Larry and Candy (Jeanne)

Larry liked candy and would often offer it to others. Some of his favorites were my least favorite, though. He liked circus peanuts - those orange things reminiscent of styrofoam.

He also liked chocolate covered cherries. One Christmas, at least three different people gave him a box for gifts! As he passed them around for others to "enjoy," most of us declined.

Another favorite of his were the classic Hershey chocolate bars. The full sized ones! Some of us are a bit more particular about our chocolate and don't enjoy the Hershey milk chocolate. He loved buying boxes of chocolates - Russell Stover or Whitman's - for our mother. Then when she ate them, he commented on her eating too many chocolates . . .

As Ann reminded me, he also liked ice cream bars. The ones with vanilla ice cream and the hard chocolate shell.

When I was little, I would go through my Halloween candy and take out all the Bit O' Honey and the icky orange and black wrapped maple ones and "generously" give them to him . . . simply because I didn't like how they tasted.

My siblings have fond memories of his Snickerdoodle cookies, but I never liked them. I still don't like them. I didn't have similar tastes to my dad!

Comments

Gum and Thriftiness and Pronunciation and Honesty (Jeanne)

Eileen was a very thrifty gal. She bought CareFree sugarless gum and would willingly share it. A half piece at a time. Seriously! Since gum loses its flavor relatively quickly, she thought it was wasteful to take an entire piece, no matter how long you would chew it. So she would tear the piece in half and hand it out as though it were a special treat. Even Jenifer remembers this about her! When her grandson Morgan was preschool age, he pronounced the word "Num." Grandma Eileen said, "Gum. G - g - g - g - gum. With a hard G. You say it." And Morgan said, "G - g - g - g - num!" It was hilarious! He wasn't doing it to be a stinker; he just had trouble with the word. But she kept trying! When Jeanne was five-ish years old, Eileen said "No" at the grocery store to buying her a pack of gum for herself. Jeanne took one and put all five sticks in her mouth while on the car ride home. Since she was dumb, the wrappers were all there in the bac...

A Dad Story: Memories Lost (Jeanne)

It has been two years since my dad died. (Today is 1.22.2018. He died on 1.21.2016.) In getting rid of scraps of paper in my life (de-cluttering; I'm not yet ready for Swedish Death Cleaning!), I found an old receipt with some notes on it. "broken hand" "Dr. Dumont" "St. Joseph nuns" "Campbellton" Google brought me here: St. Joseph Hospital - http://www.rhsj.org/en/former-apostolic-sites_382_-21.php Religieuses Hospitalieres de Saint-Joseph I can't find information on Dr. Dumont (not that I tried that hard . . . ) but here's what I remember of that conversation with my dad over two years ago (I don't have the best memory!). He was talking about bequests after my mom died. He wanted to send money to places that were meaningful to him - the convent where his sister, Sister Beatrice, served, for example. He also mentioned Dr. Dumont, who had fixed his "broken hand" when he was a kid. He said they couldn'...

Mom miscellany (Jeanne)

She used to always have a half-stick of Carefree sugarless gum. She would share, but you could only have a half-stick (torn in half). She was thrifty and knew that when it lost its flavor, we would spit it out. I don't really remember when she stopped chewing Carefree, but I vividly remember what a huge part of my childhood it was. She had such a sweet tooth! She loved desserts and treats so much. When we had fruit that was tart, she wanted to add sugar to it. She and Louie were so different that way! Louie loves tart fruit. When Stacie started bringing her homemade desserts to family gatherings, my mom's face would light up. Yum for desserts! She was more than willing to try weird foods (and expected us to give them a try, too). The beef tongue was disgusting! It looked gross (like a gigantic tongue) and tasted nasty. It was really hard to chew, too. She also made a pie one time and said, "Try it. It's apple." It didn't look like apple and she was being t...

Eileen and Larry Somers

Search This Blog