What's Your Dish Story -Contributed by Katie VanBrackle
It's funny the things a child remembers about their grandparents' home, but my grandmother's candy dish always help a particular fascination for me as well. It was a pretty, crystal dish full of unwrapped hard candies---like peppermints, only instead of only red stripes, some had yellow, some had green, etc. I don't remember any blue ones, but purple was definitely in there somewhere. The yellows were my favorites.
The problem with unwrapped candies, especially in hot and humid South Georgia, is they tend to clump together, so when my brother and I tried to select one, the whole bunch came up with it. Then we had to bang the lump on the side of the dish until we managed to chisel out the color we liked best. It was a bit of a challenge and rather noisy. Come to think of it, perhaps my grandmother intentionally used unwrapped candies in order to make it more difficult for the grandkids to sneak a piece unobserved. She needn't have bothered. If we really wanted candy, all we had to do was find Granddaddy. He was a banker and always kept his suit pockets full of those little thin "bank suckers" that the tellers hand out to children. He would wink and slip us one behind his back.
Today, that crystal candy dish is still in use in my own home. It sits in our living room just as it once did in my grandparents' home----on top of the piano where my mother and her sisters took music lessons in the 1950's, where I took lessons in the 1980's, and now in 2013, where my youngest son is learning to tinker away on the keys.
Through the generations, it has been filled with various treats, has suffered through many poorly played piano concertos, and has been lovingly handled by many sticky-fingered children seeking a bit of sugar. How it has survived through the years unbroken is a minor miracle.
Today, I keep shiny, golden toffee candies in it------firmly wrapped and easy to sneak. I smile when I see it, imagining how many more generations of our family will seek its treasures in years to come.
Katie
