Dear Ian:
Your brother is alleric to peanuts. Not an uncommon allergy, now, but rather unheard of when I was growing up. Not much more I can say about that. Not sure why the huge increase, or maybe we just weren't all that aware of it. Who knows? Maybe that is why that kid always hung at the edges of the playground at Riverside Elementary when Kyle, Jeff, Todd and I were enjoying our lunch dessert: Snickers!
Total sidenote (as if any of this ever stays on point for more than 125 words). There was a girl in elementary school, Kim, if I remember correctly, who stole a whole box of Snickers from a local, family grocery (long, long, long time ago there were neighborhood groceries...these were replaced by SUPERmarkets later on. Nothing really super about them, and I will save discussion of WalMart for later. Remind me if I forget.) Anyhow, Kim got the nickname Snicker Box from her introduction to petty crime. This nick hung with her all the way through high school. Not as cool as "Baby Face" Nelson or "Scarface." I think she wound up in prison, maybe, maybe not.
Back to candy. Snickers: pretty much Milky Way but with nuts. You can freeze a Milky Way for a pretty awesome summer treat, but for some reason the peanuts mess this up for Snickers, so don't freeze them.
Never eat a Snickers around your brother. Probably not a Milky Way either. I think they are made in the same plant. So why risk it? Sneak off behind the garage, if you have to, but really you have to give them a shot.
The other candy bar that absolutely has to be frozen is the Charleston Chew. I don't even know if they make them anymore (I quit eating candy when I was a sophomore in college, again, more on that later, let's just say that I got HUGE for a little while, there.
We used to get our Charlestons from Anderson's Shop-Rite in Morgan Park. This was a different Mom and Pop grocery than the aformentioned site of the Snicker Box heist, but you get the picture. I think they were cheaper than everything else and at least 2 feet long. Okay, maybe not, but they were a lot bigger than a Snickers, and even though I did't take my first Economics class until I was a high school junior, I knew a sweet deal (ha! a pun!) when I saw one.
An unfrozen Charleston is basically a 26.2 mile run for the jaw muscles. (There may or may not have been a candy bar named Marathon, I forget). Let's just say that it was a whole lot of chomp-chomp-chomping. Freeze those bad boys, though, smack it on your thigh or kitchen table and presto change-o, crackly little bits of nougat goodness. And bonus, Charlestons were available in chocolate covered vanilla, strawberry and chocolate (double-double goodness).
Candy has changed a lot in the years, but then again, what hasn't. Your nickle candy is gone...maybe.
Next time we meet, maybe we will go hunting for Laffy-Taffy. That, again, is for another time.
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