a foil-wrapped milk-chocolate heart.