Special to AOL from Dr. Don Kinsman
Not long ago I was in a drug store about to pay for a prescription when I spotted IT in the candy shelf: a Clark Bar. Clark Bars were my favorite of all candy bars when I was very young and I had not seen any in a long, long time so I immediately scarfed one. I rushed home, unwrapped it and bit into it. It was stale. But memories came back anyway, not only of the old Clark Bar commercials which for some reason featured kangaroos and giraffes as I recall, but of the veritable tons of candy I ate way back when.
Of course it wasn't just me. All us kids ate a lot of candy in those days. Just ask any dentist who worked on kids from the pre-fluoride days. Not a day would go by when one of the guys didn't have some sort of candy he would share; either willingly, or because other guys would yell "dibs," which for some reason gave you the right to have some of his goodies.
We munched happily on many things, some of which like Three Musketeer Bars and Milky Way Bars are still easy to find and others which you have to hunt for nowadays, or maybe even special order. My favorites included Good & Plenty - especially at movies - malted milk balls; Boston baked beans; chocolate covered raisins; orange slices; those coconut covered bars with the three colors for different flavors: black, white and red; Bun candy bars, though they were not exactly bars per se; and French burnt peanuts.
I was also very fond of Chuckles as were my friends. There was, however, no agreement on the order in which they had to be eaten. I preferred green-yellow-orange-red-black as my order, working from least favorite to most favorite. There was also the challenge among us as to whether or not we could fully lick off the outer coating of a Tootsie Pop before biting into the center; or let a Life-Saver, or cough drop fully melt in our mouth without crunching on it.
Yes, we used cough drops as candy back then. Someone always seemed to have a box of Luden's, or Smith's Brothers Wild Cherry, or Licorice. Once, my friend Terry had a bag of candy he said his mother loved as a girl and he wanted us to try it. It was horehound drops, which I later found out people also used to use for irritated throats. I don't even remember what they tasted like except that they were way down on my list.
We also shared candy cigarettes and those wax bottles with the flavored sugar water inside and I thought they were okay, but my buddies also used to offer me things which I did not like and would never buy on my own. I never got into the Pez craze and I did not like the red hots, button candy - those dots on a paper strip - NECCO Wafers and whip licorice.
We also all chewed a lot of gum. My favorite was the pink bubble gum cigars, but someone always had sticks of Juicy Fruit, Blackjack, and Dentyne, which we all believed was actually good for us.
Not really a candy, but something we would ask out mothers for - they all carried it as a breath freshener - just because it was such an amazing taste was Sen-Sen. If you have never tried one, do so. You will remember it.
There were homemade candies as well. Now and then someone's mom or sister would try to make salt water taffy, or fudge. I still remember my sister dropping bits of melted chocolate into cold water to see if it formed a ball which meant it was done.
Plus there was seasonal candy like jelly beans (I love the black ones) hard Christmas candy, and at Easter those big chocolate eggs with a gummy interior that seemed to have nuts, or fruit, or something not identifiable in it. The whole family would attack that egg, but it still lasted for weeks until Mother would just throw away the last bit left in the refrigerator.
I rarely eat candy any more and I have not had a stick of gum in 46 years. But Halloween is coming and I will be buying a bunch of bags of candy and certainly the ravenous hordes of kids won't know if a small bar, or two, or three of Snickers is gone. They are small so there can't be that many calories in them. And I can brush and floss right away. Won't hurt I guess.
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