Sweet and Tart

Do you know you can buy a roll of Sweettarts in Spauling Oklahoma for 25 cents, a fraction of the Connecticut cost? Your correspondent purchased a roll for 26 cents with tax and had to ask twice to make sure the price was right. The poor clerk thought he was dealing with a European, with the Yankee accent and the unfamiliarity with local currency. Your correspondent shared the Sweettarts with his travelling companion as they drove the straight, dirt roads that crisscross Seminole and Hughes County. They admired the views of grazing beef cattle while they savored the taste of sugar and citric acid packed into colored powder.

Oklahoma must receive the rejects from the Sweettart plant. The whole roll, fifty candies in all, consisted of alternating yellow and purple Sweettarts. The two comapanions remarked on this. The man ate the yellow ones and the woman ate the purple ones. It is hard to tell what flavor they were meant to represent, but they decided bananna and grape came closest.

This reporter bought a roll of Sweettarts at the convenience store on the corner of Evergreen and Ocean Avenues in New London this morning. This food is not a staple of his diet, but out of nostalgia for his recent vacation in the Sooner State, he wanted a little sweet combined with a little tart. There was one pink candy in the mix. The rest were yellow and purple. Amazing.

Equally amazing, this reporter spotted a dazed yellowjacket on the sidewalk when he entered Parade News on a tobacco and newsprint related errand. The insect was logey, a bit dazed in December's upper 40 degree weather, and at a loss to do something on the cement that lines State Street. What does this have to do with Sweettarts? The yellowjacket must have been malnourished. Its stripes were pastel yellow and purple in a pattern found in that fateful roll purchased in Spaulding, OK. Sometimes it is hard to determine between an omen and a coincidence. Time will tell if this has any meaning.