Chiclets memories... When I was a young lad, the Ladies Altar Guild Society of our Catholic parish would hold card parties and at them, they would sell Chiclets by the box. Some boxes had numbers in them and they were the door prizes. I would help sell the Chiclets by holding the tray with the boxes--the ladies would ask me to pick the boxes they had purchased and I remember getting my cheek pinched each time one of the ladies won a prize. ~ Steve from New Jersey Every day at lunch time at school we had half an hour of break in which we where allowed to leave school property. I would always run to the store and buy some Chiclets. I couldn't through the day without my fix of the chix. Everyone always knew I had some Chiclets in my pocket, the trading ensued, by the end of the day I already had people to do my homework for me, as well as a dollar or so in pocket change. And all of this originated from one single pack of Chiclets. I will always identify Chiclets with my lazy days back at school. ~ Lucas from New York My memory involves my Grandma and her purse. Whenever I was at Grandma's house she would usually tell me to go check on her purse in the closet. I knew that this meant that I could get a piece of Chiclets gum. I would sit down on the floor by the closet, open up the purse that there would be that familiar box that would rattle when I shook it. I was only allowed one, but I knew that I'd be back to her house again and would get to have another one then. In my memory I can still smell the Chiclets when I opened the box and feel the crunch when I'd first bite into it. ~ Susan from Georgia I came from a very poor family. At the time, I was about 3 or 4 years old. Once in awhile we were given a quarter, we went to the corner store, and they would fill up a little candy bag with different candies. Chiclets I loved, I loved to suck on them to get the outside coating off and then start to chew. I also had a PEZ dispenser and when the PEZ candies were gone, I would try to turn the Chiclets side wise and put them in the PEZ dispenser trying to get a chiclet to come out, oddly enough they would come out. I held on to my bag of candy making it last as long as I could way after my brothers and sisters had theirs gone, I would hide it so they never new I had it. The little boxes of Chiclets always lasted me longer than anything else because I would get about 5 boxes, that would give me ten pieces, I only took one out at a time and put the rest in the PEZ dispenser. Sometimes they would figure out that I had some and cry to my mother that I had candy and was made to give it to them. But I always had another secret compartment and hiding place. ~ Kat from Tennessee Every Christmas, when I was a child, my father would buy each of the four children in my family a carton of Chiclets gum (the big boxes). After all the gifts were opened and examined, my siblings and I would huddle and divide up the Chiclets; we were each able to keep two stacks of our favorite flavor (mine was Pepsin) and give one stack to each of our siblings. So we were all able to share the flavors. One year, when I was about 13, he stopped giving us Chiclets and we were all quite upset about it! Daddy was quite surprised as he didn't realize that he had created a tradition by that simple task. The following year, he made sure to scramble around and find our gum! ~ Lori from Washington |
