Allowances, Penny Candy & Pop
- jim Young
“Nostalgia is the heart's way of reminding you of something you once loved. It travels in many forms; on a song, or in a scent or in photographs… but no matter how it comes to you it will always have the same bitter-sweet taste.” - Ranata Suzuki
My first allowance, when I was a young boy, was 25 cents a week. My chores were washing the outside of the windows on our house and cutting the lawn in the summer. Feeding the dog was a year round task but other than that, I don’t really recall that I had to do too much in the winter. Shoveling the snow in our laneway was too big a task even for my father. We didn’t have a snowblower however, so the laneway was always just filled with snow.
“Never shovel anything you can drive through,” my father taught me at an early age. And it seemed to work for him, because he rarely got stuck. My father also taught me that “you’re never stuck as long as you’re moving” and he could somehow manage to get his car out of any situation so long as he could get it rocking back and forth even a fraction of an inch.
From my 25 cent-a-week allowance, my parent’s expected me to save 10 cents, giving me 15 cents to spend on whatever I wanted.
That 15 cents pretty much always went to Mitchell’s General Store in Painswick.
There were plenty of “penny candy” options available behind the glass counter that we would dirty with finger and nose prints while we watched Mr. or Mrs. Mitchell carefully place our choices into small brown paper bags.
Many, such as my favourite Black Balls, were just 3 for a penny.
Bazooka or Double Bubble Gum with a small comic were a penny each.
Pixie Stix - a straw filled with a powdered sugar that resembled cocaine (in looks only) cost a penny or two. (No… we never even thought about trying to snort it.) However, if someone made us laugh while we were trying to suck it in from the straw, it sometimes came out of our nose.
Lucky Elephant Pink Candy Popcorn. These were a little pricey at 5 cents for a small box and 10 cents for a big box but, like Cracker Jacks, they included a free prize and were sometimes worth splurging on.
Chocolate Bars were available in 3 sizes; small for 5 cents, large for 10 cents and for 25 cents you could purchase a jumbo sized version. Oh how I longed for the 25 cent version of a Cadbury Caramilk Chocolate Bar.
Given that the spending portion of my 25 cent-a-week allowance prohibited the purchase of the latter in any given week; and my reluctance to save enough from one week to the next, I never experienced the pleasure of the jumbo sized chocolate bar until I got my first job that paid 25 cents-an-hour.
Licorice wheels were a treat. They were made of thin strips of licorice rolled to look like a small record with a red hot candy in the center.
So I think it’s safe for Regal Confections to change the name of Popeye Candy Sticks back to Popeye Candy Cigarettes and put the red dye back on the ends.
I always tried to limit my confectionary choices to 5 cents leaving me 10 cents to purchase a comic book such as Archie, Little Lulu, Richie Rich, Superman or Batman.
We were always careful to leave our comic books at home, however. Comic books in school were confiscated and ripped up by our teachers and sometimes accompanied with a strapping. Crusaders in those days were as certain comic books would corrupt young minds and turn them into delinquents as crusaders today believe candy cigarettes or even seeing real cigarettes behind the counter will lead young people to become chain smokers.
On a hot summer day, in lieu of adding a new comic book to my collection I might opt for a pop. A 10 cent bottle of Coca-Cola could be purchased for the bargain price of just 8 cents if I opted to drink it in the store and leave the bottle behind leaving me enough for 6, count-em 6 more black balls.
What stores today even allow young children to open the pop they have just purchased inside their premises let alone loiter long enough to consume it?
While snack vending machines were not yet available, many stores were setting up pop vending machines outside their premises to enable them to take advantage of sales even when closed.
My favourite was the top access pop machines. Some were air cooled, but the really “cool” ones were water cooled with the pop bottles sitting in ice cold water.
Slotted rails allowed the bottles to hang in place and after inserting your dime into the coin slot, you would simply move your selection to the bottle dispenser and pull it up to remove the bottle.
You had to be quick though, because if the bottle slipped out of your fingers just as you were releasing it, it would fall back and the dispenser would lock back into place. Your only option then was to forfeit your pop or cough up another dime.
Inevitably the Crush Cream Soda I wanted would be at the end of the row behind 10 bottles of Canada Dry Ginger Ale and if the other rows were full, there was no opportunity the juggle them around like the tiled number puzzles we used to entertain ourselves with to get it to the dispenser.
It wasn’t long however, before some more unscrupulous teenagers began to take advantage of these. As the vending machines were left unattended after regular store hours, some teens would come with a bottle opener and a straw and help themselves to the pop with the bottle still in the machine.
These were probably the same teenagers that read too many comic books and walked around with Popeye Candy Cigarettes stuck to their lips.
On the plus side, at least the bottle that was worth 2 cents deposit was left behind.
Yes, my friends… Those were the days.
- 30 -
Do you have some pictures or memories of the proverbial “good old days” that you would like to share? If so, please send them by clicking on this link, Those Were The Good Old Days.
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