The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid_ A Memoir - Bill Bryson [41]
At Bishop’s, where they had a large and highly regarded assortment of penny candies by the cash register, you could also get a comparatively delicious licorice treat known, with exquisite sensitivity, as nigger babies—though no one actually used that term anymore except my grandmother. Occasionally, when visiting from her hometown of Winfield and dining with us at Bishop’s, she would slip me a quarter and tell me to go and get some candy for the two of us to share later.
“And don’t forget to get some NIGGER BABIES!” she would shout, to my intense mortification, across half an acre of crowded dining room, causing a hundred or so diners to look up.
Five minutes later as I returned with the purchase, pressed furtively to outside walls in a vain attempt to escape detection, she would spy me and cry out: “Oh, there you are, Billy. Did you remember to get some NIGGER BABIES? Because I sure do love those…NIGGER BABIES!”
“Grandma,” I would whisper fiercely, “you shouldn’t say that.”
“Shouldn’t say what—NIGGER BABIES?”
“Yes. They’re called ‘licorice babies.’ ”
“ ‘Nigger baby’ is a bit offensive,” my mom would explain.
“Oh, sorry,” my grandmother would say, marveling at the delicacy of city people. Then the next time we went to Bishop’s, she would say, “Billy, here’s a quarter. Go and get us some of those—whaddaya call ’em—LICORICE NIGGERS!”
THE OTHER PLACE TO GET PENNY CANDIES was Grund’s, a small grocery store on Ingersoll Avenue. Grund’s was one of the last mom-and-pop grocers left in the city and certainly the last in our neighborhood. It was run by a doddering couple of adorable minuteness and incalculable antiquity named Mr. and Mrs. Grund. None of the stock had been renewed, or come to that sold, since about 1929. There were things in there that hadn’t been seen in the wider retail world since Gloria Swanson was attractive—Othine Skin Bleach, Fels-Naptha Soap, boxes of Wild Root Hair Tonic with a photograph of Joe E. Brown on the front. Everything was covered in a thick coating of dust, including Mrs. Grund. I believe she may have been dead for some years. Mr. Grund, however, was very much alive and delighted when the bell above his door tinklingly sounded the arrival of new customers, even though it was always children and even though they were there for a single nefarious purpose: to steal from his enormous aged stock of penny candies.
This is possibly the most shameful episode of my childhood, but it is one I share with over twelve thousand other former children. Everyone knew you could steal from the Grunds and never be caught. On Saturdays kids turned up from all over the Midwest, some of them arriving in charter buses if I recall correctly, to stock up for the weekend. Mr. Grund was serenely blind to misconduct. You could remove his glasses, undo his bow tie, gently ease him out of his trousers and he wouldn’t suspect a thing. Sometimes we made small purchases, but this was only to get him to turn around and engage his ancient cash register so that a hundred flying hands could dip into his outsized jars and help themselves to more. Some of the bigger kids just took the jars. Still, it has to be said we brightened his day, until we finally put him out of business.
At least candy gave actual pleasure. Most things that were supposed to be fun turned out not to be fun at all. Model making, for instance. Making models was reputed to be hugely enjoyable but it was really just a mysterious ordeal that you had to go through from time to time as part of the boyhood process. The model kits looked fun. The illustrations on the boxes portrayed beautifully detailed fighter planes belching red-and-yellow flames from their wing guns and engaged in lively dogfights. In the background there was always a stricken Messerschmitt spiraling to earth with a dismayed German in the cockpit, shouting bitter