Clark Bar memories...

Many years ago my father had a candy route in eastern North Carolina. He sold many candies and small coconut pies and the like. I used to go to the local distributor with him to buy the candy he was going to take on the road to sell. he would always buy several cases of this and that and always Clark bar.

Now here is the amazing part. He would buy a 24 count box for .03 cents per bar and sell it to a retailer for .05 cents a bar. Now this is back in the middle and late 50's. Now candy bars are .69 cents and more per bar. Needless to say our family stayed poor for many years selling .05 candy. Stephen from Arizona

It was almost Easter, shortly after the Spanish American War when my mother, Ethel (b. 1897), watched her father, David P. Rogers and his two friends from the war, Uncle Ed Smith and D. L. Clark make candy in her basement near McKeesport, Pennsylvania. This sweet hobby produced a product they called the Bolster Bar, a peanut-butter crunchy candy covered with milk chocolate.

As years went on, Uncle Ed bought out my grandfather's interest in the candy business and produced the Bolster Bars officially for public consumption. As fate would have it, D. L. Clark, the "success story" of the three friends, bought out Uncle Ed, and the Clark Bar was born!

Uncle Ed moved West and settled somewhere in California, and the sweet memory of the Clark Bar in its infancy remains in my memory to this day through my momma's stories. She told me how D. L. ran test samples by her and my grandfather to see if they liked them. What's not to like?! So, to this day, when I buy a Clark Bar, I think of good old D. L., Uncle Ed and Grandpa, and what fun they must have had eating their mistakes as the Bolster Bar laid the groundwork for the Clark Bar that we love so much today. ~ Martha from Florida

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