This story is submitted to High in the Sky blog for Storytelling Sunday. Why not pop over there and read some other stories?
The corner candy store was not far from my home—just up the street and around the corner. It truly was a child’s dream comes true; a veritable candy land. To the best of my recollection, and you must remember, though, what is seen in childhood is sometimes different from what an adult remembers, but this is how I remember the candy store.
Entering the front door of McPeak's Candy Store, the first thing noticed is the gentle tinkling of the bell over the door. Looking directly across the room are the ice cream freezers; to the right there are three glass candy cases. Behind the cases sits Mr. McPeak in his wheelchair. We never knew why Mr. McPeak was in the wheelchair and as curious as children can be, to my knowledge, no one ever asked. Of course, we did speculate amongst ourselves but no one knew for sure. Mr. and Mrs. McPeak ran the store along with their adult son (I forget his name.) They also had a five-year old adopted daughter named Margie. The older kids told us that Mr. McPeak had an accident and it prevented him from fathering any more children after his son so that’s why they adopted Margie. See, when kids don’t know the truth, they fabricate what they think could be the truth. And, for all we knew it could be true.
Hanging across the ceiling is a metal cord. Attached to the cord with clothespins are the latest editions of comic books like Super Man, Archie, Katie Keene, and all the others I can’t remember that children loved and adults didn’t. This was the era prior to baseball cards so comic books became our collection items.
In those days, candy was either one cent or five cents, although you could sometimes get two for a penny if the candy was small. There were some unusual candies; such as, a small fluted metal dish containing sweet nougat that you scooped out with a tiny metal spoon. After the dish was emptied, it could be used with your tea set to hold tiny cookies or pieces of cake to feed your dolls. Then there was the wax bottles filled with some sticky, sweet, liquid that all tasted the same no matter what color they were. These came in a cardboard carrier and contained six wax bottles. After drinking the sweet liquid, we chewed on the wax until no flavor remained.
Penny candies were always artfully arranged in glass dishes inside the glass cases. Nestled in one would be Tootsie Rolls. These are the same Tootsies Rolls that seem to have shrunk through the years to bite-sized pieces but then were about three inches long. Lined up beside the Tootsie Rolls are Pink Canada mints so sweet they hurt the teeth when bitten. The next dish contains root beer barrels so big you can hardly keep them in your mouth because you are drooling saliva that can’t be swallowed since you can’t get your mouth to close. Chocolate covered caramels, jellies, and nougats lay side-by-side in another dish in a rosette patterns. Mrs. McPeak made the candies more attractive to children by placing them in fancy designs within the dishes.
Nickel candy bars fill up the case next to the penny candies. Clark bars, Almond Joys, Mounds, Hershey Bars, Juju Beads, Juicy Fruits, Dots, etc. all of these were five cents. Today, we might be lucky and get them for $1.00 in a vending machine.
The final glass candy case held fancy boxed chocolates that young men bought for their sweethearts. Whitman’s Chocolates sampler box was always a big hit with the women because they could easily pick out their favorites by following the chart on the lid. This case was always filled with red heart-shaped boxes for Valentines Day.
One of the great joys of summer time was to take a huge vegetable dish over to McPeak’s and have it filled with scoops of different flavored ice cream for everyone in the family. Fortunately, since we lived so close to McPeak’s, the ice cream didn’t completely melt by the time we got it home. Can you just see in your mind children rushing huge bowls of ice cream through the streets trying to get it home before it melted?
Besides containers of ice cream, the freezers also held twin popsicles that really were twins that you broke apart. Not like the ones today, labeled as twins, but are really just two individually wrapped popsicles. The trick back then was to break the twins apart vertically without cracking them horizontally. I think the Fudgesicles back then were creamier and bigger, too. Grown ups back then seemed to like the thin chocolate coating on the vanilla ice cream stick, and also the orange creamsicles.
I don’t think McPeak’s sold anything else—just candy, comic books, and ice cream. I wonder if a store like that could succeed today. The McPeak’s seemed to make a living from their store even though they were closed every afternoon from 1:00 to 4:00. I think that was when Margie took her nap. I remember that by the time we returned home from school and changed into our play clothes, McPeak’s would be rolling up the shades and unlocking the door waiting for the children to come in and spend their pennies. McPeak’s closed their doors for good many years ago. I can’t remember what type of store it is now, but I know it is not a candy store. I wonder if the new owners can still hear the laughter and screams of young children lining up where the candy counters once were, holding pennies in their sweaty little hands, their noses pressed against the glass, taking their time in choosing which sweet treat to buy? I suppose it doesn’t really matter because, in my mind, I can still see it.
