Cranks My Tractor

Recently, I spent over 24 hours driving during a three or four day period.  It really isn’t so bad, if you are not in a hurry.  Driving allows you time to think, dream and play with the radio.  Please note that I only play with the radio when it is safe to do so.

Long road trips require stops at state visitor information centers, truck stops and other points of interest.  Again, the key is not to be in a hurry. 

When I stop at gas stations and truck stops, I like to check out the candy counters.  My Grandmama had a candy store and just looking at the candy reminds me of her.  I enjoy it.

As you drive along, you get “hankerings.”  On this particular trip, I got a hankering for Mallo Cups and Goo Goo Clusters.  They bring back good memories and anytime you can bring something good back, you should (kind of like Cokes in glass bottles).

After finding a truck stop with both Mallo Cups and Goo Goo Clusters, I drove on down the interstate feeling good about my success.  After an hour, the Mallo Cups were calling my name.  I had gotten a long “four pack” of the Mallo Cups and as I drove, I eased open one of the ends.

Sinking my teeth in, I remembered why I liked Mallo Cups as a boy.  It didn’t have anything to do with the whipped marshmallow center surrounded by a delicious combination of milk chocolate and coconut.  As a matter of fact, I don’t even like coconut.

I bought Mallo Cups because they had cardboard coins inserted into the package.  The coins ranged in value from a penny to fifty cents.  The goal was to save up to 500 cents/points and you could send them in for free candy.  Keeping in mind that I didn’t like coconut so much, for the next hour I thought about why I actually did that.

I guess it was for the sense of accomplishment, a goal that a little boy could obtain as opposed to growing up to be a professional baseball player or rocket scientist or something.

Over the years, I’ve actually acquired a taste for them.  Maybe it’s the memory I’ve acquired a taste for, I really don’t know.

For the record, I only remember one package of free candy that came to our house in Alabama from the Boyer Candy Company in Altoona, Pennsylvania.  It was in the summer, the reward ended up being packages of melted whipped marshmallows, delicious milk chocolate and coconut.  My brother put them in the freezer and they ended up being frozen Mallo Cup sticks that you had to pick the wax paper cups out of.

Continuing to drive, I looked for the cardboard coins in my four pack of Mallo Cups, they weren’t there.  To my disappointment, the four packs do not contain the cardboard coins.  The taste of coconut bothered me more.

The Goo Goo Cluster was still sitting there in the passenger seat; I decided to let it stay in its package.  It won’t melt for a few months.  I think I buy them just because they remind me of Nashville, Tennessee, a place that I enjoy visiting.

Supposedly, the Goo Goo Cluster was the first ever combination candy bar.  In 1912, the Standard Candy Company in Nashville poured out a melted blob of caramel, marshmallow, peanuts and chocolate and let it get hard and put a wrapper on it.

The Goo Goo Cluster doesn’t have coconut in it, but it does have caramel in it.  I don’t care so much for caramel either; the thought of Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff at the Grand Ole Opry kind of mask the taste.

On my car’s radio, a classic country station was playing Roy Acuff‘s “Wabash Cannonball.”  It was appropriate.

I was in Tennessee and I was singing along with Roy, who passed away in 1992.  I remembered meeting him in a restaurant parking lot in Nashville, Tennessee in the 70’s.   He was a nice man.  After he went in the restaurant, we looked at his vehicle.

It was a Mercedes Benz coupe with his name engraved on a gold plate in the dash.  That was pretty cool to a little boy (and to a grown man).

Driving and thinking, I asked myself, “Why do I eat things that I don’t care for so much?”

Are the memories really that good?

Yes, they are.

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