hostess, i'll miss you

Ok, they aren't healthy.  They contribute to tooth decay and elevated blood sugar.  But Twinkies have been around for longer than I have been alive.  Invented in 1933, they have been a staple in kids lunch boxes for years, and every time I opened my lunch box and saw a package of Twinkies, my day was a bit brighter.

Now they are gone.  Forever.  There have been imitators, but nothing ever came close to a Twinkie for me.  I was surprised to hear that Hostess was liquidating, due to decreased profits and a union strike that could not be resolved.  In our health conscious society, it has become harder for makers of high sugar products to continue to make a profit.  Competing brands didn't help either.  For many years Hostess was the king of the baked goods market.  Do you remember Wonder Bread?  I do, and ate it for years when I was a kid.  Now we avoid processed white flour products like the plague.  The thing I remember most about Wonder Bread was that they advertised how nutritious it was and that it helped build strong bodies.

It is a fact of life that nothing is static, and things change.  But still, I was a bit saddened to see part of my youth gone forever.  To try to capture one last bite of that youth, I sent Stevie Wonder on a Twinkie hunt yesterday.  It was too late.  Even in remote areas Twinkies were sold out.  There was a run on Hostess products by people who were feeling nostalgic and a little panicky, like me.  In fact, everything Hostess was sold out, except for this:

Yes, all that was left was fruitcake, and it looked and felt like it was left from the holidays last year.  That was probably why it was the only thing left.  Stevie Wonder brought it in and held it out in his hand like it was  precious metal, and he had found the mother lode.  I am not a fruitcake lover, but I snarfed most of that down like a dying man having his last meal, and enjoyed every bite.  It wasn't a Twinkie, and it wasn't about Twinkies at that point, but about enjoying the end of an era.

Goodbye Hostess.  I'll miss you.

...life is good. ~cath
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