Family Pictures: A Kid in a Candy Store

Throughout my life, the Haynes Grocery candy case was a treat. As a child, whenever I stayed with my dad’s parents in Waycross, Georgia where I was born, they would always walk me down to the grocery to get a piece of candy from the large oak and glass case that sat on the counter. If you look closely at the photo above, you’ll see a wood and glass case that drew every child from all around for a sweet treat. Parents would have to pick up their children to let them get a good look, and sometimes they would pull out the containers for kids to get a better look, as you can see above. Ansley is carefully considering what kind she would like. I can’t remember what she chose, but I do remember my choice was almost always plain M&Ms. And I remember the joy of seeing my own daughter choosing candy from that case. (You could get an ice cold bottled Coca Cola, too, and we would put salted peanuts in ours to make it better).

The store has held wide appeal for generations, and unfortunately, though the building is still there, my cousin Lucy could not continue on with the store once her parents died, so it closed and stayed in a state of disrepair for some time. Her father, my great uncle Laverne, ran the store with his wife Lucille, who died when Lucy was a young child. Laverne was the butcher, and everyone got their meats from the Haynes Grocery and Meats. I’m not sure whether Lucy has sold the store yet, but I know everyone wanted that candy case. I also don’t know who the highest bidder was or where the candy case is today, but it sure made a lot of eyes light up in its day. Once a kid in a candy store, ALWAYS a kid in a candy store.

There are two photos of the Haynes Grocery Store below, dating way back to the early 1920s/1930s era, and the one beneath it was taken in the 1990s. I look at that photo today and remember so vividly the way there and back from my grandparents’ house: out the door of the grocery, go left. Turn left at the corner, and walk down the dirt road on Creswell Street to the last house on the left before the road intersects. And if you looped the block, Great Granny Haynes’ house was on Prescott Street. And that was how fast I could get to candy back in the summers of my youth in a dirt road railroad town in the Deep South, where to this day I still don’t know how they never had central heating and air. I can still see the curtains billowing in the moonlight, hear the fan in the window and the horn of the train as it rattled down the tracks.

And every single time, I still choose the plain M&Ms.

An Abecedarian Candy Case

What to choose from the candy case? Let’s see…..