Sweet

Every Easter I manage at least one complaint about how I can no longer buy the jellybeans of my youth. Everyone's busy making little gourmet jellyballs that taste like popcorn or peanut butter or puke, but the basic Brach's assortment--eight no-nonsense flavors, beans as big as your thumb--is never anywhere to be found.

Determined to put this annual rant to rest, my wife shopped around and came home with a bag of  "Brach's Classic Jelly Bird Eggs." And oh, the joy. Everything tasted exactly as I remembered. The citruses were bold and unmistakable. The cherry and grape were gloriously artificial, like children's medicine. The white and pink flavors were still marvelous and inscrutable. And the blacks. Dear god, I could live on black licorice jellybeans. I used to pile them in my mouth and chew with ecstasy until rivers ran down my chin and my teeth turned as gray as a flannel scarf. And so I did again, ripping through the bag in about 20 minutes and savoring that waxy buildup on my teeth long after the goo-orgy was over.

Fast-forward to today, Greek Orthodox Easter, when the church across the street has finally stopped with the all-night chanting. This is a good thing, because Easter brings all the C-and-E Christians out of the woodwork, and the church is too small to hold them all. So every syllable is blasted out into the street on a P/A system, and dozens of the marginally devout stand on the sidewalk and listen. I'm sure it's a lovely and moving ceremony for the faithful, but to the neighbors it sounds a lot like the atonal groaning during the sex-cult scene in EYES WIDE SHUT.

Orthodox Easter also means that un-Orthodox candy is priced to move. I stopped into a big-chain drugstore and there it was--the forlorn discount rack that had been mostly picked clean, except for a pile of pink bags. (This is one good thing about being older than the key consumer demographic; the stuff you like is no longer popular and thus dirt cheap, making possible the absolute scandal of finding XTC albums in the discount bin.)

So I grabbed two bags and headed to the counter, expecting to pay a couple bucks apiece. But when she scanned the bounteous bean booty the price came up as 62 cents. For a 19.5-ounce bag of pure gold. This was an atrocious market imbalance I'd be crazy not to exploit, so I begged a moment and headed back to the shelf. I rummaged around for five more bags, and then found the holy. fucking. grail: a bag of All Blacks.

I bought seven pounds of jellybeans for $4. I feel like I got in on Google's IPO.

On Thursday I have a dental appointment to repair a broken filling. Unless my wife can hide my bean stash, my dentist will probably have to cancel the rest of the day's appointments.

Comments

[Lisa]

I saw a bag all of black jellybeans at the Shoprite. Shoulda coulda woulda.

[Weeze]

My mom was so proud when at age ten I asked that my Easter baskets be filled with only black jelly beans. (She gave me her blue cheese fetish, too. I'm sure the two are related.)

[Angelica]

Congrats on re-finding the love of your life!

[21stCenturyMom]

I'v always thought the white ones taste like soap but that never stops me from eating them. I'm a jelly bean ho - love them!

[pennifer]

I soooooo agree with you on the Brach's thing. The one true jelly bean brand. Black and purple and orange are my personal faves.

[Jerri Ann]

Me loves me some plain ol' plain ol' plain ol' jelly beans...all of them except.........the black ones, blech!

[Kristen]

For some reason, I was never a jelly bean fan. More of a twizzler or gummy bear girl. But recently I discovered some of the new-fangled flavors that Jelly Belly offers, and I have to admit, I now see jelly beans in a whole new light. I'm sure that's sacrilege to a long-time old school jelly bean fan like yourself, though.

[Wood]

Are you hiding these from the boys or what? Or do they have their own and aren't interested in your vintage beans? The problem with candy consumption around here is that whenever I eat it, my daughter approaches me with the damn "more" sign and I feel guilty hiding the candy behind my back so that I don't pollute her little body. The only solution is to wait until she's in bed.

[kristied]

happy days are here again!! woohoo for you!!

[Anne Glamore]

Remember when for a while the Brach's people had a few dark brown cinnamony jelly beans in every package? I loved them ALMOST as much as the pink ones but I haven't seen them in years.

[abogada]

I guess there are good things about getting old after all. Thanks for the smile.

[Lauren]

I love, Love, LOVE the black jellybeans. My mother always gets me a bag of all black ones. Mmm...they make me indescribably happy. And I'm jealous that you have some now.

[Papa Bradstein]

As one who loves the licorice, and who has had to struggle through Easter season with a temporary filling that lifts up every time I try to chew something remotely soft on that side of my mouth, this had me laughing all afternoon. Only one question: when you were eating all those jelly beans, were you moaning atonally a la Eyes Wide Shut?

[LOD]

No comment.

By the way, for those of you looking for a quick licorice fix, get yourself a box of liquorice Altoids.

[Neil]

I knew I liked the way you think but I couldn't figure out exactly why. Finally, the reason. You're an XTC fan. Great blog, sure, but now that I know what's really deep in your soul, it all makes sense.

[Just Susie]

Are those the kind that taste like wax? The only flavors in that pink bag are orange, black (licorice) and "waxy other." Bleh. But glad someone enjoys them. I'll be sure to send you mine next year.

[Allison]

The oddest thing I have ever observed about Greek Orthodox Easter is how it can look so weird from the outside and yet be so freaking cool when you're in on the joke. Is that how cults work?

Also, now I have "Scarecrow People" stuck in my head. Thank you.

[wix]

inexplicably, i once found a copy of the coil album "love's secret domain" at a wal-mart in austin. and my copy of "the english settlement" also came out of a cut-out bin. there's no accounting for taste in this world.

[Tali]

I am with you 100%. Black jelly beans are the best flavor they have made period. Just hearing about you owning whole bags of just black jelly beans makes me extreamly jealous!! Here I have to sort through the huge bags of jelly bellies to find 2 black ones in the whole bag. Grrr!!!

[Colleen]

I love black jellybeans too. The best thing about that trait is, you always get them. No bickering over them like the red ones. Nope, once someone knows you like 'em, you get 'em all. Mmmmmm.

[Heather]

We've always called twice a year church goers "Chreasters."

If postage is cheap enough I'd be happy to mail you all my black jelly beans. I'm definitely not a fan and it no seems terribly wasteful for me to throw them out after reading your devotion to them.

[Daniel]

I'm fairly omnivorous, and I've never really understood the strong partisanship in the arena of jelly beans.

I know people who still get angry when a scarring memory surfaces of some relative "tricking" them with Brach's spice jelly beans.

There's plenty of room in my life for both classic Brach's (fruit, black, and spice) and new-fangled Jelly Bellies. Loving Brach's black jelly beans (which I do) makes me no less a fan of Jelly Bellies watermelon and toasted marshmallow.

Can't we all just get along?

I love the adjective "inscrutable" used to describe the white and pink Brach's jelly beans. I refer to them both as "Vaguely Vanilla," while realizing that whatever they taste like, they taste different from each other.

Fantastic blog.