THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503040653
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Half a century or so ago, the possession of an Indian head or Lincoln penny provided an open sesame to the land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, a sweet-toothed realm memorable for confections ranging from bejeweled gumdrops to chewy Monkey Kisses wrapped in transparent yellow paper.
No more. The Indian head penny has long since disappeared from circulation, having become a numismatic rarity. And the purchasing power of the Lincoln head cent has become so minimal that even newly minted ones dropped unintentionally by pedestrians are not considered worth picking up. Meanwhile, the once-flourishing penny-candy counters that catered to American youngsters for generations have become extinct as the dodo.
It wasn't always that way. In my preteen years, when my maternal grandmother sent me on a special errand to Spry's Grocery Store on Liberty Street in Berkley, she always guaranteed that I would bring back her purchases promptly by telling me that once the bill had been paid I could have the ``coppers'' - the term used to designate the smallest unit of U.S. currency during her Victorian childhood. With Grandma's bounty, I could usually fill a small brown paper bag with enough cheap sweets to guarantee a first-class bellyache later. This inevitably resulted in a dose of castor oil, but that is another story.
If you ever pressed your pudgy juvenile proboscis against the glass front of a penny-candy counter, you'll have no trouble recalling the overflowing cornucopia of inexpensive confections that sold for a penny apiece or two or three for a cent. There were jawbreakers - hard candy balls the size of English walnuts that revealed multicolored marbled layers as they melted in your mouth. There were also Mary Janes, light brown caramels filled with peanut butter; miniature Tar Babies of licorice right out of Joel Chandler Harris' ``Tales of Uncle Remus''; orange and light brown marshmallows shaped like bananas and peanuts; French mixed candy molded like pastel-colored fruits and flowers; sour balls; lemon lozenges; pyramid-shaped chocolate drops with creamy vanilla fillings; round white mints; and lollipops of various shapes and sizes.
Then there were orange, lemon and lime jellied fruit slices; jelly beans; cinnamon-flavored fire balls; nonpareils; and chocolate-coated patties laced with such heavy charges of peppermint they left you breathless.
To accommodate this bewildering variety of sweets, most neighborhood groceries included a fair-sized candy counter tucked between piled-up boxes of laundry soap and wooden pails of salted mackerel, popularly known as ``bloaters.'' If the store boasted a pickle barrel and you were fortunate enough to have two cents, you could combine a pickle with a stick of peppermint or lemon candy into a sour-sweet treat. The remembrance of this offbeat combination might set your teeth on edge now. But when I first began to sit up and take notice it was considered the ultimate treat.
The selection of penny candy usually whetted most children's desires to get the most for the least. It also taught a valuable lesson that could be summed up briefly as ``Let the customer beware.'' You may recall that the two-or three-for-a-penny candies were usually so inferior, it paid to pass them over and settle on the better-tasting ones that sold for just a little more.
Pennies in those antediluvian times were hard to come by, and were usually earned for putting away a load of firewood, cutting a neighbor's grass, raking the leaves that autumn scattered with prodigality on the herringbone brick pavements, or running errands for one's elders. Once the copper reward was clasped in your hot little hand, you indulged in a little pre-gorging speculation before you exchanged it for a favorite treat.
There was another angle to the penny-candy business that I had almost forgotten. An early addiction to tobacco was frequently promoted at the penny-candy counter, for there were also pink-tipped candy cigarettes for sale packaged to simulate well-known commercial smokes. And once the short-lived pleasure of these cloying substitutes had been exhausted, it was only a matter of time before you graduated to puffing real ``coffin tacks'' behind the family woodshed. by CNB