Plate Magazine #7 - The Junk Food Issue

When I was twelve, walking home from school past blocks and blocks of identical brick houses, I passed only one store. It's now a green grocer, but then it was a candy store with a small soda fountain built into the basement of a corner house. It's still the only store of any kind in that neighborhood, built just after WWII, on the leading edge of the baby boom, two kids in every house. You could buy penny candy then for a penny, Bit-o-Honey, Tootsie Rolls, Bazooka Bubble Gum, candy buttons, wax lips. I would buy, for five cents, an Italian roll, preferring that fresh bread to cake or candy. She would always question me, the woman who ran the store, the store named after her, but I can't remember the name, "You want just a roll?" The rolls were for sandwiches at the counter, nobody bought just a roll. They bought candy. I bought a roll.

-Harry William Saffren