Steve Almond - Candyfreak: A journey through the chocolate underbelly of America

CANDYFREAK

Also by Steve Almond

My Life in Heavy Metal

A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

STEVE ALMOND

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL 2004

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
708 Broadway
New York, New York 10003

2004 by Steve Almond. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by
Thomas Allen & Son Limited.
Design by Rebecca Gimnez.

Portions of this book have appeared in slightly
different form in the Boston Phoenix.

Chocolate Jesus, words and music by Tom Waits and
Kathleen Brennan, copyright 1999 by Jalma Music (ASCAP).
All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Almond, Steve.
Candyfreak : a journey through the chocolate underbelly of America /
by Steve Almond.1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-56512-421-9 1.
Candy industryUnited States. 2. Candy. 3. Chocolate.
4. Almond, Steve. I. Title.
HD9330.C653U513 2004
338.476641530973dc22 2003070801

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition

TO DON RICCI ALMOND,

a freak of unparalleled wisdom and

sweetness. I love you, Pop.

See, only a chocolate Jesus

Will satisfy my soul.

TOM WAITS

FREAK APPENDIX

CANDYFREAK

1. The author has eaten a piece of candy every single day of his entire life.

I want you to look at this sentence and think about it briefly and, if youre so inclined, perhaps say a little prayer on behalf of my molars. This would not be unwarranted, and for supporting evidence I refer you to Elizabeth Gulevich, a highly competent doctor of dental surgery who spent most of the early seventies numbing my jaw. I doubt Dr. Gulevich is the sort to have established a hall of fame in her waiting room (she was more the Ansel Adams type) but I would like to believe that my run of seven cavities during the infamous campaign of 1973 stands as some kind of record.

Not a single day did I fail to consume, not one, not during those miserable family camping trips to Desolation Wilderness during which I kept nervous vigil over the trail mix for its meager ration of M&Ms; nor at Camp Tawonga, where I learned to savor the sweet gnash of hickeys and sun-ripened Red Vines; nor on those days when I was cut off from outside supply lines, bereft of funds, during which I thieved chocolate chips from the baking shelf and pressed same into a spoonful of Jif peanut butter; nor even in the aftermath of the removal of all four of my impacted wisdom teeth by a gentleman whose name was, I believe, Dr. Robago (Italian: butcher), after which I was on liquid food for five days and therefore partook of shakes from the Peninsula Creamery, made with mint chip ice cream.

Also, was I the only child in America who regarded Bakers Chocolate as the cruelest food product ever invented? Was I the only one whodespite repeated warnings from the Mother Unit, despite the dark knowledge that the Mother Unit would not knowingly place a pound of chocolate within my reach, that this was simply too easy, despite even my own clear memory of having tried this stunt before and wound up with a mouthful of bitter gooreached into the back of the cupboard and removed the box and greedily slipped a square from its curiously stiff, white wrapper? Was I the only one who gazed upon the thick, angled square, so much like a Chunky, really, in abject lust? And who held the piece to my nose and breathed in the deep brown scent and then, despite all the evidence to the contrary, simply unable to will my disbelief, bit down?

2. The author thinks about candy at least once an hour.

More than that, actually, and not just the eating of a particular piece of candy, but a consideration of potential candies. For several years, Ive been obsessed with the idea of introducing a new candy bar into the market: a crisp wafer held together with hazelnut paste, topped by crushed hazelnuts, and enrobed in dark chocolate. My friends have listened to me rather patiently and only a few have been impertinent enough to point out that no one in America actually likes hazelnuts, a kibbitz to which I generally respond, Yes, and they didnt like penicillin at first either, did they?

I think, occasionally, about the worst candy bar I ever ate, purchased on an overnight bus trip from Istanbul to Izmir back in 1986 and which had a picture of a donkey on the wrapper (this should have been a red flag) and a thick strip of cardboard to make it seem bulkier and which tasted like rancid carob and had a consistency similar to the sandy stuff Dr. Gulevich used to blast between my teeth.

More often, though, I think about the candy bars of my youth that no longer exist, the Skrunch Bar, the Starbar, Summit, Milk Shake, Powerhouse, and more recent bars which have been wrongly pulled from the shelvesHersheys sublime Cookies n Mint leaps to mindand I say kaddish for all of them.

And when I say I think about these bars I am not referring to some momentary pulsing of the nostalgia buds. I am talking about detailed considerations of how they looked and tasted, the whipped splendor of the Choco-Lite, whose tiny air pockets provided such a piquant crunch (the oral analogue to stomping on bubble wrap), the unprecedented marriage of peanuts and wafers in the Bar None, the surprising bulk of the Reggie!, little more than a giant peanut turtle, but rounda bar that dared to be round! Or, at the other extreme, the Marathon Bar, which stormed the racks in 1974, enjoyed a meteoric rise, died young, and left a beautiful corpse. The Marathon: a rope of caramel covered in chocolate, not even a solid piece that is, half air holes, an obvious rip-off to anyone who has mastered the basic Piagetian stages, but we couldnt resist the gimmick. And then, as if we werent bamboozled enough, there was the sleek red package, which included a ruler on the back and thereby affirmed the First Rule of Male Adolescence: If you give a teenage boy a candy bar with a ruler on the back of the package, he will measure his dick.

Oh where are you now, you brave stupid bars of yore? Where Oompahs, those delectable doomed pods of chocolate and peanut butter? Where the molar-ripping Bit-O-Choc? And where Caravelle, a bar so dear to my heart that I remain, two decades after its extinction, in an active state of mourning?

Without necessarily intending to, I keep abreast of candy. I can tell you, for instance, that Hersheys introduced in the fall of 2002 a Kit Kat bar with dark chocolate. I spent two weeks searching for this bar, because I had tasted a similar bar fifteen years earlier when I lived in Jerusalem and, back then, the taste had made me dance in happy little nondenominational circles, flapping my arms. Why two weeks? Because giant candy companies like Hersheys rarely devote an entire production line to a new product without market testing, which means producing a limited edition, which means people like me (that is, candyfreaks) have to stop in every single Mobil station in the greater Boston area and ask the staff if they have Kit Kat Darks, because that is where my friend Alec told me he found his.

Well.

In the end, Alecwith whom I play squash, though, as a tandem, we somewhat belittle the definition of the sportbrought me a bar, purchased from the Inman Pharmacy, and Im happy to report that it is absolutely mind-blowing. The dark chocolate coating lends the fine angles of the bar a dignified sheen and exudes a puddinglike creaminess, with coffee overtones. This more intense flavor provides a counterpoint to the slightly cloying wafer and filling. By the time you read this, Kit Kat Darks will very likely have been discontinued, because they failed to make a gazillion dollars, which is a sad thing for you, I promise, though not so much for me because, in an abundance of caution, I purchased fourteen boxes (36 bars per) soon after my first taste.