On Banana Fudgsicles

"A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five." ~ Groucho Marx

In the bank, there is a small, square, wicker basket on the counter by each tellers window. Inside this basket is some candy. Dum-dums. Dum-dums are small loli-pops. Some people call them suckers.

Now, I am a type II diabetic so I am not supposed to have a lot of sugar, but I couldn't resist sampling one, because Dum-dums have undergone something of a transformation in recent years. No more do they offer only cherry, strawberry, grape, lemon, and lime. Now they come in all kinds of exotic flavors, like coconut-banana, chocolate, watermelon, banana, etc. They even have a flavor called simply, "Mystery flavor" .

I tried the mystery flavor once, in an attempt to ascertain exactly what flavor it was. It's still a mystery to me. Maybe all those years of smoking took their toll on my taste buds, but I couldn't recognize any specific flavor.

I don't smoke anymore. Remind me to tell you how I quit some day. It's a hoot of a story.

But I digress. The whole point of my rambling on about Dum-dum flavors is the flavor I sampled last inadvertently started a discussion between me and the employees in the bank. It was banana. I said, "Oh, I like this banana flavor, it's good!" Whereupon Ginger, one of the tellers announced she doesn't like anything banana flavored except bananas. "And pudding", she added as an afterthought, "I like banana pudding."

Then the new guy spoke up and announced he likes banana flavoring, too.

Anyway the discussion went on for a few minutes and then, suddenly I was taken back in my mind to a more carefree time, when I was a child, and the ice cream man drove through the neighborhood playing that annoying song on a speaker. It didn't matter what song was playing, and it didn't matter that it annoyed adults, it nevertheless created an air of excitement in us kids.

At he sound of this music, immediately, no matter what activity kids were engaged in at the moment, there was a flurry of children sprinting back to their homes to beg, borrow, or steal money from mom to buy an ice cream bar.

As I recall, the favorite treat of most of my peers in the day, was either a Popsicle or a Fudgesicle. Popsicles were fruit flavored ice on a stick. Fudgesicles were chocolate flavored, but not ice, and not ice cream. To this day I don't exactly know what Fudgesicles are made of, but I loved them.

(This is where a picture of a fudgsicle was supposed to be, but as usual, blogger won't load it)

What spurred this pleasant memory of my childhood was the banana flavored Dum-dum. It brought back to my memory the wonderful banana flavored treat called the "Banana Fudgesicle" . There is no doubt they were my favorite of all the treats.

The new teller guy, who is about 25 years old, maybe less, said, "Banana Fudgesicles sound gross". I had to explain to him that the word "fudge", in this case, is a misnomer.

Banana Fudgsicles had no fudge in them. Or even chocolate. They were all banana flavored and they were very tasty.

They don't make them anymore.

No, that is wrong. They do make them still, but they have been changed. I don't know what they did to them but they just aren't the same and they just aren't as good as they once were.

I wonder why they changed them. I wonder if it was some kind of genius marketing strategy similar to the infamous "New Coca Cola" fiasco. Whatever the reason, it didn't work. They just aren't as good anymore.

I miss Banana Fudgsicles.

I miss happier, carefree times. I miss my childhood.