neighborhood.
“That’s going to be very hard,” she said. “You realize it will still be Lent when you go and you remember your promise.”
I’m sure my mother thought the non-Catholics in charge of the Brownies scheduled the trip during Lent on purpose, knowing most Catholic kids were trying to abstain. We were usually allowed a treat on Sundays in Lent, but five days was sooo long to wait.
“But this is a special trip, Mom. Can’t I have an excuse?”
“They don’t give excuses for breaking your promise. Now, it’s not a sin if you eat the candy, it’s just that God will be very disappointed in you.”
I stood at the window of our living room and could picture God looking down from the clouds. His fatherly face had a very hurt expression. I looked up, feeling very small but still determined to compromise. In my mind the negotiations were going back and forth.
“It’s just this one time, Heavenly Father, and all the other girls will be eating the candy, and I promise to go back to not eating it on the next day, OK?”
In my imaginary conversation, God wouldn’t look at me. He just shook His massive head and stared off into what must have been the suburbs of heaven.
“It’s not a sin, my child, but I guess you just don’t have what it takes to be strong enough, to fight the temptation. Don’t you see that this is practice for when the Devil really tempts you to do something wrong? If you can say no now, you will be strong enough to say no when it really counts.”
This made up dialogue played over and over in my head. I was miserable and I wanted the candy. I decided not to decide until the field trip.
We arrived at Mars in the late afternoon. It was still light enough to see a long, low building with perfectly straight awnings on each window, immaculate grounds, manicured landscaping and not a spot of litter, nothing broken or out of place anywhere. We were ushered into a receiving area and greeted by a woman in a stiffly starched lab coat and hairnet. She passed out identical hairnets to each of us as she welcomed us to the birthplace of my favorite candy bar - the Milky Way. We could already smell the chocolate.
We quietly followed and entered into the largest, cleanest kitchen I had ever seen in my life. We were behind huge windows which gave us the opportunity to see everything while staying beyond any actual touching or tasting. All the workers moved about in spotless white uniforms, pushing buttons to control huge mixers, conveyor belts, cookers and all the other equipment it took to create a candy bar from sugar, butter, chocolate and, I was sure, secret ingredients that made it taste so good.
The temperature in the building was cool but we ignored the chill as the process held our complete attention.The sweet smell was all around us. We had never seen so much chocolate in our lives. Our fingers were itching to be dipped in those huge vats of caramel and nougat. Three Musketeers, Snickers, Mars Bars...we were in heaven. We traveled along the observation trail, watching all the ingredients gradually come together to form the most perfect candy bars - hundreds and hundreds of them marching along the belts toward the packaging machines. Yes! There you go little Milky Way bars! Follow along and we Brownies will all take good care of you!
Toward the end of the tour, we watched our favorite treats disappear into cardboard boxes and were carted away to be stored and delivered. The candy was always just beyond our reach and now it was gone. We found ourselves in the same receiving room as when we arrived, gathered our coats and prepared to leave. Our tour lady, the last to emerge from the plant area, walked in with just what we had been hoping for-- boxes of miniature samples of all the Mars products for us to take home and eat until we made ourselves sick.
I had never had so much candy that I didn’t have to share. I just looked at the white box with the cellophane cutout - they were all there and they were all mine. As we got on the bus, our troop leader told us to wait until we got home before eating the candy but her admonishment fell mostly on deaf ears. I longingly looked at my treasure and managed not to open the box. As the “public” kids chowed down on all that delightful chocolate, we Catholics knew we had to save our treasure until the following Sunday.
When I got home, the box went into the refrigerator and I managed to wait. On Sunday I could take it out for a treat, but I had to have been dreaming to think it was mine alone. Everyone in our house got a share.
Fannie May, Milky Ways-- chocolate covered anything was a favorite of my mother’s but such treats were never consumed without sharing. We would bring home a candy bar, which only cost a nickel, and as the wrapper came off, a kitchen knife came out and the bar was split in three and I shared with my sisters. I don’t think I ever ate a whole candy bar until I was an adult - and only because having had small portions as a child, the whole thing was entirely too sweet and too much to eat at one sitting. I can still make a large-sized Milky Way last an entire week. However, I don’t think my mother could say the same thing.
