The Rest of the Story: KittyTown and the Quan
September 25, 2008
Advice to children crossing the street: damn the lights. Watch the cars. The lights ain’t never killed nobody.
~Moms Mabley
Yesterday, I wrote about the Quan. I emailed my sister, asking for a memory or two. This is her response in its entirety. I’ve changed nothing except the names.
Two things first.
I just set up an account with StumbleUpon. Writer Dad was taken (now I know how you felt Dave; sorry). My username is writerdaddotcom. If you’d like to be friends, let me know.
Also, I need help with my Feedburner feed. Since I started, I’ve been unable to deliver full feeds. Yes, I have the full feed plugin, and yes everything is set as it’s supposed to be. If anyone can help, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.
Without further ado, Kittytown:
I’m a bit shocked and appalled that memories of the Quan are not crystal clear in your mind.
The Quan did not happen because we were bad kids. The Quan happened because we were not allowed to have sugar. I think that is the thing that is so shocking now… that MOM (our mother’s full name) would not let us have sugar.
The Quan could only happen when the stars were aligned just right. By which I mean (of course) that it was Sunday and Mom went grocery shopping without us. We never would have dared with Mom home. I believe that if it was announced she was going without us, we had some sort of secret signal… a look… we just knew. We had preparations to make: finish our chores and then we would each go to our secret stashes of change and cram everything we could into our pockets. Then we would make sweeps of the house looking for unclaimed change in corners and on counters, maybe under the couch.
By the time Mom had her keys in her hand, we were ready. Her car was barely out of the driveway before we told Pop we were going out to play and were out the door. We would walk to the corner, doing our best to appear casual. We probably thought we were sauntering with secret agent slickness, but I’m sure we were quite obviously up to something. By the time we hit the corner of Golden and 20th, we’d look both ways and race off. You pulling ahead of me on your scooter, me pounding my little pink moccasined feet against the pavement as fast as they would go. We’d fly to the Quan, our hearts pounding and so excited we were barely breathing. And I was not much bigger than Mia.
I can still see the candy display on the counter. I remember the selection. We’d get the big stuff first… the quarter candies: boxes of lemonheads, red hots, jawbreakers, and the occasional box of boston baked beans. No grapeheads. Never grapeheads. We neglected the chocolate because it was too expensive and we were bargain shoppers. If we were feeling spendy, we would each spring for a 45cent jolly rancher stick. Then we’d throw in some packs of hot dog gum and a few envelopes of cinnamon toothpics. Whatever money was left would be traded for as many bazooka joe’s as we could afford.
Quan counter guy would sweep our candy into a plain paper bag, which you would then roll up and hide under your shirt. We would race back home as fast as we could and then hole ourselves up in your room. The candy would be dumped out on the bed and divided… some of it to be gorged on immediately (only what we could finish before Mom got home) and the rest would be horded away, hopefully to last until the next clandestine Quan trip.
This was probably the only time not involving action figures that I was allowed in your room without being beat up.
Writer Dad and KittyTown
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