Stinkin’ good fudge – memories of remote times and places

Have you ever made the fudge recipe on the back of the Jet Puffed Marshmallow Creme? We just made some tonight, and I forgot how good it is. I can take a bite, close my eyes and rewind to 1981…
My grandmother (Dad’s mother) made this fudge every year at Christmas and it was always in the same box on the same shelf in the same room. It’s amazing how time just stood still at my grandparents’ house. Every time we went there, everything was just the same- as if time had just stopped while we were gone: someone pressed the pause button on the Abilene, Texas remote control until we pulled into the driveway of the little green house again. It was kinda comforting… There was Paul Harvey on the radio, Wonder Bread and Club Crackers in the bread box, Post Toasties in the cabinet, vanilla ice cream in the freezer, Coca Cola in the pantry, and 10 leftover green beans from dinner the night before because it’s a sin to throw out any food if you lived through the Depression Era. Since there was nothing to do besides read Aunt Jane’s old Nancy Drew books or watch “Big Country” News, we always went over to the park near their house, just on the other side of Catclaw Creek. That is, unless it was the middle of summer, because all the playground equipment was too hot to touch- especially those old metal slides, which you could fry an egg on and sometimes your legs when you were dumb enough to think that you could slide down wearing shorts without actually touching the slide with exposed skin. If you weren’t burning your legs in the summer, you burnt them in the winter when you went to the bathroom because they had a small gas heater with an open flame built into the wall right next to the toilet. For fun, while you were sitting there, you could roll up some toilet paper and light it. It was great entertainment, but it didn’t take long before there was incentive to finish the business at hand- your right leg got so hot you had to get up or risk injury!

Anyway…. the fudge is great. It must be. Fast-forward to 2006 and that same recipe, unchanged, has been on the back of the marshmallow jar since my grandmother started making it eons ago.