Confectionaries

When I was just a lad there were three confectionaries just down the street at the corner. They were a great way for widows to support themselves and any children they might have had. There were living quarters in back and the ladies made a living selling penny candy, milk and bread. One had a soda fountain, one had a meat counter and the other had pinball machines and comic books. My favorite was the latter one.

There was a grade school right across the street from our house and it was a good one, still there today, 60 years later. I was raised Catholic though and had to walk four blocks away for school. Because it was a poor neighborhood, that school was closed and it is long gone. There was a confectionary there also. It had living quarters in the back and the old lady there had to come out of her quarters, through a curtain and down six steps to sell penny candy or a bottle of pop which probably only made her perhaps two or three cents. She was a bitter old gal and now I can see why.

The old confectionaries made money selling cigarettes and all of them did. All a kid had to do was answer the question, “Who are these for?” The correct answer was, “For my mother,” and the smokes were yours to use. The cigarettes cost 20 cents a pack, but it was a rare day when we had that 20 cents. The confectionary with the soda fountain was just 10 cents for an ice cream soda and that was sometimes manageable. That place had, according to the mothers in the neighborhood, loose young women working that soda fountain. What did I care; I was five or six and they were older women of 15 and 16, but the 16 year-old boys did spend a lot of time there. There were rumors that “heavy petting” went on in that place, but I did not know what that was. Ah, if only I had been 10 years older back then. Of course I would be 10 years older now, but I may have been much more experienced. It’s a tradeoff I suppose; I would have appreciated it then, but now, not so much.