in our younger years, (the 1970's as opposed to before the cancellation of arrested development) my brother graeme and i read a lot of archie comics. we bought them, at frugal blake's instructions, not at the corner stores, but at garage sales.

"who cares that it's not the most recent edition?" he's demand "they keep reusing the same comics over and over again. save your money." so we did, and instead of buying one for 50c, we would buy 5 for 50c at a garage sale, six or seven if the covers were ripped, as they often were. blake also taught us not to buy the large comics, rather save the money for the digests. the large comics only contained three stories, but were larger sized, and half the price, whereas the digests, contained at least four times the stories, and were about one third the size as the large comics, for twice the price. frugal blake heaven. it's a miracle that neither of us need wearing glasses now, for all in the dark comic reading we did.

the back page of the comic books was always devoted to twinkies or joes louis. they looked so delicious to graeme and i, and we spent years discussing how fantastic these items would taste. and archie and veronica and betty were fans as well! how wonderful! how chocolately the chocolate would be. how mouthwateringly complimentary the entire concoction would be. of course, twinkies weren't available in edmonton and yellowknife back then, they were an american deal, so we just fuelled the fantasy by talking about them for several more years.

at some point in our development, i think around 13 and 11, we laid hands on twinkies. i think frugal had gone on a business trip to the states or something, or he and mum had gone on a trip to hawaii and to compensate for not taking us, they had brought us back twinkies. (to be fair, that is probably what we asked for.)

graeme and i sat down across from each other and savoured the packets infront of us. at last. as carefully as any groom on his wedding night we revealed the cellophane wrapper and felt sorry that the poor class of cellophane had surrounded this poor twinkie with it's sad scent. we each picked up our twinkie, stroked it a couple of times, and on the count of three, bit in.

now normally, graeme and i would psych each other out, take a bite before three, not bite at all..you get the picture. but this was too important. we had waited too long for our twinkies.

so we bit, and chewed. and tried to pretend that we liked it. nodded for mum and dad's benefit, as they loomed over us, a satisfied smile on their faces. the twinkie was absolute crap. tasted like nothing and dissolved instantly. massive let down.  so much for our dreams of growing up and living on twinkies.

i think we finished the box of twinkies...can you imagine frugal blake not letting us? but i sure wasn't in a hurry to taste a joes louis or whatever they were called.

a pretty pointless blog, but there we go. soon i can write about WIG WAGS, the lost (and best) canadian chocolate bar. and graeme, i miss you.

Comments

[knobody]

twinkies? nawwwww. what you need is a good, old fashioned, banana moon pie! :)

[Coral]

They call them Tinkies here (SA), and I really feel there are so salty, yuck!!

They must have great advertising for us to fall for it, hmm?

[joeinvegas]

Just bought a box yesterday at B's request - I had one, she has almost finished them off. Some people like the dull stuff at times. Me, I prefer the chocolate cupcakes with the squiggle on top and cream filling. Absolute crap, but isn't most stuff?

[berlin]

Gut!