Slo Pokes memories...
Free Show and a Nickel
Can I have some money, Mom? A nickel. Take some time to think of what a nickelcanbuytimesup. How do I make a nickel last the night? "Doing without"
was negative thinking. Yankee ingenuity demanded a solution.
The Free Show happened every Thursday night all summer vacation long. It was the high point of the week in Cameron, population of a little over 300
people. I know. My two sisters and I counted them out loud while waiting for a freight train to go by. There was at the time of this story the post
office, a gas station-pool hall-small goods (hey, the first convenience store), a barber shop, a grocery store, the lodge hall, the (only) church, the
grade school, and when I was very little, a smithy.
Between the barber shop and the grocery store was a vacant lot. A man came from the neighboring town with film reels and a projector in the back of
his station wagon. A big sheet was hung on the side of the brick grocery. Our own outdoor theatre! And free.
We saw for the most part the same movies every year. Some of the classics were The Five Little Peppers, Francis the Talking Mule, all the Ma and Pa
Kettles, The Little Rascals, Abbott and Costello, and too many other 1940s B flicks to remember. A war film now and then, and at least one Doris Day.
The best was The Glenn Miller Story. I have the VHS tape in my collection.
So every Thursday about dusk, we rolled up our blankets, collected our nickels and walked down the road to the outdoor theatre. From all the candy in
the case at Sam's pool hall, no one told me what to pick. It was mmmyyyyyyyy choice.
There it was. Caramel heaven. The kind that slid out the corners of the mouth and had to be hurriedly swiped with a sticky tongue. A Slo Poke. It
seemed like a whole foot of thick sweetness when in reality it might be--hey, let's not ruin a good memory! I'd hand Sam the nickel and have that
thing unwrapped before I hit the creaky double screen doors. Liiiiick the Slo Poke. Sloowwly. Lick the chin fast!! Repeat until the little white stick
was free of all caramel and soaked. It probably didn't get me to the end of the movie, but regardless of the movie or the Slo Poke, there was a pretty
strong chance I was asleep by then anyway. After all, that had to be 10:00! That was past my bedtime.
Come to think of it, 10:00 is past my bedtime now. Sure would like a Slo Poke ~ Jane from Tennessee
When I was growing up, I was very lucky to live a block and a half from a
candy store! Once a week, when I'd get my 25 cent allowance, I'd go down to
Shirley's and buy all the candy I could for that quarter! I'd buy lots of penny
candy to make the money go farther, but one of my favorite things to buy was a
Slo Poke sucker, because I could make it last all day if I was very careful.
I'd
carefully remove the paper (hopefully it wasn't too sticky) and pop that
beautiful brown sucker into my mouth. I loved sitting on our front porch in the
rocking chair, reading a book and enjoying my Slo Poke! The really cool thing
was, when it got really soft on the end of the sucker, I'd pull on it and make
it stretchy! I'd suck on that Slo Poke until all that was left was a little bit
of brown clinging to the white stick. Then I'd kind of nibble it all off.
You'd
think that would be the end of the sucker, but it wasn't. I even enjoyed chewing
on the sucker stick 'cuz it had Slo Poke "residue" left on it. It was one of the
best nickels I could spend! ~ Elizabeth from Michigan
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