Top 10 candy bars, best cinema candy

I realize this is a more or less subjective list, but I recently got into a discussion (argument) with my daughter about the best candy bars of all time. She hasn’t been around that long, but I reach back a few more years and obviously have a larger knowledge base.

Now, there are some candy bars that will make the list that will be pretty much universal. Snickers, Three Musketeers, Hershey Bars, and Milky Way are in the Top Ten, no doubt about that. But now I have six additional picks that will certainly stir up some controversy — er, I mean — discussion; mainly because there are so many options, and if we didn’t have different tastes, those options wouldn’t exist. Isn’t free enterprise nice?

I went ahead and made my choices, and they are, in no particular order: Snickers, Three Musketeers, Hershey Bar, Milky Way, Almond Joy, Baby Ruth, Butterfinger, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, PayDay, and last but not least the Zero. The first Zero I had blew my candy bar taste palate away as it was the first white chocolate I had ever eaten. It was a novelty of sorts, so I ate lots of them and in the process ran up our bill at Polk’s Store. We had an account there, and Mr. Polk let us kids sit at the comic book rack all day and eat and drink while catching up on the latest antics from Archie, Veronica, Jughead, and Betty. And on all those Marvel and DC Comic superheros as well.

When I got to thinking about the best candy bars, my thoughts also turned to candy I ate at other venues which didn’t happen to be in the form of a candy bar. For instance, when I went to the Cameo or Macco, I always looked forward to what I call theater food. Naturally, that buttered popcorn Mr. Florence served was number one, but there were also some sweet treats available to clean that salty palate.

Milk Duds, Sugar Babies, Boston Baked Beans (the candy ones), M&M’s, Junior Mints, Red Hots, and Raisinets are the ones I remember. Of those, I much prefer the Milk Duds, but those Red Hots did do the job as a palate cleanser. Sugar Babies were also a contender for me, though they didn’t get that name for nothing. All of these created a thirst, which sometimes caused another problem at the movie theaters.

If there was one thing Mr. Florence wouldn’t tolerate (besides talking during the movie), it was a constant up and down or back and forth from your seat to the concession stand or bathroom. You were much safer if you went ahead and got all your food and drink before the movie started. And when I say safe, I mean it in the sense of not being banished into the crying room, or worse.

For folks who don’t know, the crying room was a glassed off cubicle in the right hand corner of the large theater room that allowed folks with little babies to watch the movie without disturbing other people. Back in the day it was considered important to be able to hear the dialogue between all the characters. Now they just turn the sound up ever higher, which takes some of the joy away from me in the modern cinema era. Deaf as I am, it blows me out of my seat.

Back to the story … You didn’t want to see Mr. Florence approaching you with that flashlight in hand. It could mean a reprimand in the form of a shhhh, a trip to the crying room, or, in the worst case scenario, getting kicked out. All this applied to the ground floor for the most part. In the balcony there was something else beyond constantly getting up and down or talking that could get you banished. And that was smooching. There were a couple of nooks on each side of the projection booth, but one in particular (the one opposite the balcony entrance), that lent themselves to privacy, and naturally young couples gravitated to them.

It was kind of an unspoken rule that only couples were allowed to go into the balcony but, as in most things, many times that rule was broken. Usually it was a group of pre-teen boys who would go up to the balcony and spend the evening rubber-necking in an attempt to catch one of the couples in the act of kissing. I’m sure I never did that, yet how would I know if I hadn’t? OK, I did it, but only a couple of times. Later on, I was the victim of some of these brats, then realized I was the pot calling the kettle black.

Anyway, I think this was the reason that more and more couples decided to go to the Rocket Drive-In rather than the Cameo, even when the weather was hot and miserable or really cold. OK, maybe not cold, because that made smooching even better.

I can honestly say now that the train has jumped the tracks, and I don’t know how I got from best candy bars to smooching in the movie theaters. Maybe it was just the wonderful memories I have of growing up here, or perhaps it was growing up in a simpler time. Either way, it was truly a wonderful life.

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