What Happens When You Eat an Almond Joy?

It’s amazing the memories that can be resurrected  by eating an almond joy.

As soon as I sunk my teeth into the sweet, chocolate-covered, coconut nougat and crunchy almond I was transported back to a time where my much older sister wore a curly bob, brown suede shoes and a brown and orange outfit from the Lemon Tree in Bremen. My tiny, six-year-old head sported a shag hair cut and I wore homemade jumpers sewn by my Aunt Claudia who lived just a few yards down the dirt road from my house.

A time when we watched Tarzan, Jane and Boy on Saturday afternoons and I was allowed to cut the paper dolls from my sister’s McCall magazine.

We didn’t have smart phones, computers, or even a VCR, and our home was modest, but the simple peace that settled around us as we baked blueberry muffins and Chef Boyardee pizzas was priceless.

Since no female cousins were available in my small country neighborhood, I played with boys on most days. Only when I went into “town” did I play with my female cousins. Of course, then we played with dolls, and made mud pies adorned with the fuffy pink blooms from my Aunt Shirley’s mimosa trees that flanked each side of her drive. The precious antics of my Aunt Shirley could take up an entire blog, so I’ll just simply say she was well known by everyone in my small town of Buchanan, Georgia.

When playing back in my neighborhood, my cousin, Keith, and I would trek through the woods over hill and dale, along creek banks sometimes dodging angry bulls.

I can remember climbing to the top of a steep hill inside the pastures that surrounded our house and then running all the way to the bottom. Our strong, muscled, legs were the only mode of transportation we needed.

We ate fruit straight from the numerous, laden trees that spotted the back and side yards of the handful of houses along Poplar Springs Road. My uncles owned most of those homes, so we filled our little bellies with apples, peaches, pears, cherries, plums, grapes, scupadines and muscadines.

On Sundays we went into town to attend church, and then it was back home to eat homemade fried chicken, fresh beans from the garden, biscuits and fruit cobbler with a scoop of ice cream from the Red Dot Grocery Store which was position in the corner of our town square.

My sister, Hope, kept the dust stirred, zipping up and down the road in our black Chevy 2. She loved horses, riding with friends every chance she got. Eventually, she became the proud owner of Little Boy, a large brown quarter horse. She’s gone now, but I’ll never forget the sparkling light that filled any room she entered.

After a long day of playing, I would sit on my front porch. When I spotted my Aunt Claudia’s car stop at her mailbox as she returned home from working at the Shirt Shop in Buchanan, I would hop on my red, big girl bicycle and throw up some of my own dust, almost beating her to her car shed. She would laugh sounding much like a chicken. She had chickens, so I always assumed they learned how to laugh from her.

I would follow her into the house where she would point to the refrigerator and corner cabinet just to the left inside her country kitchen. An RC Cola and Moon pie would fuel my body in preparation to follow her around the yard as she tended to her garden, and various livestock. I remember my job was to not step on the vegetables and to run from the chickens.

Wow! I think I’ll go buy another almond joy. Until next time, Laura K.