My Life, Because of Chocolate
For better or for worse, my life has been largely determined by the fate of chocolate.
Each week, a menu of sorts, around a revolving theme. This week: sugar city, trick or (not) treating, the sweetest place on earth, and the lifesaving power of Reese’s.
Ingredient List
🎵 : What I’ve been listening to this week: “Take Me as I Come” by Wyatt Flores & Evan Honer, “Flower of the Everglades” by Charles Wesley Godwin & Joe Stamm, “Year of the Cicadas,” by Caiola, “Drunk, Running” by Lizzy McAlpine, “Overtime” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise, and more
Listen to the playlist on Spotify
📖 : “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl // Not be confused with “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” the movie based on the book. This is our current bedtime book, and boy, is it a tremendous read-aloud book, which I never realized. Road Dahl is a master at sticking to the Vonnegut rule of “Every sentence must advance the action or reveal something about the character,” and every bit of it is wondrous.
Course 1
A Word of Gratitude: Lucky Charms
If you visited my house as a child, you wouldn’t be wrong to think that Buddy the Elf did our grocery shopping. While our dinners were pretty wholesome, and we ate peanut butter and jelly every day of our life for lunch, the rest of the time was open season on sugar.
The pantry was any kid’s dream. Cereal options were endless and varied: Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes, Super Golden Crisp, Waffle Crisp, Oreos O’s, Apple Jacks, Smacks, Honeycomb, Reeses’s Peanut Butter Puffs, Cocoa Pebbles, Fruity Pebbles, Cap’n Crunch (all varieties), Cookie Crisp– you get it.
Candy, snacks, cakes, and popsicles. We used to eat spoonfuls of Kool-Aid and Nestle Quik just because. In the summer, we’d freeze Country Time Lemonade and suck on the ice cubes in the basement to try and cool off after playing outside. Surge was an acceptable replacement for water. My friends would marvel when they came to my house, as if they’d opened a secret portal. Especially CK, who had ADD and lived in a house devoid of sugar. Ritalin was no match for my mom’s cupboard.
Today, I rarely eat candy. Or cake, or pie, or dessert. Sometimes ice cream or Oreo Thins. Obviously, the occasional Reese’s, just because it’s the undisputed heavyweight champ of candy. I’ll have maybe one or two sodas a month.
But for the most part, I had my fill in the first half of my life. It was probably more sugar than a human should eat over the course of their whole life. It was the best of times, when cereal toys were good and Kool-Aid points meant something.
I made it out alive, diabetes-free.
And for that I am grateful.
Course 2
Appetizer: Candy Apples
Every year in October, kids would dress up as cowboys and Indians. My mom would pull me out of class for the rest of the day, because the school didn’t do a land acknowledgement beforehand.
Just kidding, it was because I grew up in a strict, conservative Christian household and Halloween was off-limits in all capacities. There was no hope for my soul if I were to walk down the hall in the annual costume parade, surrounded by wicked eight-year-olds wearing Ninja Turtle disguises (I wouldn’t know either way– I wasn’t allowed to watch shows steeped in eastern philosophies.)
To be fair, this was the height of the ‘80s satanic panic– subliminal messages in Judas Priest songs, supposed suicide contagions brought on by Dungeons and Dragons, razor blades hidden in candy apples. I remember trick or treating once, as a five year old, and then that was it. My superhero role-playing stopped with a cheap Superman mask.
I forget what kind of half-hearted lie I’d always tell my friends on November 1, something along the lines of “it’s a tradition to dress up and go to our grandma’s house since the neighbors don’t live close by.” Saying it now is as ridiculous as saying it then. It should be no surprise that when I got older, I spent my Halloweens terrorizing the township with my friends.
Today, I live in Baltimore, where Halloween is basically a national holiday. My kids dress up. My wife dresses up. I kind of don’t care, but sometimes I dress up. We walk around our neighborhood with reusable grocery bags, blocks on blocks of rowhomes spaced 15 feet apart. Adults sit out front in folding chairs or on their stoops, blasting music, laughing and loving the costumes that pass by. Offering handfuls of candy to the kids; Jell-O shots, sangria, and Natty Boh to the adults. Within an hour, my kids’ bags are flush with sweets of all shapes and sizes, a feat I could never have imagined as a child.
Thousands of pieces of candy over the years, that last the year. None with razor blades. No written contracts in blood. Maybe some AC/DC playing over a bluetooth speaker. Just a few hours of kids being happy and neighbors having fun on a chilly night in October.
It’s black magic at its best.
Course 3
The Main: Milk Chocolate
I’m here because of chocolate. Growing up right outside Hershey, Pennsylvania, it’s not an exaggeration to say that my family’s livelihood depended on it.
When I say my family, I mean– my entire family. My grandma, aunts and uncles, cousins, great aunts and uncles and second cousins, sisters, brother– everyone worked for The Hershey Company at some point. My mom and dad met in the factory. My mom quit to take care of us, my dad stayed for 42 years. While I never worked there, I did work summers at the Holiday Inn, whose main revenue stream came from New Jerseyans and New Yorkers visiting Chocolate Town, USA, on their yearly family vacation.
Generally, people come to Hershey for the fun and thrills at Hersheypark, a state championship game at Hersheypark Stadium or concert at the Giant Center, or a day in the spa in the Hotel Hershey while their husband plays golf on the local links. But just like me and my family, all of those things are here, of course, because of chocolate.
And that chocolate and everything born of it came from one man– Milton S. Hershey.
Born just before the Civil War north of the Mason Dixon line, Hershey was an entrepreneur from the start. After a few failed attempts at candy-making ventures, Hershey finally succeeded in making caramels. However, he believed that chocolate was the future, and after selling his caramel factory, decided to start his life’s work in what is now Hershey, Pennsylvania. He was right of course– his milk chocolate business was wildly successful, from then until now.
Much of its success was thanks to Hershey’s steadfast dedication to his employees. The entire town was built for them, with tree-lined streets and a full trolley system (before cars ruined everything). As was Hersheypark, an amusement park for employee entertainment outside of work. There was also the beautiful Hershey Theater (the location of my high school graduation). On top of the tallest hill, the elegant Hotel Hershey, still the finest hotel in the area. All of these were built in the Great Depression, as factory workers transitioned to builders. In the entirety of the hardest years in American history, no employee was laid off.
Most importantly, Hershey founded what is now the Milton Hershey School, a school for orphans to which he left his entire fortune. The school has a controlling interest in the Hershey Company and is the wealthiest private school in the United States. It currently has an enrollment of 2,000 children, all of whom come from poverty and are given a free private school education (including room and board), in addition to full college tuition. It’s a tremendous legacy.
Eventually, part of the entire Hershey legacy trickled down to my own family. My great-grandparents, who came north out of the hollers of West Virginia looking for farmland, also found jobs at Hershey. Eventually they bought a farm on which my whole family still lives, right down a country road that leads straight into Hershey’s town square.
A job at the chocolate factory was a steady job. Maybe what some would call an honest job, but it was a real workingman’s job. Pension and ESOP, but third shifts and mandatory overtimes. Strikes at the factory left us in limbo for weeks at a time, while extra hours churning out holiday treats paid for our Christmas presents. In the old days before safety measures and automation were fully in place, heavy machinery cranked away in halls bordering on tropical conditions with no air conditioning. People died, limbs were torn off, candy was tainted by disgruntled workers. My grandma worked through bouts of trigger finger and carpal tunnel caused by years of pulling candy on the line. And this was with a union.
Of course, as with any large corporation, there’s been ups and downs, questionable labor and production practices, corners cut to maximize profits. Nevertheless, it provided a solid job with stable wages for my family. My grandma only went to eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse, my dad had a public high school education, and I was the first person in my entire extended family to go to college.
Without Hershey, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. Without Hershey, my parents couldn’t afford to buy me a skateboard so I could then destroy the marble ledges that Hershey built (which I honestly feel bad about). Without Hershey, I wouldn’t have known what it was like to put the car windows down on a warm spring day and smell the rich, deep smell of chocolate all around. Without Hershey, I legitimately never would have been born. Never here, writing this now.
When they say it’s the sweetest place on earth, they’re kind of right.
Course 4
Dessert: Peanut Butter Cups
A few weeks ago, I was home visiting for Easter weekend. Obviously, candy was a main theme and I ate way too many peanut butter eggs, handmade by my mom. That Saturday, I had a 10-mile long run lined up for my Boston Marathon training, and as usual, I forgot to bring a gel for that extra pick-me-up halfway through. In a pinch, I scanned my mom’s pantry. Just like always, I found some Reese’s peanut butter cups. I stashed one in my shorts pockets and stopped to eat it around mile 7. It worked, and I finished my run feeling super strong. The power of peanut butter and chocolate combined.
End of Menu
Thank you for dining with me this evening, I hope the service was acceptable. Tips (whether monetary or recommendations to others) are appreciated, but not expected.
Delicious. Nostalgic and grateful for the things that landed you where you are today. Love it Robbe. My thoughts have lead me to similar appreciations lately. Thanks for writing!