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The Surprising History of Penny Candy: NECCO Wafers, Tootsie Rolls, Corner Stores, & Church Steps · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:03
  Nancy May: Hey everybody, it's Nancy May and Sylvia Lovely once again
• 0:07
  at Family Tree Food and Stories.
• 0:10
  I just love to say that.
• 0:13
  Sylvia Lovely: Wonderful.
• 0:14
  today we're stepping back into a sweeter time when a single
• 0:18
  penny could buy happiness.
• 0:19
  Can we remember that?
• 0:21
  Nancy May: I can remember that, I pick up pennies on the sidewalk if
• 0:25
  you see them And the best place to find pennies, I gotta tell you, is
• 0:29
  at, not the ATM, but the drive-up window at the bank or at the fast food
• 0:34
  chains where people drop their change.
• 0:36
  They just leave it.
• 0:37
  So yeah, I pick up, I pick up pennies on the side of the street, especially since
• 0:41
  they're not made anymore, and they stopped circulation in the end of last year, 2005
• 0:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Could be valuable someday.
• 0:47
  Keep those things going.
• 0:48
  Nancy May: Well, at least it may be worth a penny.
• 0:51
  It's actually worth more than a penny 'cause the cost of producing
• 0:54
  the penny is more than a penny, so
• 0:56
  Sylvia Lovely: expensive.
• 0:57
  Yeah
• 0:57
  Nancy May: I might be richer than I thought
• 1:01
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, you know, if you had a nickel in your pocket, you felt
• 1:03
  pretty wealthy when you were a kid.
• 1:05
  You know,
• 1:05
  Nancy May: Right
• 1:06
  Sylvia Lovely: I remember lemonade stands, I think those have...
• 1:08
  Inflation's probably hit now.
• 1:10
  Nancy May: Right?
• 1:10
  Don't ask for a quarter.
• 1:12
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 1:13
  Nancy May: going to the bank.
• 1:14
  today we're talking about the magic of penny candy.
• 1:18
  We're exploring the delicious themes like, can you remember going down to the corner
• 1:22
  candy store or let's say the 7-Eleven in, in our neighborhood, where it felt
• 1:26
  like, you were queen, you owned the store if you went in with, 10 cents even.
• 1:31
  Because you could go home with a stash of stuff stuck in your pockets,
• 1:35
  providing it wasn't summertime and it all melted by the time you got home.
• 1:38
  But it
• 1:38
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah
• 1:38
  Nancy May: usually didn't make it that far.
• 1:40
  Sylvia Lovely: Now, I didn't have that childhood experience 'cause I lived way
• 1:43
  out in the country, but I can feel it.
• 1:46
  I mean, yeah.
• 1:47
  I remember having saved a bunch of money to go to one of those
• 1:50
  kinda stores to buy a doll once.
• 1:53
  saved everything I could get my hands on.
• 1:55
  and then my parents took me to the shopping center,
• 1:58
  which was some distance away,
• 1:59
  Nancy May: You had to get on the horse to go to the corner store.
• 2:01
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, just about.
• 2:04
  Nancy May: I can almost feel the pain of my knees being scratched when,
• 2:07
  falling off your bike or, oh God, we used to ride our bicycles with,
• 2:10
  flip-flops and skinning your toes.
• 2:12
  Nothing worse.
• 2:13
  Nothing worse than that.
• 2:15
  But anyway, penny candies
• 2:17
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah.
• 2:18
  And so the history of penny candies kind of helps to see where they came from
• 2:22
  Nancy May: Oh yeah, we got lots of stories.
• 2:24
  Actually, in doing the research for this and, looking through some of the stuff
• 2:26
  that you had and, that I found, I was amazed about the history of penny candy.
• 2:31
  I had no idea how interesting and, well, I historical, it actually was.
• 2:36
  In the late 1800s, sugar became more affordable, so that's how
• 2:41
  the candy manufacturing started and became more large scale.
• 2:44
  First it was ordinary families that were able to buy sweets, but speaking
• 2:48
  of sugar, I have a little trivia point
• 2:50
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, please
• 2:51
  Nancy May: So now that I am Gator Girl here in Florida after a couple
• 2:55
  years, that's what I call myself, Gator
• 2:57
  Girl versus the, the Nutmeg Girl from up north.
• 2:59
  But Florida is the largest producer of sugarcane in the country,
• 3:05
  Sylvia Lovely: Didn't know that
• 3:05
  Nancy May: right?
• 3:06
  And we have the biggest port.
• 3:07
  So Florida produces $737 million, worth of sugarcane or unprocessed
• 3:14
  sugar, which is about 50% of the value of all sugar in the US.
• 3:19
  Interesting, huh?
• 3:20
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, very,
• 3:22
  Nancy May: Yep, And we have the largest port, which is in Palm Beach, and that,
• 3:26
  brings in and out about 650,000 tons of sugar shipped to refineries, which is even
• 3:32
  more interesting because you can't use sugar in penny candy unless it's refined.
• 3:36
  So we have the actual sugarcane
• 3:38
  Sylvia Lovely: Refineries like oil.
• 3:40
  Ah.
• 3:40
  Nancy May: Yeah, kind of like, right?
• 3:41
  Sylvia Lovely: kind of like oil.
• 3:43
  Yeah.
• 3:43
  and then of course, in 1879, a young entrepreneur named
• 3:47
  Frank Winfield Woolworth.
• 3:49
  Yay.
• 3:50
  I've heard of that.
• 3:51
  Still have that name on buildings that have been repurposed.
• 3:54
  He was the founder of FW Woolworth company, and it was one of the first
• 3:59
  very successful five and dime stores.
• 4:01
  It probably had countertops and counters for, you know, getting
• 4:05
  Nancy May: Soda
• 4:05
  Sylvia Lovely: hamburger and
• 4:06
  a, yeah.
• 4:07
  offer inexpensive goods at fixed prices, and candy fit perfectly into that model
• 4:13
  Nancy May: Did you call it a five and 10 or a five and dime when you were a kid?
• 4:16
  Sylvia Lovely: Five and dime.
• 4:17
  Nancy May: It, would seem like switch interchangeably.
• 4:19
  There was one that we had, I don't think it was in F- I
• 4:22
  think it was a Kresge's, not a,
• 4:24
  Sylvia Lovely: Kresge's, I've heard of that
• 4:25
  one too
• 4:26
  Nancy May: in Glen Cove and one in Manhasset that ha- was just
• 4:29
  called the five and 10 or five and dime, which I thought was classier.
• 4:32
  I loved going there as kids.
• 4:34
  It was so special.
• 4:35
  it was the place to go.
• 4:37
  I'd save up my coins and get ribbons and not just candies.
• 4:41
  But in the early 1900s, general stores and pharmacies and dime stores, as
• 4:45
  they called them also, popped up all over the country and displayed
• 4:49
  jars of individually priced candies.
• 4:52
  So you can see them in the old-fashioned, like general stores.
• 4:55
  We have some down here,
• 4:56
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, Dollar General.
• 4:58
  Uh, what's the other one?
• 5:00
  Tree, something
• 5:01
  Nancy May: Oh, Dollar Tree?
• 5:02
  Yeah,
• 5:03
  Sylvia Lovely: Dollar
• 5:03
  Nancy May: Instead of the Five & Ten or Five & and Dime, we now have the Dollar
• 5:06
  Sylvia Lovely: And they have junk.
• 5:08
  I mean, it's
• 5:09
  like an emporium for kids.
• 5:12
  Nancy May: But the penny had real purchasing power back then,
• 5:14
  and it made you feel empowered
• 5:16
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, and it penny candy was one of the first products
• 5:18
  marketed directly to children, and it gave them something just priceless,
• 5:23
  really a learning opportunity, right?
• 5:25
  Leadership, the ability to make choices and decisions.
• 5:28
  And know it was tough to make those decisions.
• 5:31
  You had just that amount of money and try to find the right thing and,
• 5:35
  scour the counters and all of that.
• 5:38
  Yeah
• 5:38
  Nancy May: there's so many varieties.
• 5:40
  But during the Great Depression, that's when money was scarce of course, penny
• 5:43
  candy became a tiny but meaningful luxury.
• 5:46
  I think even for adults, right?
• 5:48
  Just having that little sweet thing to suck on, especially
• 5:51
  lemon heads or things like that.
• 5:52
  But a single piece of candy brought you just so much joy.
• 5:56
  It was something special.
• 5:57
  And even having that candy with you was something you could share
• 6:01
  Sylvia Lovely: or bargain.
• 6:02
  so tell me about the first modern day penny candy.
• 6:06
  Nancy May: well, I will.
• 6:07
  The first modern-day penny candy was, sold for what they called a silver penny or
• 6:12
  a pence, and it was a hard peppermint or a lemon candy made by a woman whose name
• 6:17
  is Mrs. Spencer of Salem, Massachusetts.
• 6:21
  And she sold them on the steps of the first church in town, the first...
• 6:26
  I guess it must have been a Congregational church or something, which is sort of
• 6:28
  New Englandy She sold them on the steps of the first church in town, and it was
• 6:32
  Nathaniel Hawthorne's records that noted they were sold for a silver penny or
• 6:37
  a pence, which I just, A silver penny.
• 6:40
  I don't know when we turned from silver to copper, so that's kind of interesting.
• 6:44
  But that was the first mention in any record of actually
• 6:48
  calling it a penny candy
• 6:50
  Sylvia Lovely: Interesting.
• 6:51
  So Are there some updates to this?
• 6:53
  Nancy May: Well, before I go there I've spent some time
• 6:55
  up in Salem, Massachusetts.
• 6:57
  up in the Marblehead area.
• 6:58
  It's a great little town.
• 6:59
  But in Salem, they actually have, I think it's, one of the first
• 7:02
  candy stores, which is cool.
• 7:03
  I've been there with friends, and they have those old jars.
• 7:06
  And they, had these lemon candies.
• 7:08
  they say they were the first ones.
• 7:10
  so, maybe I had the first candies ever.
• 7:12
  I don't know.
• 7:13
  But there's a debate as to whether the Necco Wafer or the Tootsie Roll was the
• 7:18
  first classic modern-day penny candy.
• 7:22
  And the thing here is that the Tootsie Roll was wrapped and the
• 7:25
  Necco Wafers weren't wrapped.
• 7:27
  They were in sort of the long,
• 7:28
  like,
• 7:29
  rolls,
• 7:30
  Sylvia Lovely: different colors, you know, for
• 7:31
  colors
• 7:32
  Nancy May: yeah, so technically I guess the first title is supposed to go to
• 7:37
  Necco Wafers, which was created by Oliver Chase, and he was a pharmacist in Boston.
• 7:41
  Boy, you know, I gotta tell you, those Boston people, they
• 7:44
  do all sorts of cool things.
• 7:45
  From dumping tea, since we're on the 250th anniversary coming
• 7:49
  up, all the way to candy.
• 7:51
  But he created the first American automated lozenge cutting machine in 1847.
• 7:58
  So the Necco Wafer, before it was called Necco, was actually called
• 8:01
  the Chase Lozenge the Hub Wafer.
• 8:05
  and it was basically candy, but it was also originally packaged with
• 8:09
  pharmaceuticals, peppermint and other things to help with stomachache of
• 8:13
  the day, and even opiates at the time.
• 8:16
  So, you know, go suck on that one.
• 8:18
  But
• 8:18
  Sylvia Lovely: so how does the, how about the Tootsie Roll challenge, the
• 8:21
  Nancy May: Yeah.
• 8:23
  Well, the Tootsie Roll challenge.
• 8:24
  So the two back and forth, but let me finish up with, the Chase and Company.
• 8:27
  In 1901, that was sold out and merged with the New England Candy
• 8:31
  Company, then therefore NECCO.
• 8:34
  And Chase Lozenges was rebranded as the Necco Wafer.
• 8:36
  But Tootsie Roll was the first official true penny candy, you know,
• 8:40
  wrapped up and stuff like that.
• 8:43
  You know the little ones?
• 8:44
  They have big ones too.
• 8:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, I love those.
• 8:46
  I love
• 8:46
  those
• 8:47
  Nancy May: it's a subtle difference, but an important difference as it
• 8:49
  was considered the first single wrap, although Leo Hirschfeld made the first
• 8:54
  Tootsie Roll by hand in February 23rd.
• 8:56
  It was actually documented, I can't believe that, in 1896, and then sold
• 9:01
  as penny candy in his Brooklyn store.
• 9:02
  So, you know, boop on Bost- Boston.
• 9:05
  It goes to Brooklyn, the other B. And he didn't apply for a patent for the
• 9:09
  actual candy until 1907, and finally received approval for that patent in
• 9:14
  1908, a year later, and that's when he went into full production, and the
• 9:19
  rest is history as the Tootsie Roll.
• 9:21
  How many licks can you get in that Tootsie Roll pop?
• 9:24
  Hoot hoot,
• 9:25
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 9:25
  I love those.
• 9:26
  Yeah.
• 9:27
  So, the candies themselves.
• 9:28
  Let's talk about some of the other stars of the show,
• 9:31
  those other that followed the Founding Penny Candies, and were their successors.
• 9:36
  Not just sweets, they were tiny works of art, and I love them.
• 9:39
  Candy cigarettes
• 9:41
  Nancy May: Oh my God.
• 9:42
  I don't think we're allowed to sell candy cigarettes, at least
• 9:45
  they weren't in Connecticut.
• 9:46
  You know, Connecticut folks were kind of prudish up there,
• 9:49
  Sylvia Lovely: No,
• 9:49
  Nancy May: allow...
• 9:50
  Sylvia Lovely: now.
• 9:50
  I've seen them in
• 9:51
  some.
• 9:52
  Yeah,
• 9:52
  Nancy May: Okay.
• 9:52
  Sylvia Lovely: them.
• 9:53
  Yeah.
• 9:53
  Nancy May: they were white and they had the little, even the little red
• 9:56
  dot at the end, so it looked like
• 9:58
  it was painted red and like
• 9:59
  you...
• 9:59
  Sylvia Lovely: them for my son.
• 10:01
  He
• 10:01
  loves... Yeah, yeah, 42 years old, and he still loves candy cigarettes.
• 10:05
  Nancy May: Does he smoke or did he smoke?
• 10:07
  Sylvia Lovely: No, not that I know of.
• 10:09
  He
• 10:09
  may, he may be hiding that from me, but I don't think he does.
• 10:12
  But, children strutted around pretending to be movie stars, I can remember
• 10:16
  this, or glamorous grown-ups.
• 10:19
  Uh, that seems almost unbelievable now.
• 10:21
  Nancy May: And what about candy buttons or dots?
• 10:24
  Sylvia Lovely: Uh-huh.
• 10:26
  Nancy May: Yeah, I see them around occasionally, and the only thing I
• 10:28
  didn't like about them... So l- if, if you don't know what a candy paper
• 10:32
  or a candy dot is, let me explain.
• 10:35
  I'll try to do this as visually as I can.
• 10:36
  They're on long strips of paper, and they're little sugar dots just
• 10:41
  sort of like stuck on there in different colors, and they sort of
• 10:43
  were the color of, of the rainbow.
• 10:45
  They blended over a variety, so it It was a visual experience
• 10:49
  as well as a tasty experience.
• 10:50
  And you bit or you peeled with your teeth
• 10:53
  the little dot off the paper, and there was always some piece
• 10:57
  of paper that got stuck, right?
• 10:59
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah.
• 10:59
  Oh, Yeah.
• 11:01
  Nancy May: And candy necklaces
• 11:02
  Sylvia Lovely: oh, yeah, I remember those.
• 11:04
  How about those little nickel, uh, nips?
• 11:06
  Nickel nips.
• 11:08
  Little wax bottles.
• 11:09
  I love those, filled with sweet syrup.
• 11:11
  You bit off the top, you drank the liquid, and then you chewed the wax.
• 11:15
  Yay,
• 11:15
  Nancy May: I
• 11:15
  never chewed the wax on those.
• 11:17
  Like,
• 11:17
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, and wax lips.
• 11:19
  Oh, tell me about it
• 11:20
  Nancy May: Wax lips.
• 11:21
  Oh, those were great for Halloween for sure.
• 11:23
  Absolutely.
• 11:25
  Loved, loved, loved those.
• 11:27
  Lots of fun, especially when you tried to talk with them in your
• 11:29
  mouth, and like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." You can't
• 11:31
  quite
• 11:32
  Sylvia Lovely: tasted good too.
• 11:33
  I mean, you had, you had a method for chewing them up.
• 11:36
  you gotta chew
• 11:36
  Nancy May: I think they put flavor in those.
• 11:38
  That's the only thing I can think of is because they tasted good versus
• 11:42
  the the bottles which never had
• 11:44
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 11:45
  No, those lips tasted good.
• 11:47
  Nancy May: Yeah, and Mary Janes, mm, to this day, to this day I'd be happy to...
• 11:52
  Well, I don't, I could chew probably my tooth out on that one, but I love them.
• 11:57
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 11:57
  so those introduced in 1914, and Chewy Candles combined, molasses and peanut
• 12:03
  butter, and they were beloved by children and feared by dentists, and
• 12:08
  that was Bit-O-Honey and taffy candy.
• 12:10
  Oh, gosh,
• 12:11
  Nancy May: Oh my God you would lick on those and get them long
• 12:15
  and stringy and yeah, they were on lollipops some of them,
• 12:18
  right?
• 12:19
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah.
• 12:19
  Bit-O-Honey.
• 12:20
  Oh, haven't seen a Bit-O-Honey in a long time.
• 12:22
  Nancy May: Taffy, we were not allowed taffy for some reason, probably 'cause,
• 12:26
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, and part of your teeth
• 12:27
  Nancy May: probably, but I think the Mary Janes do the same things, too.
• 12:30
  They're hard to find, the
• 12:31
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah, I think Mary Janes were kind of crunchy though.
• 12:33
  It didn't
• 12:34
  Nancy May: Yeah, but they would get sticky too.
• 12:35
  Yeah.
• 12:36
  Before we go any further on reminiscing about penny candy, we're gonna take a
• 12:40
  little break because there's a lot more in store on just the whole history of
• 12:43
  penny candy, which I think is fabulous.
• 12:45
  And if you got a moment, jump on your bike and go down to the store,
• 12:50
  'cause we'll be right back in a minute
• 13:11
  So we were talking about, penny candy and Bit-O-Honey and taffy candy
• 13:17
  I'm not sure they're actually... Well, Bit-O-Honey probably is, but
• 13:20
  the taffy candy, I'm not sure that's classified as penny candy It probably
• 13:24
  cost a little bit more, as I remember,
• 13:26
  but still, it was, it was good.
• 13:28
  It was good
• 13:28
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, 'cause the taffy candy that you see mostly now are in
• 13:32
  those resorts where, everybody seems to have a taffy-making machine, and they
• 13:36
  come in the little wrapped up white,
• 13:38
  Nancy May: Oh, that's saltwater taffy.
• 13:39
  Sylvia Lovely: thing.
• 13:39
  Nancy May: different.
• 13:40
  Yep.
• 13:41
  Sylvia Lovely: good stuff.
• 13:42
  Nancy May: That's seaside New England.
• 13:43
  I th- I think of,
• 13:44
  uh, Rhode Island and the Cape,
• 13:46
  and I don't know if they have them down south.
• 13:48
  Do they... Is saltwater taffy a big thing down
• 13:51
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 13:51
  Every, Every, souvenir shop it seems like, Gatlinburg or, wherever, you can
• 13:57
  find those And they're usually packaged.
• 13:59
  cause people buy them as gifts.
• 14:01
  But you also had root beer barrels.
• 14:03
  Remember those?
• 14:04
  Yay.
• 14:05
  And, even today, Atomic Fireballs.
• 14:07
  Oh, boy, I love those.
• 14:09
  Nancy May: you a Fireball fan?
• 14:10
  Sylvia Lovely: Love Fireballs.
• 14:12
  BB Bats, I don't know about that, but I do know about Bazooka bubble gum.
• 14:15
  Talk
• 14:16
  about the teeth.
• 14:17
  Nancy May: bubblegum.
• 14:17
  Oh,
• 14:18
  Sylvia Lovely: I love it
• 14:19
  Nancy May: well, I have a story about Bazooka bubblegum, . You'll love this.
• 14:22
  So first of all, I'm not a fan of Fireballs, anything's too spicy
• 14:25
  and hot, and I never heard of BB Bat, so that's interesting.
• 14:29
  But Bazooka bubblegum, so you used to get it for a penny, and then it
• 14:32
  went to something like five cents.
• 14:34
  You couldn't even get it to... It just jumped from one cent to five cents.
• 14:37
  And my aunt and uncle were stationed, well, in, for business, my uncle
• 14:41
  was in marketing and stationed over in, Kyoto, Japan, for a number
• 14:44
  of years, and my cousins were little, so they were growing up.
• 14:47
  And my middle cousin was the ultimate entrepreneur at probably 10 years old.
• 14:53
  So they'd come back from trips, to the States, home leave type of thing,
• 14:57
  even for corporate, and while they were here, he would pick up boxes and
• 15:02
  boxes and boxes of Bazooka bubblegum, the little individual packets, and
• 15:06
  bring them back with him to Japan.
• 15:08
  Well, here they were anywhere from one to five cents.
• 15:10
  In Japan, the kids loved them so much, he sold them for a dollar.
• 15:14
  Sylvia Lovely: Hmm.
• 15:14
  Hmm, I love that.
• 15:16
  That's interesting.
• 15:17
  So the corner store experience, so let's talk about that
• 15:20
  Nancy May: or corner store experience.
• 15:22
  It seems like the grungier the corner store, the better
• 15:25
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, I agree.
• 15:26
  But
• 15:27
  Nancy May: But that was the only place you could really get the
• 15:29
  penny candies, as I remember,
• 15:31
  Sylvia Lovely: that's where they have the cheap stuff.
• 15:33
  most neighborhoods had a small grocery store, a drug store, or a five and dime.
• 15:37
  Now, when I was really little, under about eight, my uncle had
• 15:41
  a small five and dime store.
• 15:44
  I'd forgotten
• 15:44
  about
• 15:44
  that.
• 15:45
  Yeah, he did, and I I didn't, I took it for granted.
• 15:48
  It was cool.
• 15:48
  It was how he supported his family.
• 15:50
  and we would go there when we'd go visit my aunt and uncle.
• 15:53
  But it was just interesting.
• 15:54
  It was a little Kentucky diaspora
• 15:56
  in Dayton, Ohio, which there are many.
• 15:58
  But this little, tiny working class neighborhood, had the corner
• 16:02
  store that everybody would, go to.
• 16:04
  Uh,
• 16:04
  Nancy May: Oh, he was, he was
• 16:05
  like the big man on
• 16:06
  Sylvia Lovely: He was
• 16:07
  big man, yeah.
• 16:08
  Yeah, everything, had a little of everything.
• 16:10
  but also there were the Woolworths and Kresge's, and some of those
• 16:13
  big names that still emblazoned,
• 16:15
  Nancy May: there's a, there's an FW Woolworth's building in
• 16:18
  Manhattan, I've been there.
• 16:19
  Beautiful, beautiful old art deco
• 16:21
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I know.
• 16:22
  They really are.
• 16:23
  Nancy May: but I remember going to the counter, you pick out your candy, and
• 16:26
  the penny candy was on the top shelf.
• 16:27
  The more expensive stuff was at eye level.
• 16:30
  but you'd get your handful of stuff, and
• 16:32
  it was, really a lesson in math for kids when you think about it.
• 16:36
  You put your candy down there, and the cashier would always help you count it.
• 16:40
  Unfortunately today, cashiers don't do too well in counting change out,
• 16:44
  so you kind of helped, helped them
• 16:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, you gotta have sophisticated kids.
• 16:48
  Nancy May: Maybe they need to go back to penny candy school
• 16:50
  Sylvia Lovely: yeah, and you know, your eyes would scan and look at
• 16:53
  the rows of glass jars or where, in the countertops, wherever.
• 16:57
  but there was also gum, but it was Beeman's gum.
• 17:00
  And
• 17:00
  it came in different flavors, and I just don't see it anymore.
• 17:04
  You do in Cracker Barrel.
• 17:05
  Cracker Barrel is a chain that still has the penny candy kinda ethos.
• 17:11
  cause, so that's kinda interesting.
• 17:12
  I haven't gone recently.
• 17:13
  I'm assuming it still is kinda like that.
• 17:15
  Nancy May: I've only been there, once
• 17:17
  Sylvia Lovely: Well, that's probably good.
• 17:19
  I'm sorry.
• 17:19
  I'm
• 17:20
  sorry, Cracker Barrel.
• 17:21
  Nancy May: Yeah, Bob and I, we was given a gift certificate from Neighbor.
• 17:23
  It was lovely 'cause their, niece was working there.
• 17:26
  And we went and, it was cute and it was nostalgic, but, oh, it was salty.
• 17:30
  Oof.
• 17:30
  Sylvia Lovely: Stuff.
• 17:31
  They got stuff
• 17:32
  Nancy May: But if, jawbreakers, have you ever had jawbreakers?
• 17:34
  My favorite.
• 17:35
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 17:36
  Nancy May: And the big ones, the giant big ones that you couldn't,
• 17:38
  hardly even get your mouth around
• 17:41
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 17:41
  But you walked out of that store feeling triumphant.
• 17:44
  And like you said, for some of our kids it was the first lesson in
• 17:47
  economics, budgeting, trade-offs.
• 17:49
  And I will have to say that while not socially acceptable, it was also maybe
• 17:55
  where you stole your first thing.
• 17:57
  Nancy May: No, I never stopped eating any.
• 17:59
  Uh-oh, okay.
• 18:00
  Sylvia Lovely: And somebody dared you to go in, you and steal,
• 18:03
  and it's like, "Okay, I want to be part of the cool kids."
• 18:06
  Not that I ever did that, but it has happened.
• 18:09
  Nancy May: Oh, okay.
• 18:09
  I will not tell on you.
• 18:11
  I won't tell your mom.
• 18:12
  Sylvia Lovely: But yeah, yeah, it was a first lesson of life,
• 18:15
  because sometimes you got caught.
• 18:16
  Nancy May: Oh dear, dear, dear, no.
• 18:18
  I, I would, the, the wrath of mom, I never went there.
• 18:21
  But, penny doesn't buy what you thought anymore, which is the sad fact, and many
• 18:25
  corner stores have actually disappeared as... the gas stations are there, but
• 18:29
  the candy that's there when you see it behind the glass with the cigarettes
• 18:32
  and everything else, which I don't do.
• 18:34
  I sound like such a prude.
• 18:35
  really not that bad.
• 18:38
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 18:38
  But, where, where, so where are we today with penny candy?
• 18:41
  Nancy May: Well, I'm gonna say that we still have, the lollipops and the
• 18:44
  Dum Dums and everything like that.
• 18:45
  Oh, lollipops and Dum Dums.
• 18:47
  There is a child, an eight-year-old boy, I think it was last year, who
• 18:52
  was famous for buying a bunch of Dum Dums in Lexington, Kentucky.
• 18:56
  Did you hear
• 18:57
  that story?
• 18:57
  Sylvia Lovely: I did.
• 18:58
  I did.
• 18:59
  Nancy May: bought a billed on Amazon.
• 19:01
  He somehow got into his mom's account, God forbid, lucky mom, and bought
• 19:06
  $4,000 worth of Dum Dum lollipops.
• 19:10
  That equi- that was 70,000 lollipops for all his school friends.
• 19:15
  Sylvia Lovely: I remember it made, national news, and
• 19:18
  so
• 19:18
  Nancy May: I don't know if his
• 19:19
  mom had to pay for it, but I gotta tell you it was
• 19:22
  Sylvia Lovely: You've heard of those things.
• 19:23
  Kids get on there and order 17 Big Macs.
• 19:27
  that happens.
• 19:27
  I don't have little kids in my house anymore, but, now the world has changed.
• 19:31
  you have accounts, you have DoorDash
• 19:33
  they
• 19:33
  Nancy May: I just have to keep Bob off of Amazon.
• 19:35
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah, I know.
• 19:38
  Nancy May: But that nostalgia is so powerful, and I don't know, it's almost
• 19:43
  as good as comfort food, I would say
• 19:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Mm-hmm.
• 19:45
  Yeah.
• 19:46
  Uh, it is very, very powerful.
• 19:48
  Nancy May: and it touches everybody, absolutely everybody.
• 19:51
  So we have one of the oldest general stores in the country, which is about
• 19:54
  25 minutes from us and I put pictures of the where- we had the aprons.
• 19:57
  I saw pictures of aprons, and they have all the penny candy there, and yep, they
• 20:01
  got my Mary Janes, so that's where I go
• 20:03
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, sweet.
• 20:04
  Sweet.
• 20:05
  I have to go looking for penny candy here one of these days if I can find the time.
• 20:09
  okay, so, um, so how about then and now?
• 20:12
  How do we, how do we work through all this?
• 20:14
  Nancy May: Well, I think we have to actually look at some of the things
• 20:17
  that brought us joy back then.
• 20:19
  And when you do take out your five cents and splurge on some of those
• 20:22
  things because they do matter.
• 20:24
  And bringing back that sense of maybe just a little specialness and joy sometimes.
• 20:28
  But, it just makes me feel good.
• 20:30
  E- even if it's, y- okay, so sugar's not great for you, but
• 20:34
  a penny candy is not gonna kill
• 20:36
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 20:37
  Well, you know, back then one cent bought a treat, so what happens now?
• 20:41
  Nancy May: Well, I gotta tell you, there's a little bit of nostalgia that happened
• 20:44
  at Bob's nephew's wedding, and this is now, oh, God, their daughter's I think
• 20:49
  16, so maybe about 18 or 19 years ago.
• 20:53
  as everybody left their wedding, they had a table filled with glass jars of
• 20:58
  penny candy, and you could take your bags and fill them with your penny
• 21:02
  candy, uh, for the ride home, which was a nice sugar high on top of the wine and
• 21:06
  everything else that we ate that day.
• 21:09
  So
• 21:09
  Sylvia Lovely: that is funny
• 21:10
  Nancy May: I thought it was a great way to start a life together
• 21:12
  Sylvia Lovely: That sounds fun.
• 21:14
  Nancy May: But I suspect we can all remember all of our favorite candy.
• 21:17
  I mean, I'm not sure which was my favorite, but I think Mary
• 21:20
  Janes was pretty close to it.
• 21:22
  It was probably that.
• 21:23
  And, uh, the chocolate-covered, it was not taffy, but it
• 21:27
  was, a... I'm trying to think.
• 21:28
  Sugar Daddies.
• 21:28
  Sugar
• 21:29
  Daddies was
• 21:29
  Sylvia Lovely: Sugar Daddies.
• 21:30
  Oh, I
• 21:30
  Nancy May: too, and they're still around.
• 21:33
  But we really remember where we were.
• 21:35
  I mean, it's, it's really hard not to f- to remember where you were
• 21:38
  when you got penny candy as a kid,
• 21:40
  right?
• 21:41
  The summertime, the afternoon, the bicycle ride down to the,
• 21:43
  street, dumping your bike.
• 21:45
  Well, you didn't have a bike, so dumping your...
• 21:47
  Tying your horse up.
• 21:48
  Sylvia Lovely: I just didn't go anywhere.
• 21:50
  It went to the
• 21:50
  it
• 21:51
  went down to the
• 21:51
  creek d- near the
• 21:53
  town.
• 21:54
  The
• 21:54
  Nancy May: Mm-hmm.
• 21:55
  Get...
• 21:55
  Sylvia Lovely: they say in eastern
• 21:57
  Nancy May: There you go.
• 21:57
  There you go.
• 21:58
  And just holding that bag of, treasures and treats and seeing
• 22:01
  how long you could make them last.
• 22:03
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 22:04
  That is fabulous
• 22:05
  Nancy May: I have one more Tootsie Roll story if you will indulge me
• 22:08
  since we're talking about candies.
• 22:09
  So in camp, I went to sleepaway camp, and all the fancy rich
• 22:13
  kids from New York would get care packages from their parents.
• 22:17
  And it was, oh, God, pickled corn, baby corn, and they got
• 22:21
  caviar, and they get little jars of tuna and all sorts of stuff.
• 22:24
  And I'm thinking, "Ew," like I've never seen that stuff before, And
• 22:28
  I wrote my mom and told her about it, and Mom sent me a care package,
• 22:32
  which was the Tootsie Rolls.
• 22:34
  But the Tootsie Rolls, the long skinny ones that would come in the packs,
• 22:37
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 22:38
  Nancy May: sort of lined up like little
• 22:39
  soldiers in a package.
• 22:40
  She sent me two packets of those one, summer, and I had to hide them underneath
• 22:45
  my mattress because the, the rich kids from New York wanted... d- didn't
• 22:50
  want their pic- their, uh, ba- their
• 22:52
  Sylvia Lovely: Fancy stuff.
• 22:54
  He wanted that plain old stuff.
• 22:56
  Well, you know, I s- suspect we can all remember our favorite candy.
• 22:59
  but, where we also remember is where we were, friends we were with, a
• 23:03
  summer afternoon, the bicycle leaned up against the curb, and just the
• 23:07
  excitement of whatever it is you went to get and however long it took you to
• 23:11
  get there, it was still an important moment in your life and memorable
• 23:16
  Nancy May: Absolutely.
• 23:16
  And it was a lesson in economics, and it certainly is today in looking
• 23:20
  at the price of everything else.
• 23:22
  But, it's fun to reminisce and go back and even teach your own kids
• 23:26
  or other family members who've never experienced what a penny candy is.
• 23:30
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah,
• 23:31
  Nancy May: A candy cigarette, Dots, necklaces, the whole nine yards.
• 23:34
  And so it's a little sugar along the way.
• 23:37
  it's like a little sense of freedom,
• 23:38
  even if it's just for a few moments and the amount of time that it takes
• 23:43
  you to slow down and just suck on that
• 23:45
  Sylvia Lovely: Yeah.
• 23:46
  Nancy May: Root- beer barrel, right?
• 23:47
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I love the root beer barrels too.
• 23:49
  Oh, that
• 23:50
  and Fireballs, yay.
• 23:51
  No, jelly beans.
• 23:53
  I see
• 23:53
  them on somebody's
• 23:54
  desk.
• 23:54
  Uh, yeah,
• 23:55
  there's a steakhouse restaurant up here called Jeff Ruby's, and
• 24:00
  it's like super high-end, but he has this big thing of jelly beans.
• 24:04
  I always get a handful before we be seated.
• 24:07
  Nancy May: Well, Ronald Reagan used to have jelly beans in the
• 24:09
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, I love them.
• 24:10
  I love them.
• 24:11
  They are so good.
• 24:13
  Nancy May: Penny candy has a great story and history behind it, and
• 24:16
  it started back in the early 1800s.
• 24:19
  Who would've known?
• 24:20
  I never even thought about that till we started to look into this a little deeper.
• 24:23
  So it may not be a meal that's on your table that you're having
• 24:26
  some stories or nostalgia or a sense of peace and joy about.
• 24:30
  It could be that Mary Jane that's just waiting to be unwrapped and where you take
• 24:35
  the paper off and it sticks on a hot day.
• 24:38
  Sylvia Lovely: Oh, yeah.
• 24:38
  Nancy May: Because every meal has a story, and every story is a
• 24:42
  feast, even if it's a penny candy.
• 24:44
  ... So until next time... , may your memories be sweet and your stories worth sharing.
• 24:49
  Take care.
• 24:49
  We'll see you soon, and we'll hear you
• 24:50
  soon.
• 24:51
  Bye-bye
• 24:51
  Sylvia Lovely: Bye-bye