Ballet, Tap and Red Hots!!

I started taking tap and ballet in 3^rd grade. I remember seeing a poster at Groveland Elementary school announcing an after school dance program. I knew then and there I had to do it. Little did I know then that dancing would become a major focus of my life for 20 years.  Every Friday afternoon we would file into the gym. Black leotards, black tights and black ballet shoes (pink wouldn’t come into vogue for several years, apparently!).  We didn't have ballet bars to hold on to, instead they would line up folding chairs and that is what we use to hold on to. From the beginning I loved ballet, the music, the steps and patterns, the outfits, everything!  I was free, I was beautiful, I was me.  Tap was just pure fun, but ballet is what made my heart sing.  I truly loved it…. Anyway, this is really about red hots!

Fast forward a few years. I am still taking tap and ballet at Groveland, but as I got older I was able to leave the school grounds between school and ballet class.  Talk about dangerous! There was a Tom Thumb store about a half a block from school. Every Friday I would skip lunch and save the quarter it cost for lunch (yes, my children, 25 cents for lunch) and before ballet class I would walk to Tom Thumb and buy a bag of red hots for 19 cents. We’re talking about a big bag of red hots, not the nickel kind (yes, candy was a nickel back then). I loved the cinnamon flavoring, how it would burn slightly on my tongue. Red hots are best when slightly soft and chewy. For some reason buying them in a bag would guarantee that perfect mix of hot, spicy, soft and chewy.  I am positive I would come to class with a red tongue and what likely looked like red lipstick on my lips from eating so many red hots!

The best part was that walking to Tom Thumb to buy candy without my parent’s knowledge felt surprisingly good, a little dangerous, but also slightly wrong. My first taste at independence at such a young age proved to be precipitous. What followed through the rest of middle school and into high school was an incredibly determined, fiercely independent person. I’ve always followed my own path and didn’t let others overly influence me. I went to an open school throughout high school so I could dance every day and I continued dancing through college, even majoring in dance. Today, dancing is still an important part of who I am. When no one is looking I will do pirouettes in the kitchen, I shake my booty at a latin hip hop class twice a week, and when I close my eyes, I am young again and dancing up a storm!

And of course, I still love cinnamon candy!  My repertoire has broaden a bit to  cinnamon sticks, cinnamon Mentos, and Brach’s cinnamon hard candies, but every now and then I will seek out that perfect cinnamon imperial slightly soft, extra spicy red hot! 

Licorice!!

I know this is a written piece, but I want you to imagine Oprah saying “Licorice!!!!” In that voice of hers (you know, that loud high pitched voice that starts out lows and ends up high, right?) If you can imagine that voice that is the feeling I am trying to portray in the heading:  Licorice!!!! That’s right, whether it is Good n’ Plenty, Licorice Mix, Twizzlers, Red Vines, String Licorice, Anise hard candies, or even Luden’s Honey-Licorice Cough Drops there is nothing quite as good. The rich, almost heavy tasting candy has been around for centuries. It is even used for medicinal purposes. But none of that has to do with me, my friend Goldie Reinhardt, and string licorice!

It was fall and I was entering 3^rd grade at Groveland elementary school in Minnetonka. As with each new school year I was nervous and shy, wondering if would I find a new friend, would I fit in? I was placed next to a new girl in the school – Goldie Reinhardt. Oh, what an exotic name. Goldie, like her name had a round chubby face, and curly golden hair. I liked her immediately and we became fast friends. I was so happy!  Shortly after school started I was invited to play at Goldie’s house after school.

At Goldie’s house her mom gave us a bag of strawberry string licorice. Wow, this was a new experience for me. We took the string licorice and made necklaces and bracelets comprised of multiple knots. We would proudly wear the “jewelry” as we danced around the house (yes, my dancing career had started by then!). After displaying our fine wares we would eat our jewelry. If you have done this before you know that “knotted” licorice tastes better and different than the stringy part. I swear it does! Try it if you don't believe me. The bag of licorice would quickly disappear as we continued to eat what we made and soon it was time to go home.

But when my mom came to pick me up and saw where Goldie lived she immediately drew conclusions on not only Goldie, but her family as well. Goldie’s family lived in the basement apartment of a pink house in the “older” part of Minnetonka. I wasn’t sure why my mom didn’t like Goldie and her family – I thought the pink house was awesome, and her mom gave us licorice to play with.  I guess that was my first experience with discrimination. I’m not totally blaming my mom, I know she is a product of her generation, but my heart broke a little bit that day. I just didn’t get it. While Goldie and I continued to be friends, over time the friendship faded, more than likely because I wasn’t always allowed to play with her. Then Goldie’s family moved outside the school district and that was that.  To this day, it still makes me sad that I lost a friend.

That experience intuitively made me sensitive to any form of discrimination. You may not know this, but we raised our three kids while living in an apartment. We didn’t have much money, but we raised three beautiful, smart wonderful daughters. When I would see the parents of my daughter’s friends treat us “differently” I thought back to how Goldie and her mom must have felt. It simply isn’t right, people shouldn’t be judged based on the balance of their checkbook or their address. I am so incredibly proud of my daughters and how they didn’t let the fact that we didn’t have a lot of money affect them, actually, they wore that like a proud badge.

So forever, string licorice reminds me of my friend Goldie Reinhardt. It is a sweet memory for me.

My love affair with jelly beans begins!

I have loved-loved jelly beans my whole life. Anyone who knows me knows I look forward to “jelly bean season” like a runner prepares for a marathon! Plus, my closest friends know I always have a bag of Jellys Bellys with me at all times (my love affair with Jelly Bellys is more recent, more about that in a later post). But how and why I started really loving jelly beans wasn’t because of Easter, it began when I started getting allergy shots. How is that for an unlikely beginning!! 

When I was in elementary school I had allergies, and after having an allergy test it was determined that I needed weekly allergy shots. Like any kid, getting shots were not fun, let alone once week!  My mother would drive me to Wayzata every Saturday morning for my shot. I’ll never forget that first time when the nurse pulled up my sleeve and administered the shot. I was nervous and apprehensive, which I swear made the shot hurt that much more. Ouch!  Not fun. But to my surprise after the shot she pushed forward a candy jar full of jelly beans! These were the big, Brach jelly beans: red, purple, pink, orange, green, white, yellow and black! Oh heaven. As she pushed the jar toward me so I could take one (yes, only one – c’est impossible!) I reached in and pulled out the one on top – a big purple jelly bean. It was love at first bite.

Suddenly the torture of having a weekly shot along with the added mandatory misery of sitting around for 20 minutes to make sure there wasn't a reaction to the shot wasn’t so bad, because I was guaranteed my one rationed jelly bean! Each week I silently prayed a purple one would be on top and was invariably disappointed if I ended up with a green or yellow one.  Red was my second favorite color, with the white one a distant third (for some reason the white ones always seem strangely exotic to me – maybe because for being such a plain color they taste so good?).  To this day, 40+ years later, those are still my favorite three colors!  Hmm, why do I associate the Brach jelly beans with a color and not a flavor? Don’t know, don’t care, just give me my purple jelly bean!

My Early Years

When you are young you don’t always recognize that grandparents are special, that they can shape your lives in ways your parents can’t. Little things even after all these years will come rushing back to me – whether it is hearing my grandfather’s voice in my head when I am walking “pick up your feet when you walk” or my sweet nanny’s loving nature, always happy to see you and when it is time to leave she would stand in the driveway waving goodbye with a handkerchief with tears in her eyes as we drove away. I love those memories.

But when I think about my earliest memory of sweets it is with my Grandfather Curry or “Papa” as we called him. I was probably 8 or 9 at the time. On holidays we would pile into the car and drive to St. Louis Park, up the scary steep driveway and pull into my grandparent’s house. The Curry’s always had “pop” for us kids – I remember drinking ice cold Bubble Up and relishing each sip. The kids would all go downstairs to the basement and play pool and drink our pop. Oh, how I loved the sweet bubbles tickling my throat with each swallow. I always wished I could have more than one bottle. I suspect I snuck an extra one now and again too! But it was Papa’s crystal candy jar that I remember the most. It was always filled with spiced gumdrops. I love gumdrops – especially the white peppermint ones or the red cinnamon ones, or the green spearmint ones…. Okay I love them all, I admit it.

While my siblings played pool downstairs I would sneak up and stand around the candy jar until my grandfather spotted me. Papa would lift the latch of the candy jar for me and there would be the luscious gumdrops, recently replenished just for me. One, two, three, I would take, he wouldn’t care, because of course that meant he could take one as well – always the orange clove one (my least favorite). I think he did it so I could enjoy my favorites! Here is a picture of that candy jar. It was truly the one item I wanted from their estate after they were gone. It is fragile and I am often afraid to use it. But some day when I have my grandkids of my own I will take it out and fill it with gumdrops just like Papa used to do!

Welcome!

I am officially over the hill, there is no way around it – my children are grown, my skin is starting to sag, my peak earning years are behind me – yet I feel as young as ever, my spirit is youthful and spry, I am happy despite my waning years. Why? Because of my life long love affair with candy. It is true. Sweets have helped form who I am, people tell me I am sweet – but that isn’t the reason, candy makes me happy, gives me comfort at times when I am lost. It is home for me. As I get older I find myself indulging my sweet tooth without guilt, but yes, with moderation (depending on the time of year of course. More on that later). Recently I thought is there a pattern here? Why is candy so important to me? So I started to think back over my years, my formative years, my childbearing years, my workaholic years, to today and decided to write my memoirs, but with candy as the central theme. So here we go, grab a coke, a butterfinger or a bowl of jelly beans, sit back and enjoy!