Apr 11, 2022 3 min read

I was grocery shopping early last week at one of the local “artisan” food stores that had individual cookie and chocolate-covered pretzels in bins. Customers are permitted to pick up items using a tissue and place them in a bag. A nice touch I thought, because not everyone wants a dozen cookies or pretzels. But I was put off when I saw a hand-lettered sign near the bins: PLEASE! NO NIBBLING!

Apparently, some customers cannot resist the urge to take a bite while filling a bag. Who knows if they pay for the “sample?” Who knows if the crumbs fall from their lips back into a bin? I won’t even go into the ethical problems. But the sign reminded of my favorite story involving Christmas candy.

My dad most often held minimum-wage jobs because he didn’t graduate from high school. After I came along in 1949, we were a family of five with a brother in the U.S. Air Force. We didn’t often have extravagant food on the table. At Christmas, my stocking held an orange, an apple and, maybe, some walnuts. But the thing I looked forward to most each December was the five-pound box of Brach’s chocolates that Mom bought every year. It was a wonder!

Two layers of chocolate-covered creams, nuts, nougats and caramels, perhaps a cherry or two. And jellies. Now, Dad was a man who loved sweets and richness, so much so that he was known to slather butter on cookies before shoving them whole into his mouth. But I never saw him eat a candy bar – maybe because even at an average of 5 cents per bar, they were too costly when he was growing up during the Great Depression. And because he never ate candy bars, I can see why he was eager to dive into that box of Brach’s.

My memory isn’t good enough to recall for certain if in the fifties Brach’s included a roadmap on the underside of the box lid that indicated the flavor of each piece of chocolate. But I’m almost sure the maps were invented because of my father.

Dad hated chocolate-covered jellies. I’m not sure why. But his aversion was such that he approached each box of Brach’s as if he were a soldier sweeping for landmines. His method wasn’t scientific or subtle. To determine what each piece of chocolate held, Dad shoved a forefinger through the top. If the piece squished, he’d eat it; if his finger bounced back, he would move on to the next piece, leaving behind a field of cratered chocolate tops that drove my mother crazy.

She called him on the practice, saying it was disgusting and unsanitary. But he didn’t stop. Instead, Dad merely turned each piece over and poked a finger through the bottom, then turned the piece right-side-up if it contained jelly. I guess his reasoning was that no one else would discover his handiwork – we would just pick up the piece and bite into it, none the wiser. It didn’t work. But Mom knew scolding him was of no use.

So I’m pretty sure she wrote to Brach’s, pleading for them to put a roadmap on box lids to stop her husband’s chocolate probing.

Maybe not.

But I know for certain that, had Mom been with me shopping last week, she’d have nodded approvingly at those “NO NIBBLING!” signs.