Remember penny candy?

Drew with his worn out sack of candy given to him by grandpa.

My husband Thomas and I have ten grandchildren. The youngest are 4 years old and 9 months old.  We also have a new little girl, Addi, in utero with an ETA sometime in September.

Tom has truly enjoyed spoiling these little guys. He always brings a hidden treat and Drew is definitely on the lookout for it every time he sees his Grandpa.

Last week Tom decided to put the candy in a little brown paper sack and he even tied a string around the end of it for some reason. Boy was it a hit. The bag has been treasured by Drew and carried everywhere he goes. For some reason it has caused him to save some candy to eat later too.

He has worn the bag out to the point it got a hole in the bottom that his dad had to tape up. Later Tom and I were laughing and talking about the little sweetheart and and how he has treasured his “candy sack” when I asked Tom:

Do you remember when you could fill a bag with penny candy for a dime?

Well, I had my laptop near by, so I picked it up and began documenting as Tom told this story. I so enjoyed it, that I decided to share it here,

So here it is:

As told by my hubby Thomas.

Oh yes,  I remember penny candy. I remember every week Aunt Rudell (White) would come to check on Grandma and Grandpa (her parents) and she would always stop by and get us kids, all 7 of us, and head to Cousin Cora Yarborough's store. We all loved to see her come.

She was like a big kid herself and she really enjoyed carrying us to the store to buy us candy.  As a kid I never thought much about where the money came from or how generous Aunt Rudell was. I just knew she loved me and I loved her.

Yarborough's Crossroads as it looks now. Arrow marks where the
  store once was. This is located at the intersection of Philadelphia Rd
and Lawson Grove Rd in Darlington County, SC.

The store was at Yarborough's crossroads about 2 miles from where we lived. Yarborough’s Crossroads was at  the intersection of Philadelphia Rd and Lawson Grove Rd in Darlington County SC.

There was a gas pump out front. It was a little wood sided store, with a shop building on one side. Cousin Otis did blacksmith work there. The store had a wooden floor and a double set of wooden screen doors with big handles that had Merita Bread painted on them and they would spring closed with a slam.

She sold chicken and hog feed in cloth bags (later to be recycled into little girl dresses). Folks would sit on the bags of feed and drink their 6 oz Coca Cola in a green glass bottle and eat a "Moon Pie".

Right inside the door to the right was the drink box. Coca Cola, RC Cola, Pepsi and Red Rock were all there. Then there was a dairy/meat case where Cousin Cora kept the Cobel milk, bologna, and cheese. And there at the end was that wonderful huge glass case filled with penny candy.

Kids were asked not to put their hands on the glass, but we all did anyway. What an assortment!  Inside the case was Squirrel Nuts, Mary Janes, Caramel Creams, bubble gum, candy cigarettes, jawbreakers, malted milk balls, peppermint sticks, Tootsie Rolls, peanut butter logs, suckers and I am sure much more!

We each took our turn agonizing over our choices while Cousin Cora patiently waited, then she would pack up the goodies in a little paper sack.

Cousin Cora knew all us children by name and would have to hug each one of us as she gave us our sack of candy...and we each got our own separate bag. This was 65 years ago, and yet I remember it like it was yesterday…right down to that little brown paper sack all the candy went into.


 Oh, now I'm also  remembering on the last day of school (Old Philadelphia Community School) Cousin Cora would come to school driving her Kaiser (auto) with the back seat full of boxes of Popsicles in all flavors and she gave each child a Popsicle.

I did not care what flavor I got because I loved them all. What a COOL memory this is. It would pay for adults to remember they are making memories for children. So they should make good ones.











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