I couldn't have been much older than five.
Even at that advanced age, the chocolate bunny was taller than I was. It had jelly beans for eyes, and held a basket of mints on its back. I will never forget that bunny.
As I walked past the counter and into the kitchen, I felt my father's grip on my hand tighten a bit.
"A commercial kitchen is no place for a child" he said "but I want to show you something."
Everything was bigger than I was in that kitchen. Several copper kettles that could have held me easily were cooling along the side wall. A huge marble work bench in the center of the room was large enough for six people to have a picnic on, and it was covered in recently filled chocolate molds in a variety of animals and shapes. There were racecars and bulldogs and pigs rowing boats; there were roosters and turkeys and lambs and horses and rabbits galore. Trays of colorful mints filled a cooling rack - pink, green, blue and white. The white ones, peppermint, were my favorites. My father pulled one off the tray, still warm, and placed it on my tongue. There were trays of peanut clusters, peanut brittle, ribbon candies, nut barks, and much more, everywhere I looked. These were the fruits of that day's labors. It would all be left to cool and set overnight, then packaged for sale in the morning.
Glorious! Every child's dream! Even better, it belonged to my Uncle Steve, who had opened it with his father, my Papou, in 1947.
Years later, when my career turned out to be that of pastry chef, my Uncle Steve showed me how to make most of those candies in the basement of his home where, after the candy store closed, he continued to produce his candies for Christmas, Valentine's Day, and Easter. I learned how to temper the chocolate by swishing it around on a baker's tray with my bare hand until I could feel that the chocolate was the correct temperature for pouring into the molds, no thermometer needed. I learned that the chocolate had to be a shade warmer when I mixed in the peanuts for peanut clusters. I learned how to cook sugar and water to make the brittles and the mints in one of those big copper kettles. I went on to sell all this and more in my own store in the Big Apple, 300 miles away, using antique molds and a great copper kettle that had been used by both my Papou and my uncle, and were given to me by my father.
Then came the day I moved back to the tiny town I was born in, in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, which makes me a Greek hillbilly. I bought the very house my uncle taught me how to make candy in. Tucked away in the attic of the garage were two more copper kettles and a small collection of unusual chocolate molds, among other relics from the long ago soda fountain and candy store. I even found a 1947 ration check for their first shipment of sugar!
When people notice these copper kettles in my home, and they are quite hard to miss, I have always said "They are my inheritance." When I read the prompt for this week's creative non-fiction challenge, there was no question about what I would write.
My inheritance was much more than a few kettles and chocolate molds. I come from a line of candy makers, my career was in sweets, and I still love me a good bit of chocolate, although I haven't molded any of my own in quite a while.
Maybe it's time to change all that.
This is my entry to the Ink Well Community's weekly creative non-fiction challenge #13. The prompt is heritage. All the images are mine.