Just toward the end of County Road, toward the Jolly Roger that was built to look like a pirate ship and not far from the Union Pacific underpass, was the penny candy store Grandpa would take us as children, standing tiptoe on the wooden floor to look into the containers of sugar wonder.

My cousins Trudy and DeeDee just a few years older, second cousins really but we didn't distinguish, frequently went along and sometimes the Butchers--Mary Lou, Dale, and Margie Jean--if they were in town.   Marsh cousins.  

There was every imaginable delight for a young child to see and all for a penny--a penny for a piece of salt water taffy, a penny for a sucker, a penny for a jawbreaker.  We got wax containers of sweet liquid shaped to look like pop bottles and even back then candy cigarettes that were meant to look like the real thing because no one cared, most things for a penny, but occasionally something was a little more.

Back then we could go to the grocery store on our lunch hour from school and get a Cherry-O-Let for a nickel, or a Mounds bar or Almond Joy, any candy bar for a nickel, charge it to our parents' account and pay it off every few months or so, just a little signature from a little person who could reach the counter but that was about all, ice cream cones for a dime maybe, soda pop out of the machine was a nickel some places, a dime others, Orange Crush or Grape Fanta.

Grandpa liked to take us to the penny candy store the way he liked to take us to the circus, back when we could get chameleons and pin them to our sweaters on the way home in the car to see if they'd change color, crazy things from the sixties that would seem silly now but not the least bit out of joint there, cotton candy, rides in Liberty Park, tilt-a-whirl, feed the ducks on the boat on the lake, take the ferris wheel, laugh and laugh and laugh, walk through Tracy Aviary, see the birds, go to Hogle Zoo and see Shasta the Liger who was famous to us long before Napoleon.

Circus peanuts and Bit-O-Honey and Tootsie Rolls and Good-N-Plenty and Mary Janes, burnt French peanuts, bubble gum, licorice ropes of all colors. 

Down a Wisconsin northwoods street not far from my cottage, on a sidewalk that used to be wooden and still remembers, is another penny candy store, where kids tiptoe to reach the bins to see what's inside, fudge and gummy rats and candy that looks like cigarettes but isn't really anymore, Jelly Bellys and homemade fudge and everything imaginable, all for the taking, not a penny anymore, $4.99 a pound for all you can bag in a little paper bag, set it up on the counter while your mother stands by and reaches into her purse for the coin, or maybe the credit card, and you feel so big and important because you bought something, and it was something fun.

I took my own grandchildren there when they were younger, hand in mine, fun in a sugar bag, love not measured.

I hope they will take their own.