Oldies

Most convenient stores today are lined with candy ranging from snickers, three musketeer bars, skittles, twizzlers, and a wide variety of gum brands and flavors. Looking at the array of assorted candy bars makes me reminisce about the candy dating back to the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. I developed a taste for old goodies at a small little shop in Viking Village on Long Beach Island called the Sugar shack.
The Sugar Shack is nestled in the center of Viking Village. The contrast between the Dark brown wooden shack and bright yellow and white striped awning makes the bold Black letters, Sugar Shack, hard to miss. Hanging from the bright yellow owning is a wind chime. As the cool wind blows off the bay, the soft sound of a slow ding fills into the air. Leading into the sugar shack is a tiny brick path lined with large rainbow pinwheels. The pinwheels slowly turn in the wind. The bright colors catch the eye of both children and adults. Entering the sugar shack I am overwhelmed by the various varieties of candy dating as far back as the 1920s. Fruit slices, licorice wheels, Mary Janes, Nik-L-Nips, Atomic Fire Balls, rock candy, Bazooka bubble gum, and many more. My top choices were candy cigarettes and candy buttons.
I loved looking at the different brand titles and pictures on the boxes of candy cigarettes. I wasn’t choosing from actual cigarette brands like Marlboro Reds, Camel, and Parliaments. Candy cigarettes had their own companies with names like, Stallion candy, Target candy, and Kings candy. My favorite pack of cigarette candy was the Lucky Lights candy. The bright horseshoe on the box and green clover looked so glamorous to me. Walking around the neighborhood on a warm summer night was a bond my dad and I shared. I would pretend to smoke my candy cigarette as my Dad smoked his cigar. I loved pretending to blow imaginary rings of smoke into the air. Every bite of the sugar stick was pure satisfaction. No artificial sweeteners involved, just pure sweet sugar cane.
Along with candy cigarettes, I found a love for candy buttons. Candy buttons are small dots of colored sugar lined across in threes on paper Tape. I loved looking at the rows of yellow, blue, and pink candy dots. Every time my mom would buy me candy buttons, I knew it meant one thing; she wanted to keep me preoccupied while she went shopping. As I would wait for my mom to browse through Viking village looking at the different types of knick-knacks and buying fresh fish, I would carefully peel off the candy buttons. Looking back on my experience now, I realize that candy buttons really had no taste to them at all. The paper tape would also always get stuck to the back of the buttons. The taste of food dye and paper was a delicacy to me at age seven.
The sugar shack is a small shack that holds candies dated all the way back to the 1920s. The sugar shack exemplifies that even as time goes on, some of the oldies are worth keeping around.