Candy Corn & Thanksgiving Music
I just saw a Facebook post from a friend here at Andrews of a dish full of candy corn. I’m disgusted. Frankly I feel candy corn, like Twizzlers, has no room in the sweets world at all unlike the royalty of Smarties and Twix. Worse yet was the gaggle of likes and happy comments that followed the post of this dish of dry, crumbly colored sugar. Don’t these people know that candy corn beckons fall and fall beckons winter and winter is slated to be a hot mess? More so, this innocent dish of pointy dust sets off a domino effect of holidays that bring family stress, over eating and spending too much money.
Every year I face these occasions with heartache for Thanksgiving, the underdog of the holiday chain. I’m sure it could rise to the top, even over Christmas, if it could change just one thing in its wardrobe. Lets face it, if it weren’t for its lack of music we all would like Thanksgiving better. But, no! Christmas has religious music and secular music. It has old carols and new hip-hop. This fills the stores and stations way to soon, like a hungry inheritor just waiting for Thanksgiving to die. Even Halloween has music. Every year I get excited for the sounds of the rhythmic piano from the opening of Warren Zevon’s ‘Werewolves Of London’. At Christmas, being a big Bing fan I fill the house with 20-50’s big band and jazz. Every good holiday has music. How did Thanksgiving get the short stick here? It doesn’t even have a mascot! I’m sure that ‘The Santa Clause 3’ with Tim Allen could hedge itself from a dismal 15% on the tomatometer if they had a Thanksgiving character in the battle against Jack Frost at its climax. Thanksgiving music could play every time she came on the screen and before long we may make it to December 5 or even 10 listening to light hearted riffs about people sick and starving in a hateful northeast winter some few hundred years ago.
I don’t want winter to come. I love the butternut squash soup my wife made last week from our early fall harvest, but I don’t want winter to come again like last year. Am I the only one who feels like summer is a few weeks and winter a lifetime? We just had corn on the cob for our welcome back party at the University. That’s summer food - Silver Queen corn and tomato sandwiches. Then in a blink, I’m heating up leftover fall soups for lunch and watching it rain. I’m sure if I had a nice Thanksgiving CD to play it would lesson the sting.
George Renninger invented candy corn in Philadelphia during the 1880’s so it does have quite a legacy. And, when I read this opening to my wife some 10 minutes ago she almost jumped out of her seat. Stopping me cold and giving my Smarties a verbal beat down she shocked me with her love of candy corn. So, in the light of all things academic I did a little research. According to Foodspin, who ranked the top 47 Halloween candies, Candy corn, to my great delight, ranked 47th, just under 46th- being hit by a car and 45th- A fistful of hair. Smarties came in a cool 19th. Yet in the spirit of our fine farm, who ranked at 38th? You know it, none other than the Apple (naked).