Little Pink Candies

There are very few memories of Grandpa - my father's father - on his feet.

-  striding down the lane in predawn mist, calling the cattle in for milking.  Try as I might, I never could imitate that call correctly.  The cows just didn't hear me.  But they heard him.

- holding me up, so I could peek over the barnyard fence at the new bull.  On my own, I would not have been permitted to get close enough to see.  But in his arms I was safe.

- patiently listening to my childish chatter as he shoveled silage from wagon to feed trough for the steers on a frosty morning.  I was confused because he wore only one glove.  Mama made me wear one for each hand, ones she carefully knitted herself.  Grandpa told me that only one of his hands got cold; I wondered how that could be?  I still don't know where the other glove was.  Lost?  Carried away by the dog?

And then, when I was five years old, a severe stroke confined Grandpa to bed and chair for his last thirteen years.  Then the memories were of Grandpa in his chair by the barn-facing window, on the porch, or in a wheelchair down by the barn.   And slow, shuffling steps, leaning heavily over his walker, in between.  But one thing that did not change -   

- little pink candies.  They were always in Grandpa's pocket, or in a small, white dish by his chair.  They tasted like the PeptoBismol we had to swallow when our tummies were upset.  And their sugary, solid texture was much easier to tolerate than that thick liquid!

Little pink Canada wintergreen candies.

You could stack them....

...till they fell over.

You could try to read the word on the top...

...and eventually eat them.

Oldtimecandy.com tells us this:

Canada Mints first appeared in the Canadian Market during the late 1880’s and found an audience in the United States in 1908. They were first packaged in a 5 cent unit in 1916. Canada Mints remains one of the most popular sugar lozenge mints in the country.

While shopping at a local discount store today, I came across the candies again.  And bought some.  Ate more than was good for me.  And remembered.  

The Trucker called from Wisconsin while I was writing.  "Oh!" he reminisced.  "Yes, my Grandpa always had those things too.  He would give me some every time we visited."

Grandpas and little pink candies.  They just seem to belong together.

Now if I could just figure out why the PINK candies are winterGREEN flavored.  The white ones are peppermint, and the GREEN candies are spearmint.  Somehow that still doesn't make sense to me, why the GREEN candies are not WINTERGREEN flavored.

And I still don't know what that word on the face of each candy is.  Canada, maybe?

But they surely taste good.