79 cents is the new 5 cents!

~ Ellie

So I’m at the cash in IGA, the closest supermarket where I always shop. I’m waiting my turn, and as usual my eyes wander… to the candy counter next to me.

First thing I spot are these:

Bunch o' Oh Henry! bars
Photo (cc) by Mike Mozart

…which right away take me back, waaaayyy back – to 1954. The summer  before I turned 9, I was a busy, clever girl. What was I doing? Well, with my fabulous 5¢-per-week allowance (occasionally subsidized with returns of pop bottles), I bought one of these chocolate treats every week. Oh, they were the small size, maybe about three inches long, but mmmm, so good. They looked like this inside:

Oh Henry! bar - cross section
Photo (cc) by Schoko Riegel

You’re looking at peanuts, caramel, vanilla fudge and chocolate. Yes yes: pure sugar, okay? I know. I’ll talk about sugar in another post, but just for now, let’s enjoy these babies!

So here’s the thing. They each cost only 5¢, and what I would do is, every week, I’d put my purchase away. I’d stack ’em up in a small drawer in my bureau. No one knew they were in there but me. I’d add to them and add to them, never partaking of even one! It was, in a way, like a savings account, except instead of money, I was saving… chocolate bars.

Finally, when the drawer was about two-thirds full, I could stand the waiting no longer. I started to eat them… one per day. I’d take them to school for a snack at recess.

They lasted about a month. And do you know what? They were the most delicious five-cent chocolate bars I’ve ever had in my life, and furthermore, it felt as though they were free! (The fact that I had indeed paid for them was by now a distant memory!)

So I’m standing here in the IGA, eyeballing these bars, drooling a bit, when I notice – the price. Seventy-nine cents! They weren’t even bars! They were labelled “eggs.” Hmph, not even egg-shaped, I thought, feeling one of the small packages (in the familiar wrapper). This is an imposter, I decided. And 79¢ yet! I didn’t buy one.

But I might go back tomorrow…

21 thoughts on “79 cents is the new 5 cents!”

    1. Hahaha! Thanks! Now I’m off to read about your cruise!! (I did one, a small one a long time ago, ’87. Another post one day! Inspired by you!! 😀 )

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  3. We never had candy bars when I was a child. It’s my own fault. I was too much of a miser to spend money. You lived it up! Good for you! I didn’t begin to buy candy bars until our children were of Trick or Treat age. I still buy candy for the neighborhood Halloween crowd, knowing only Logan will come. I buy his favorite of the moment and mine. Fallout is great!

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    1. I’m curious to know, did your teeth benefit from the dearth of candy in your childhood? You must’ve had happy and boring dentist appointments. No?

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  6. You’re in trouble. Now, you will go back at some point and either buy more or there will be other folk who have a similar O Henry fever and there won’t be anymore. You’d best get off your badoonka now before it’s too late.

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      1. Awww, but you don’t have the chocolate to make the cold all better.

        Side note…I kicked that penchant for chocolate and recently realized it just wasn’t a big deal anymore. I reckon cause sweets inhibit my sleeping. Sleeping is pretty important.

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  7. I’m impressed by the willpower you had as a child! There’s no way I’d have been able to resist eating chocolate bars for long enough to allow the drawer to become two-thirds full. I doubt there would even have been as many as two bars in any one place at the same time.

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