Candy

I don’t remember the actual name of the small grocery store a mile or so from my house. It was always just “the little store” to my best friend and me. Of course, any reference to the little store was really just a reference to what it held – candy.

And not just your typical gas station candy. It held shelves and shelves of sweet, gooey, cheap - and therefore easily attainable - treats. Who could resist temptations such as cinnamon toothpicks that burned your mouth, puckering lemon drops, or the candied cigarettes that were disgusting but looked cool? Those candies were all delicious and often caught my eye, but I went to the little store for one candy in particular. Sitting along the bottom shelf, bucket after bucket was filled with little tootsie rolls of every possible flavor. And each tootsie roll was always just one penny. As such, a one-dollar bill to me was not a worthless piece of paper but a golden ticket to 100 tiny tasty treats, and there was something satisfying about slowly counting out each tootsie roll, often holding them in my shirt after my hands become too full. I’m sure the cashier was used to sticky children dumping fistfuls and shirtfulls of these wonderments onto the counter, as he never complained and always cheerfully added a few pennies to cover the tax before putting the precious candies into a small brown paper bag.