Hostess vs. Table Talk--Which Side Would You Be On?

It was Dale and the group of guys at Panera who inspired this entry to my blog.  Early this week they were having a glorious discussion at full volume about the greatness of remembered food, food consumed when we were younger and calories and cholesterol were of no concern.  Foods like Ho-ho’s, Twinkies, Dale’s favorite Table Talk pies in the little boxes, Hostess Cupcakes with the squiggle and the cream inside, Hostess Snowballs with the pink gooey icing and the cream inside, birch beer, french fries with cheese curds on top, and Hostess Pies that looked like empanadas.  The guys also were talking about memories of places like Heid’s and of food customs they recalled.  One guy claimed he had eaten 10 hot dogs in one sitting.  I empathized with one of them who said when he was a kid he never knew what a hamburger roll was.  His family always ate hamburgers tucked between two slices of white bread. (Probably “Wonder.”)

I remember those terrific treats from time gone by.  I still see the Twinkies and the Snowballs on the rack in Byrne Dairy, but I never buy them.  When my friends and I were around 10 years old there were two stores we could bike to buy treats.  The Pennysaver was a great store in the part of Webster called Forest Lawn,  (No relation to the cemetery of the same name), but my favorite store was Unger’s on Bay Road, an easy bike ride away, even though we had to ride on DeWitt Road and avoid the always dangerous Bay Road to get there.  Unger’s wasn’t very big, and it was run by an old couple.  It had all the snack foods, plus it was the place we went during baseball card season to buy packs of Topp’s bubble gum cards for a nickel apiece. We’d open them and pray for a special card.  I remember getting a “Hank Aaron” at Unger’s.  Wish I had it now. The store had a cooler for bottled soft drinks, which we called pop.  My favorite was Orange Crush back when it was the color of lemonade and came in brown bottles with orange letters.

That was a good time for food and drink.  Coke machines that vended 7 oz. bottles for 6 cents, the four-in-one Sky Bar, and those stupid little candy dots that were stuck in long rows to the strips of paper that looked like they belonged in an adding machine.  The worst, I thought were the wax bottles filled with room temperature liquified sugar.  Does anyone else remember Super Cola, a short lived soft drink that came in a metal bottle that looked like the containers they use for engine additives?

I repeat, that was a good time for food and drink.  I imagine everyone’s pasts feature the same kind of memories. Tasty.  And the best pies were definitely the “Table Talk” variety with the little foil pie tins!  That’s what I think anyway, and I know Dale agrees.

Greg Ellstrom