Readers, welcome back to our pages columnist Sue Jane Sullivan for the season. While Sullivan also compiles many of our community calendars and event bulletins year-round, she takes a well-deserved hiatus from the demands of column writing during the summer. —The Editors
I’m a snacker. I would have fought my momma for the corner piece of a chocolate cake.
When I hear the word “snack” I visualize childhood, waking up from a nap and being rewarded for taking one. It also conjures up eating cookies washed down with Kool-Aid after scorching summer days playing with the gang on 33rd Street and Hill Avenue. The week of Vacation Bible School: I love the Lord, but make no mistake it was a morning snack that helped lead Jesus into my heart. And when we Sullivans ran through the doors after school, it was a beeline to the pantry to find anything to snack on before supper. Sometimes we hit the sauce, as in Hershey’s-in-a-can.
I’ve gone through phases of preferred snacks. When I was in high school, I’d come in from volleyball practice and pour a glass of milk, stir in the Nestlé chocolate, and then dish in two or three scoops of vanilla ice cream. After burning all those calories on the court, a setter’s gotta do what a setter’s gotta do. My older brother went for the cereal—the entire box. Cap’n Crunch never stood a chance against a teenaged boy after athletic practice.
The year that my family hosted a highschool foreign exchange student, Robyn and I went through the brownie snack phase. When I was home from college on the weekends and holidays, she and I frequently made a pan of brownies from scratch. Our philosophy was that the best brownies were the ones right out of the oven. Under my snack tutelage, Robyn returned to New Zealand with ten more pounds on the scale as a souvenir.
Another snack phase took place in my early years of empty nesting: the infamous Milk Duds/popcorn obsession. I was a lonely mom, drowning my solitude by watching lots of movies and “Law and Order: SVU.” When Bertie at the Coyote Country Store in Gail learned this, she started carrying those snacks just for me because I did not have a car to get to town. The late legendary café owner did not sell gas, but she made sure I had my Orville Redenbacher and chocolate caramel nuggets.
Just last week, my snack habit was a source of comfort during the presidential debate. Some family members, who shall remain anonymous, texted me that they had poured their glasses of Scotch to get them through the mayhem. I sent back a photo of my glass of milk and gingersnaps, my choice of self-medication on this occasion. (Depending on how the election goes, I may ditch and switch from milk to Scotch. I wonder if it pairs well with popcorn and Milk Duds).
Now, as a full-grown adult in her seniorcitizen phase, I admit that midnight snacks are still a thing, too, although my midnight is now 9 p.m.
Aging has impacted my sleep cycles but not my sweet tooth.
Snyder, Texas, native Sue Jane Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher whose thought-provoking commentary appears occasionally in several West Texas newspapers, including The Texas Spur and The Caprock Courier.
