When I was a kid, I loved Cracker Jack.... it came in boxes with that little Cracker Jack boy and his dog pictured on the label. I think it was seven cents a box when I first became aware of this special treat.
My dad loved sweets, and he and I would always share a Hershey's chocolate bar (five cents back then) or a bag of M&Ms, also five cents in the 1950s. And for a special treat, a box of Cracker Jack. Daddy ate the peanuts, I ate the popcorn. It was a perfect arrangement because I didn't like peanuts (still don't) and my father said the sticky popcorn got stuck in his teeth.
In the 1950s, Cracker Jack had a tiny surprise inside the box... a charm-sized animal or doll, a little ring or a tiny toy. I don't exactly remember when they stopped including those miniatures in their boxes of Cracker Jack.... now they have paper riddles and jokes and puzzles. Kids today don't know what they're missing, and the adults who once saved all their Cracker Jack toys back in the day can now buy them on eBay for ridiculous amounts of money.
When I was old enough to sit through a two-hour show, daddy and I went to Madison Square Garden in New York City to see Barnum and Bailey's Circus. My dad's favorite parts of the circus were the animal acts and the clowns, and the grilled hot dogs. I didn't much care for hot dogs then (still don't) and besides, hot dogs were messy, and I always had to wear a dress when we went into The City. Popcorn was a much safer choice... not as messy, and just as filling. I would have a box of popcorn in one hand, and a lighted circus necklace around my neck (all the kids would swing those necklaces in a circle when they lowered the bright stage lights and all you could see were thousands of little red dots glowing on necklaces around the arena).
In high school, popcorn was out and pizza became the snack of choice.... friends would meet at the local pizza place after school, or on the weekends. Either by the slice or a whole pie, depending on how many kids were there, pizza was definitely the thing to eat if you were going to ruin your dinner or splurge on calories in the 1960s. My dad was still driving the bus for the Transit Authority when I was in high school, and there were days when I would meet him at the last stop on his line, and ride half the way back along the Avenue with him, getting off at the bus stop nearest to where we lived. Most often than not on those days, daddy would give me a box of Cracker Jack as I got off the bus, saying "Don't forget to save me the peanuts!"
Pizza didn't last long as the 'treat of choice' as I got older and started worrying about calories. One slice of pizza was fine, but when you were with a lot of friends, just one slice was hard to do.... so it was best to move on to a healthier snack. Popcorn was 'in' again, and big companies were producing multi-paged catalogs with all sorts of flavored popcorn. When I was working at the library up in New York, our director would order huge tins of gourmet popcorn at Christmas and at Easter. The caramel flavor (similar to Cracker Jack) was always the first to go, with the cheese-flavored popcorn sticking around till the very last. Once the caramel popcorn was gone, I wasn't interested in the other flavors. Those popcorn companies are still in business, with the biggest one being in Chicago, I believe..... it had been featured on one of the Oprah shows, and if that isn't a life-saving endorsement for a business, then I don't know what else would be.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I had a small apartment up in New York, about a twenty-minute drive away from my job at the library. With a healthy snack in mind, I bought one of those hot-air heated popcorn makers. All you needed was a good quality brand of corn kernels, and like magic, you had fresh and delicious popcorn that didn't even need a drop of butter. (Never liked butter on popcorn, and still don't.)
One thing about that hot-air popcorn maker, my whole apartment smelled like a movie theater as the kernels were popping. Which was kind of appropriate because the popcorn would be made before or during an old movie from the library's collection of VCR tapes. Casablanca..... Out of Africa.... Gone With The Wind.... An American in Paris.... Breakfast at Tiffany's..... certainly all of those films, and so many more, were popcorn-worthy.
When I moved to Texas, the big popcorn-thing here turned out to be kettle corn. Sort of sweet, like Cracker Jack, but lighter and not as sticky. Definitely addictive.... once you start eating kettle corn, it becomes your meal. Somehow, just having a handful doesn't work. Kettle corn is made in huge copper pots over an open flame, most likely found at country fairs and street celebrations in small towns. I've tried making kettle corn at home.... it just doesn't work, doesn't taste the same. Without the big copper pot and the open flame, it's just not worth the time and the calories.
Except for buying a bag of kettle corn at small-town festivals, I've been staying away from popcorn. What used to be an every-night treat in my little New York apartment is now just a whisper of memory. A small bag of Cracker Jack is nice, but not as memorable as those little boxes that would fit into my dad's shirt pocket. And I remember one Christmas long ago when my husband put a gold and diamond ring into a Cracker Jack bag that he wrapped up in Santa-and-snowmen wrapping paper.
Popcorn has such innocence to it, all that golden deliciousness wrapped up tightly and puffed up inside a tiny corn seed. The aroma of popping corn reminds me of the circus with my dad, and country fairs with street vendors yelling "Get y'all's kettle corn here!" What is especially touching to me is that just the sound of popcorn kernels bursting and exploding from the heat brings back so many memories.... and I can actually hear the dialogue of all those old movies that were 'popped' into the VCR in my tiny little apartment back in New York.
"Here's looking at you, kid." (Was there ever anyone better than Bogart?)
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