It came to me last week and
recurred to me this morning how important the Tom’s Snacks vending machines were
to me in middle school. After eating a balanced lunch in the school cafeteria
(where they had ‘unlimited’ salad – just ground up lettuce, but drenched with
Green Goddess or French I would go back to it again and again) it came time to
spend some precious silver change on ‘filling up corners,’ as the Hobbits would
say. And I would be wracked with the dilemma of choice.
There were big brand names,
of course, like Lay’s Potato Chips or Frito’s, but they were usually a nickel more
expensive and full of air. The most bang for my buck were the cheaper
selections by Tom’s itself, and it took the nicety of Solomon to decide which
to pick each day (always assuming you had the money).
A good old standby was Hot
Peanuts. Dense and spicy, the very nature of the snack made you slow down and
savor it. Very seldom did I choose just regular old peanuts, unless an oddly simplistic
nostalgic mood struck me. Coveted was the flavorful dust accumulated at the
bottom of a bag of Hot Peanuts; often the package had to rent open in quest of
the precious spice.
As opposed to the density of
Hot Peanuts, the fluffiness of Cheese Popcorn might appeal. It came in a much
larger bag, hanging on the bottom rack of the machine. As big as the bag was, I
don’t think it was any more in weight than other snacks. Eaten quicker than Hot
Peanuts, it still took a while to get to the bottom of the bag. Cheesy fingers,
and gagging on hulls now and then, were the drawbacks. Cheese Puffs were a similar
snack, but with less substance. A bag of Bugles was a satisfactory workhorse, if mostly a delivery system for the taste of salt.
I think it was in middle
school that I was first introduced to Corn Nuts. They came in several varieties, Plain and Hot
and, maybe, Ranch? Or was that later? Anyway, the proper way to eat them was to
‘kronk’ them, as in, ‘I just kronked on a bag of Corn Nuts.’ Delicious, but a
bit hard on the teeth, and I remember the terrible grinding when you hit one of
those black deep-fried kernels. It makes my toothless gums ache to remember. Mom
later formed an attachment to them (they were supposed to be healthier than
other snacks) and had to have a weekly tube to eke out through the long days.
A rare treat that might be
purchased if you had enough money for two snacks was Bacon Strips. This light
wispy goodie was shaped and colored like a little strip of bacon and had a maddeningly
elusive flavor (not really much like bacon) that you chased right to the bottom
of the bag, which came much too soon. Flat but puffy, it was a celebration of
style over substance, and its like does not appear in the world today.
Of course, salty was not
always the option; there was sweet too, in the form of various candy bars. I didn’t
regularly buy many, but when I did it would be a Baby Ruth, with a Butterfinger
as second choice chockie. M&M’s, Plain or Peanut, were a distant third. I
might also mention the soda machines and a cold frosty Big Red, with the sweat
bees buzzing menacingly around the soda cans abandoned in the big garbage bins.
But I won’t.
Now, of course, I could go
out and buy as many hot peanuts or cheese popcorn or corn nuts as I wanted in
giant bags or tubes, except I can’t and shouldn’t. The state of my blood sugar
(and my teeth) won’t allow it. But perhaps it is just as well. These delights
were best savored as rare treats with the intensity of youth, and now to be
enjoyed more on the palate of memory than to be chased vainly on a river of
snacks that will never bring back the sensations I had when young.
Bon Appétit.
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