The Candy Store

When I was a little girl, there used to be a candy store in Bogart. Seems to me that maybe it was a cement block building with a tin roof that said "See Rock City". But that may only be a memory concocted in my imagination. I have no recollection of ever going inside The Candy Store. But I do remember that when my Mama Lorene and Pappy would come to visit, we would sometimes ride down to The Candy Store. Pappy would go inside for a few moments, and return with enough candy to put us all in a diabetic coma for weeks. Boxes of soft peppermint sticks, hard pepperment sticks, the tri-colored coconut planks, and my all-time favorite... hard sticks of cloves candy. Why was this my favorite? Well, for starters, it tasted yummy and lasted forever in my mouth, but it also brought on sweet memories of Christmas! At our house it wasn't Christmas without cloves candy, and every year my grandparents made sure that we had several boxes to enjoy throughout the season.

Some childhood favorites never die, and to this day, my favorite hard candy is the cloves stick candy. The Candy Store was ultimately closed and fell to ruin, and it became difficult to find the old-fashioned hard stick candy. Remember, this was back in the olden days before super malls and Wal Mart. Nowadays you can usually find it at Cracker Barrel, but last year our local store had the nerve to sell out of it before I got my Christmas stash. Not to be denied this year, last weekend I went into the store, and spotted the jar containing the cloves (which was conspicuously emptier than all the other flavors). I thought I'd browse about the store for a bit, but wasn't willing to risk someone else coming along and buying up the candy, so instead of a shopping basket, I just grabbed the entire jar and walked around the store until I was ready to check out. A nice girl behind the counter offered to go to "the back" to get me my own personal box of 80-count sticks. I contemplated for a moment, then said "Sure, go ahead", justifying the decision by thinking that I'd attach a little stick to my Christmas gifts this year as an added festive decorative touch, (but knowing deep down inside that even 80 sticks of candy probably wouldn't last til Christmas!). She returned from "the back" and said that there were three boxes, but they were "on the manager's desk", and she could only assume he was holding them for someone. Evidently someone else besides me has fond memories and a taste for the spicy sticks! So, I didn't get my 80-count box of candy. But I was able to count 30 beautiful, shiny, unbroken sticks from the jar in the store, and I walked away happy. (At ten sticks for a dollar, it was a cheap piece of happy!!) Perhaps they'll get another shipment in before Christmas and I'll get to tie them onto my (very few) packages this year. But if you're getting a gift from me, don't hold your breath. You'll probably never see that stick of candy. After all, it's MY memory of The Candy Store, and YOU probably wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much as me anyway. Maybe you'd settle for a simple candy cane? In the meantime, I'll ration myself, and enjoy the nostalgia of holding the candy in my mouth, savoring the flavor, remembering trips to The Candy Store with my grandparents, and childhood Christmases with boxes of cloves candy.