Whitman's Chocolate

When I was growing up in the 1950s, no one bought a box of candy from a supermarket. Every neighborhood had a candy store that sold handmade chocolates by the box or by the piece. You could pick out your favorite chocolates which were displayed in a large glass case trimmed in wood or brass. The store owner would wrap up your selections in pretty papers appropriate to the particular season of the year, and off you would go with this precious box of delicious chocolates.

My dad loved Whitman's Chocolate, and their most popular box was their "Sampler," which gave about two dozen pieces of chocolate-covered nuts, caramel, fruit creams, and coconut clusters. In the center of the box was the Whitman's "Messenger Boy" which was a thin brick of chocolate molded in the shape of a little boy delivering a box of Whitman's Chocolates.

Whitman's was my dad's chocolate of choice, and he bought countless sampler boxes over the years... for the family, for the nuns at school, for friends at Christmas-time. "You can't go wrong with Whitman's, and who doesn't like good chocolate?" he would say.

My grandmother and my Aunt Dolly would save the sampler boxes when all the chocolate was gone. Grandma used the boxes for sewing supplies, and Aunt Dolly filled her share of the Whitman's boxes with card-making supplies and pretty ribbons. On a rainy day when I told my aunt that I had nothing to do, Aunt Dolly would hand me one or two of her "busy work" boxes and tell me "Go sit down and make me something."  Inside those yellow Whitman's boxes would be the fronts of pretty cards, scraps of ribbons, bits of silk flowers, tiny little charms from Cracker Jack.... and I'd sit there and make a unique paper creation that my aunt would cherish for years. I've had my own boxes of card-making supplies for years now, and spend many hours making cards, invitations, and place cards for family and friends.

When my dad walked into my grandmother's house with a box of Whitman's, he would open the box in front of my grandmother and say "Look at that... all perfect.... and doesn't it smell like good chocolate should?"  Daddy would let grandma take the first piece, which was almost always the little rectangular-shaped brick with the Messenger Boy imprinted on it. Grandma would eat it slowly, letting the chocolate melt in her mouth. "Buono, buono," she'd say when she was finished. "Good, good."  Daddy would ask her to take another and my grandmother's answer would always be the same. "One is enough for now."

Aunt Dolly always took one of the chocolate covered peanuts or a cashew cluster. Nuts covered in chocolate were her favorites. She would take a small knife and cut one of the clusters in half, savoring one half right then, saving the other half for after dinner. We all knew that if we saw half of a nut cluster in the Whitman's box, that half was my aunt's and not to be touched.

Uncle Mino was the chocolate gourmet of the house. He worked in Manhattan and had access to all sorts of private chocolate shops who made the chocolates on site and sold them for exorbitant prices. My uncle would go into one of those shops during his lunch-time walk around The City and buy one or two pieces at a time, only buying an entire box's worth of selections at Christmas-time. Being that Uncle Mino had tasted chocolate "from all over the world," he thought that the box of Whitman's was too mundane. "Fine," said my dad, "That leaves more Whitman's for the rest of us."

Sooner or later, though, the box of Whitman's would tempt Uncle Mino. He would open the box and peer into it, and then take a very thin fruit knife with an ivory handle so he could slice off an end of whichever chocolate he chose to try. The blade on that knife was very sharp, and he could make these tiny slices of chocolate that were less than one-quarter-of-an-inch thick. "Just enough to taste," my uncle would say. The problem was that my uncle and his knife-slicing would result in two of three of the Whitman's chocolates missing their chocolate-covered ends.

My dad would open the Whitman's box and say "My brother the chocolate surgeon must have been here! Just look at what he did to the Whitman's!"  More often than not, daddy would take the pieces that had already been cut by my uncle, so when the box was next opened, one wouldn't see cut-off ends on the selections.

In the mid 1960s after I'd started high school, a chocolate shop opened up right on the corner where Uncle Mino caught his bus for the ride to the train station. The shop sold Russell Stover's chocolates. During their first couple of weeks, the shop gave out free samples, and my uncle helped himself to more than a few of the chocolate-covered caramels and creams. When the store discontinued their free samples, Uncle Mino bought a box of his hand-selected favorites and brought them home for the family to taste.

And so began the Whitman/Stover competition in my grandmother's house. My dad swore by Whtiman's, "hands down," as he said. Uncle Mino said that Russell Stover's caramels were thicker and better than the Whitman's.  My dad's answer to that was "The caramel is so thick that it could pull a filling out of your tooth."  Both my grandmother and my Aunt Dolly refused to take sides. "They're both good," Aunt Dolly would say. Grandma would just look at her two sons and shake her head, telling them they should be grateful that they had extra money in their pockets to buy boxes of chocolate.

The Whitman/Stover battle went on for years... my Uncle Mino bringing home a box of Russell Stover's chocolate a day or two after my dad walked in with a box of Whitman's.  Uncle Mino would open both boxes and put them side by side, comparing the shapes and the selections. My dad would tell his brother "Keep that knife of yours away from my Whitman's... if you want to slice into chocolate, then do it to the Stover's."

My husband and I have traveled quite a lot over the past twenty-some years. We've tasted chocolates in countless US cities we've visited, and we've also had gourmet chocolates in Germany, The Netherlands, London, Canada, and Australia.  Each of the private chocolate shops were beautifully decorated and their glass-covered display counters held enticing selections of chocolates. A few years ago, one of the Houston museums hosted a World Chocolate Exhibit, and we got to taste and buy chocolates from all over the globe without leaving the state of Texas.

However.... when I give a box of chocolates as a gift, I always pick up a Sampler Box of Whitman's. That familiar yellow box just says 'family' to me, and brings back all those memories of Grandma choosing the little Messenger Boy piece, Uncle Mino slicing the ends off the caramels and creams, Aunt Dolly saving the nut clusters for herself, and daddy saying "You can't go wrong with Whitman's."

A few days ago, my husband surprised me with a box of Whitman's.  He didn't tell me that he'd bought it.... he just left it on a table in the TV room where I had made a small Christmas display of a few Santa figurines and an empty tin box of a vintage Whitman's Christmas Sampler.  When my eye caught sight of the yellow Whitman's box, my heart skipped half a beat because I immediately thought of my dad, and then of course realized that my husband had put the box of Whitman's there for me to find.

My dad passed away in 2008, but when I opened that box of Whitman's from my husband and took a bite of the little Messenger Boy piece, my eyes puddled up with tears because I could actually hear daddy's voice in my mind saying "You can't go wrong with Whitman's."

As I type this, there are just ten more days till Christmas. I tend to get sad and sappy around this time of the year. I have to remind myself to concentrate on the good memories and just breeze through the not-so-good memories of years past. That box of Whitman's sitting downstairs on the table... a very thoughtful surprise from my husband which has given me the gift of hearing daddy's voice in my mind once again. I hope the day never comes when I no longer remember the sound of my father's voice.