Return of Memoryfest - Day 19/31
19. Elementary School and earlier
There used to be a candy store in the mall across the street from our house, Dolce something. We just called it “the chocolate store.” I used to get jelly beans there -- the small, simple, fruity kind, before Jelly Belly came along -- or marzipan on special occasions, while my dad usually went for milk chocolate nonpareils, my sister inevitably chose the nonpareil lollipop (which she’d often break right off the stick as soon as she took a bite and it would fall on the floor) and my mom had jelly rings or chocolate-covered cherries.
The place was small, with just a narrow space to walk in between the counter and the two glass walls, and had a distinctive smell. I used to think it was just the scent of chocolate mixed with various other confections. Years later, when I was older and the store had been replaced with a luggage retailer, I'd encounter that scent in the oddest places -- bars and musty shops and I don’t even remember where else, and it always stumped me why they would smell like a confectioner’s shop. Finally I realized it wasn’t aromatic chocolate or candy I was smelling, it was cigarette smoke. Someone, or several someones, in that chocolate store must have smoked a lot. So now for me the scent of chocolate is bound up in whatever brand of cigarettes the nameless, faceless employees of “the chocolate store” used to enjoy, and vice versa.
There used to be a candy store in the mall across the street from our house, Dolce something. We just called it “the chocolate store.” I used to get jelly beans there -- the small, simple, fruity kind, before Jelly Belly came along -- or marzipan on special occasions, while my dad usually went for milk chocolate nonpareils, my sister inevitably chose the nonpareil lollipop (which she’d often break right off the stick as soon as she took a bite and it would fall on the floor) and my mom had jelly rings or chocolate-covered cherries.
The place was small, with just a narrow space to walk in between the counter and the two glass walls, and had a distinctive smell. I used to think it was just the scent of chocolate mixed with various other confections. Years later, when I was older and the store had been replaced with a luggage retailer, I'd encounter that scent in the oddest places -- bars and musty shops and I don’t even remember where else, and it always stumped me why they would smell like a confectioner’s shop. Finally I realized it wasn’t aromatic chocolate or candy I was smelling, it was cigarette smoke. Someone, or several someones, in that chocolate store must have smoked a lot. So now for me the scent of chocolate is bound up in whatever brand of cigarettes the nameless, faceless employees of “the chocolate store” used to enjoy, and vice versa.