Food Memories: Fish and Fedoras
In the few years before grade school when I was just old enough to toddle along with my parents, trips to Mariano’s candy store were a regular treat. It was probably a full-service mom-and-pop grocery store, but from the perspective of a small child, it held nothing but sweets. The large, glass and wood, candy display case was immediately to the right of the front door. I seldom ventured beyond it.
I was usually in the company of my mother. Two blocks away, a relative of ours ran a pizza shop, where my mother worked most afternoons. We would walk over to Mariano’s before the start of her shift. A bag of candy and a pocketful of change to play the jukebox or pinball machine was enough to keep me busy while she made pizzas.
My father was a frequent customer, but I never went to the store with him. He usually would have a bag of candy waiting for me whenever I came to visit. Come to think of it, we always stayed at his apartment. It might have been a condition of visitation.
No matter which parent was in charge of the pick-and-mix, it would always include Swedish fish. Mariano’s sold the small, traditional red ones, and on rare occasion, the grape ones. The larger fish in an array of fruit flavors and bright colors came along some years later. I loved both the taste and the texture. The first gummy I had ever eaten, it was softer and more vibrant than licorice and had a distinctive flavor all its own. They were also my father’s favorite, so I could always count on them being in the bags of candy he bought.
My mother, on the other hand, was determined to make me try different things. She insisted on buying a variety, which I often didn’t like. Mexican hats were the best example of this. For one thing, I didn’t understand the name, they looked more like my grandfather’s fedora to me. What I remember most about them was that they were too difficult for a little kid to chew. They tasted fine, but I’d regret it the moment I bit into one. It latched onto my teeth like it was glued in place.
When I say they tasted fine, I’m referring only to the red hats. They also had black licorice hats. I wanted nothing to do with those. One Halloween when I was about three or four years old, an uncle of mine fed me a Good & Plenty. He thought the face I made upon chewing it was funny. I thought it conveyed “What the hell is this, and why did I let you put it in my mouth?”.
The runner-up choice to the Swedish fish was Heide red raspberry dollars. They were known back then as Red Hot Dollars, but some people found that name confusing. Generally, “hot” when used in reference to candy meant cinnamon flavor. Those and red whips were all I wanted of the licorice and gummy candy. Whips, laces, shoestrings, what you called them seemed to depend on what you did with them apart from eating them. When I was by myself, I would tie them in bows, braid, or make shapes with them. When sharing with friends, we would always end up hitting each other with them.
Rounding out the selection, I would get either Mary Janes or Jolly Ranchers, or both if I was lucky and my mother was in a generous mood. My mother would always throw in a handful of Bazooka Gum. She loved it as a kid, mostly for the Bazooka Joe comic strips on the wrappers. The gum itself lost its flavor after less than five minutes of chewing it.
The bags of candy my dad bought had a few special items that my mother would seldom if ever let me have. Chief among these were Nickel Nips, which were wax tubes filled with sugary colored liquid. Later, the tubes were changed to a bottle shape. Wacky Wafers were another rare treat. They came in a strip of five different fruit flavors. They were about the size of a half-dollar coin and had a texture similar to that of Smarties or SweeTarts.
I loved all the chalky candies that were around back then. Most other kids I knew hated them. When Halloween came, I would trade away chocolates for Smarties, Necco Wafers, and candy cigarettes. Chocolates were easy for me to come by at home. One of my grandmothers kept a stash of chocolate bars in her nightstand.
There was a bit of hysteria over the candy cigarettes. Some pearl-clutching adults concluded that the realistic packaging and nearly identical labeling were designed to lure children into smoking actual cigarettes. They also objected to the wintergreen flavored blob of red confectionery coating at the tip. Candy cigarettes disappeared for a time. They returned without the red tips repackaged as “candy sticks” in boxes decorated with various superheroes and cartoon characters. I still liked them though I missed the wintergreen flavoring.
I was fortunate enough to be born while both sets of my great grandparents were still living. By the time I was five, I had only great grandfathers. As a kid, I spent more time with my grandparents than my parents and more time with my mother’s grandfather than anyone. A retired coal miner with black lung who ran a television repair business out of his basement, he was often tasked with babysitting duty. Long before my time, he and my great grandmother ran a small grocery store and deli out of that same basement. There were a lot of businesses like theirs all over town, first floor and basement shops above which the proprietors resided.
My great grandfather would sometimes take me with him on repair calls. He had a portable kit he used for house calls. If he couldn’t fix the television on site, he would take it to his shop. He specialized in RCA and Zenith televisions. I liked it when he made repairs on site because I was often given snacks.
Many of his customers were single or widowed ladies closer to his age than not, and they all did a lot of baking. One lady in particular (with a very Polish last name that I can pronounce but not spell) made the most delicious cream puffs. I think about their rich custard filling to this day. I have never had better. In lieu of baked goods, they would sometimes set out a dish of ‘old people candy’ such as ribbon candy, jelly fruit slices, butter mints, white chocolate nonpareils, and gumdrop nougats. I was partial to the fruit slices.
I don’t recall making more than one stop at Mariano’s with my great grandfather. He preferred to visit Waschko’s drugstore down the street. Maybe it was because their selection of sweets lacked gummy candies, which he was convinced were the worst thing in the world for my teeth next to taffy. I didn’t mind because I could still get candy cigarettes there. He would admonish me not to take up smoking every time he bought them. No problem. I hated the smell of it.
It’s possible the reason had nothing to do with candy. Maybe he liked going there because he had a crush on the recently widowed Mrs. Waschko. The two of them would always get to talking, and he would invariably run into someone else he knew. Trips there were a cordial and leisurely affair. I would say Mrs. Waschko was a lovely lady, but as far as I can tell, she is still lovely and in her late nineties. If my great grandfather were alive today, he would be one hundred fourteen. Mrs. Mariano, on the other hand, was at least ten years his senior.
Waschko’s had a fantastic assortment of hard candy. A third of the massive, wall-to-wall, front counter was taken up by a tall wooden rack holding several rows of jars filled with stick candy. Beyond the standard red and white peppermint, they came in a rainbow of colors and flavors. There were various fruit flavors, plus more unique ones such as root beer, chocolate, and coffee. Out of all of them, watermelon was the one for me.
That was true of a lot of non-chocolate candy I ate back then. If it was available in watermelon flavor, it was my favorite. Jolly Rancher nailed it. The stick candy was a close second. There was a third watermelon hard candy back then, but I’ve forgotten its name if ever I knew it. They were clear pink, oval-shaped with a dimple in the middle, and about an inch big. They were similar to Jolly Ranchers, but the flavor was better. Wacky Wafers also had a pretty good watermelon flavor, but that brand disappeared from the market not long after I first tried it. Watermelon Bubblicious, Laffy Taffy, and Bonkers didn’t come along until I was some years older. They were less natural tasting, not that any of them really were, but the flavor was intense.
On a small wire rack next to the stick candy, Waschko’s sold pretty little tins of gourmet, fruit-flavored hard candies from France. It was quite a switch to go from sucking on Jolly Ranchers and Brach’s (choking hazard for small children) sourballs to partaking in the dainty and elegant La Vie La Vosgienne Pastillines Bonbons Fruits. My great grandfather would occasionally surprise me with a tin of those luxurious sugar jewels.
That man spoiled me something wonderful! It was a privilege to have him around for twenty years of my life. I wish I had come not only to that realization but also the selflessness and grace necessary to convey my gratitude before he passed.
On that one trip we made to Mariano’s, he had me try three new things: Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, filled raspberries, and Vienna candy. The peanut chews were individually wrapped, miniature candy bars about the size of a thumb drive. They had more inside than outside with a veneer of dark chocolate covering a hearty peanut and molasses center. The filled raspberries were a raspberry flavored hard candy molded to look exactly like the fruit. Bumpy and pleasantly tactile, they were hard on the outside, but their centers held soft raspberry-flavored goo. Vienna candy was another hard candy similar to the filled raspberries in that they had gooey centers, but they were brick-shaped and came in a variety of fruit flavors. They had a heftier, oval-shaped but otherwise identical cousin. Both were referred to as Vienna candy. The implication being that the candy was made in Italy, but at least one brand came from Argentina.
The strawberry filled hard candy that garnished holiday gift boxes of beef logs and cheeses sold by Hickory Farms was the domestic equivalent of Vienna candy. I found them particularly enticing, not just for the flavor but also the packaging. I liked the strawberry patterned wrappers. My enthusiasm for this special occasion treat brought about my first brush with death.
It was some such holiday, and my relatives from Maryland had come for a visit. My two cousins and I were being rowdy and running around, while the grown-ups were involved in conversation and coffee at the dinner table. We were two years apart in age from each other from oldest to youngest. The youngest was six at the time. My older cousin and I preferred to play without him. She was stuck with him at home, but with me in the mix, she could say the game we were playing was just for girls. He would always run and cry to his mom about it, and this occasion was no different. We were told to sit down and behave. We sat down, but we didn’t behave.
As we sat down in the booth in my grandmother’s kitchen, I grabbed a strawberry hard candy from a dish on the adjoining bar. When I say booth, I mean an actual restaurant booth with cushy red leather bench seats and a cozy table for four. The booth was from Carrols, which was a chain of burger joints that used to be in stiff competition with Burger King until the former was subsumed by the latter. One of my uncles had worked there as an after school job a few years before I was born. When it was bought out by Burger King, he managed to score one of the booths as a memento of a job and a boss he loathed. The restaurant was closed, remodeled and converted into a Burger King. The building still stands. The exterior still looks like a home for whoppers, but it’s presently a daycare.
I don’t recall what my cousin had said that made me laugh so uproariously. I wish I could because it damn near killed me. The candy slipped down my throat and lodged there. I could barely breathe. I gagged and panicked as I became lightheaded. I felt like I was going to pass out and vomit at the same time, yet I somehow managed to stand up. While we were seated, the bar obstructed us from view of everyone at the dinner table. My cousin screamed, “Do the Heimlich maneuver! Do the Heimlich maneuver!”. Her dad was probably the only one there who knew how to do it. Before he could get up from his seat, I sort of flung myself across the kitchen toward the sink. I slammed hard into the edge of the counter. As luck would have it, I was just the right height to accidentally Heimlich myself.
The candy ejected from my throat at high velocity. It bounced off the back of the sink, then a few more times before plunking into the drain basket. I spent several moments coughing and gasping as I leaned over the sink. My grandmother put her hand on my shoulder. When I turned around, everyone was on their feet. We all just stared at each other in silence until my younger cousin chimed in with the story of how he almost went out the same way but with a grape sourball.
Looking back on it now, it wouldn’t have been such a bad way or time to go. I was surrounded by family. We were having fun. I was happy, healthy, and carefree right up until that moment. Whenever my father would hear news of an untimely death, he would always remark, “They’ll always be remembered young.”, as if it were some sort of consolation prize for a life cut short.
The strawberry candy incident, and my younger cousin’s brush with death by sourball led to me to associate hard candy with mortality. Those weren’t the only conflations of the two. My youngest uncle was killed in a car crash along with a cousin of ours as they drove through the chicanes of the Delaware Water Gap. I wasn’t even a year old when it happened. Some said they were speeding. Some said the brakes failed. They were a couple of teenagers on their way home from a concert in an old clunker of a car. Both could have easily been true. They lost control, hit the side of the mountain, and my uncle went through the windshield. In a decorative glass jar in the back of her china cabinet, my grandmother kept a lock of his hair and a green apple sourball that was found in a pocket of the jacket he was wearing the night of the crash.
It was a sweltering summer day when my mother and I paid our last visit to Mariano’s. The sun-baked leather seats of my mom’s car felt like sitting on a hot radiator. She parked at work, and we walked over to the store. It was open, but there was no one at the counter. My mother had me ding the silver service bell, which I loved to do. No one came. I tapped the bell again. I don’t know how long we waited before my mother took a peek in the storeroom in the back. No one was there.
There was a staircase at the rear of the store that led to Mrs. Mariano’s apartment above. My mother called for her up the stairs. No one answered. She called her name again and again. I joined her at the bottom of the stairs.
We could hear a television playing. My mother reasoned, “She’s hard of hearing. She probably fell asleep watching tv and can’t hear us.”. She then tasked me with going up the stairs to barge in on the old lady as there was no outer apartment door. As I reluctantly made my way toward the top one cautious step at a time, the television grew louder and louder. My mother encouraged me to call out for Mrs. Mariano. We both called her name over and over until I reached the top of the stairs.
It was oppressively hot. The television was blaring so loud that it hurt my ears. I was standing in a short, windowless hallway. To my right was a closed door with light emanating out from under it. Immediately in front of me was the living room. The first thing I noticed was a large, high-backed armchair with a frilly, floral slipcover. The chair was placed close to the television. I didn’t want to enter because of how loud it was. My mother was still shouting from down below. I clapped my hands over my ears and scurried over to the chair for a quick look. There was no one in it.
I rushed back into the hallway with my hands still covering my ears. My mother had come most of the way up the stairs. “Did you find her?”, she asked. I shook my head. “Did you check all the rooms?”. I shook my head again. I think that’s when we both noticed it. There was a foul and peculiar odor permeating the air. I turned to her, “Mommy, what’s that smell?”.
The odor seemed to be coming from the room with the closed door. My mother concluded that it had to be the bathroom. “Smells like somebody forgot to flush the toilet.”, she whispered. She knocked on the door, “Mrs. Mariano, are you in there? Are you okay? Do you need help?”. She knocked a few more times before turning the knob. As the door cracked open, the stench came full upon us. I held my nose. My mother gasped and put her hand to her mouth, letting go of the doorknob as she did. The door swung wide open of its own accord, and there was Mrs. Mariano in what looked to be her nightgown. Her auburn hair that she usually kept in a snood was down about her shoulders. She was seated on the toilet but leaning far forward with her mouth agape and her dark eyes staring.
I remember my mother saying, “Oh no! Oh no! Mrs. Mariano!”, then telling me to go downstairs. I think I asked her if Mrs. Mariano was sick or something like that. She yelled at me, “Get down those stairs now!”. I guess I didn’t move fast enough for her because she took me by the arm and hustled me down there herself. She sat me on a stool behind the candy counter and told me to stay there. She flipped the sign on the front door from open to closed. After a few moments of frantic pacing, she went over to the phone and called the police.
Another way to put it would be to say that she called her dad at work. My grandfather worked for the Lehigh Valley Railroad until it was taken over by Conrail in 1976. He joined the city police force after that. While we were waiting for the cops, my mother scooped some candy into a bag and handed it to me. I reminded her that she had to pay for it. She told me Mrs. Mariano would want me to have it.
My grandfather arrived with another officer, and my mother escorted them upstairs. They called an ambulance to transport the body. My mother had to answer some questions. We left right after the paramedics got there. We never spoke of that day again.
Our trips to the candy store were replaced with stops at the convenience store farther down the street. A former classmate of hers worked there. I always wanted the same thing: a Nestle’s Crunch and an iced tea. My mother thought it was hilarious to have me go up to her friend and say, “I’ll have the usual.”.
My father handled the loss of Mariano’s differently. For a stretch of time, the small brown paper bags of penny candy kept coming. He told me that he had found another store on the other side of town. It was more or less the same mix he would always get me. He would occasionally claim the store was out of certain things. At least a year went by like that, then one day, I opened the bag and saw something strange.
The bag was full of Flying Saucers (AKA: Satellite Wafers). They looked like two communion wafers crimped together. They came in three colors in addition to white. They were filled with rainbow nonpareils. They were the strangest candy I had ever eaten, and I loved them. My dad had them when he was a kid, and he was delighted to be able to share them with me.
Many years later, I pieced together what really went on back then. When Mrs. Mariano died, there was no one left to take over the store. Not long after she died, an auction was held on site. My father went to that auction, hoping to score the vintage display cases that once held the penny candy. To say that he was out bid was an understatement, and he sulked about it for a long time afterwards.
At the time of the auction, he wanted those cases for his own shop. There was houseplant craze in the 1970s. My dad opened a store specializing in exotic houseplants. When the craze was over, he got into dealing in antiques. What I didn’t know back then was that he didn’t leave the auction empty-handed. He had successfully bid on a large portion of the candy inventory, and the little brown paper bags in which to put it. He also ended-up with the circa 1920s ornate brass cash register.
The store across town that my dad said he had found was actually a shelf in his bedroom closet. The change was when the Flying Saucers appeared. Mariano’s didn’t sell those. Eventually, he really did find a new candy store. It wasn’t a retail store. He found the wholesaler that sold cases of candy to every mom-and-pop shop and convenience store in town. He had been buying in bulk and making his own candy mixes for me. I was well into my twenties before I figured it out. I happened to move near the store and discovered it while out for a walk. I never told him that I knew.
Epilogue: Lost History:
In setting out to write this, I had wanted to pinpoint the events in time. I wanted to know what year Mrs. Mariano died and the store closed. Researching that information proved fruitless. As a result, it’s based on nothing more than my fading recollection.
I began by searching for her obituary. I either had forgotten her first name or never knew it. Maybe I had heard my mother use it once or twice. I tried a list of names that sounded good in my head, but I didn’t find her. I searched for any obituary of any Mariano for each year within the applicable time frame. Nothing.
It left me wondering if she was a Mariano at all. Had it been her maiden name? I only called her what my mother told me to call her. When she died, was it that there was no one left to take over the store, or were her next of kin simply not interested? Why was there no obituary? My hometown is chock-full of people with that last name to this day. One of them runs a furniture store. There had to be someone.
I searched for information about the store. I thought perhaps the town newspaper had done a story about it at some point in its history or at least had documented its closing. All I found was some guy on Facebook who had confused Mariano’s with Merf’s Newsstand. The latter of which was run by two ladies as far back as I can remember. Some said they were sisters. Others said more salacious things. I don’t think anyone but the two ladies knew for sure.
Frustrated, I turned to the town historical society. While looking up the contact information, I came across a group discussion that consisted of a handful of people expressing their frustration with having received no replies to their inquiries. As discouraging as that was, I emailed the historical society anyway. My intention was to wait two weeks, but I let it go for a month before I gave up and began writing. Anyone who might have provided additional insight like my parents and my great grandfather are all dead.
I hope this meandering tale based upon hazy memories from when I was between three and eight years old has been entertaining. I have it in mind to do a series of these food memories. I wrote it in part because I wanted to do something that wasn’t another movie list, recipe, or half-assed attempt at poetry.
It’s also a form of self-examination and catharsis. These are some of my happiest memories of my mom. That might seem like an odd thing to say, considering that I just told the story of the first time I saw a dead body, but you would have to had known my mother.