Well, for some reason in my last columns, I have spent time reminiscing. I thought I would do it one more time. One result of so doing is that a certain friend will read it and immediately send a note stating: “boy you really are old.” Hey, I am not. I just read an article about a lady in The Villages who turned 101. I have quite a way to get there so I am still young. Besides, the older you are the more stuff that you can recall that lots of people can’t.
Yesterday, we went to the grocery store and needed some corn flakes for a recipe. The first problem is that the vast majority of the cereals are heavily sweetened. The second is that they are in super-sized boxes. Finding plain old corn flakes can take some time. When I was a kid, I can’t recall any super sugary cereals. Part of that was related to the fact that I was a kid during WWII. Sugar was rationed which meant that Tony the Tiger and Captain Crunch were not working. However, what we did have were prizes in the boxes. Many of us youngsters would ask for cereal based on the prizes they contained.
The clear winner during WWII was Pep. Pep was a wheat cereal that competed with Wheaties. As there wasn’t any TV in those days, we had several fifteen-minute radio programs every evening. One of them was “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy” which was sponsored by Wheaties. There was also “Tom Mix and his Ralston Straight Shooters”. I liked Ralston too, but it was a hot cereal with no prize that I recall. However, despite liking Wheaties, Pep had the advantage in that they had an WWII fighter plane in each box. You could fold them together, put a coin in the nose, and they would fly. Well, they were supposed to fly, but mine never did a good job.
The Pep planes are another thing that I should have kept along with my comic books as they are worth something today, especially if they are in their original condition. To change the subject – as noted above sugar was rationed during WWII. I was in a chocolate store not too long ago. The Blonde in the House loves chocolate covered marshmallows on a stick. I noted that they also had chocolate covered graham crackers. One was something like $3.25.
When the above-mentioned war ended one of the first sweet products to come out was chocolate covered graham crackers. They were made by Nabisco. For a period, a box of the chocolate covered ones were placed right next to the regular gram crackers in the grocery stores. I don’t remember the exact price, but it was probably around a quarter. Undoubtedly, they will be a little more today!
I could go and reminisce about Tom Mix and cap guns. Cap guns were great fun, but I guess that enough is enough.
Barry Evans is a columnist for Villages-News.com
