For the love of a MoonPie

While waiting in a check-out line recently, I spotted a box filled with a familiar childhood treat -- MoonPies. Although I was born in the north, I grew up in the South during my teen years. Those are the times when eating habits are formed.

Some are healthy and others not so healthy. But calories and trans fats aren't tops on a kid's list when it comes to snacks. Sugar's the number one item with chocolate running a close second.

Enter the MoonPie. This treat showed up in 1917 when someone asked for a cookie treat as big as his hands cupped around the moon.

Add graham crackers and marshmallow cream to hold the crackers together, and then cover the whole thing with melted chocolate. Voila, you've got a MoonPie.

In the 1930's, poor coal miners in the South could have a MoonPie and an RC-Cola for about a nickel, and MoonPies became an inexpensive Southern treat.

I can still remember washing down a MoonPie and a cola on a hot afternoon, and I can remember eating soft MoonPies in our Louisiana back yard, swapping scary stories with my friends.

My cousins up North also liked swapping scary stories with their friends, but they couldn't imagine a MoonPie. They had subs and pop for a snack. They shopped at "Monkey Wards," aka Montgomery Wards. We Southerners shopped at T.G.&Y.

The store was a forerunner to today's Wal-Mart, and if the T.G.&.Y. didn't carry what you wanted, you just didn't need it.

Our T.G.&.Y's was located next to the Piggly Wiggly, a Southern grocery store chain. There was also the Winn Dixie, but having a grocery store with a name that sounded like a barbecue was peculiar. However, that's the way it was in a small Southern town.

But grocery shopping was for our moms. For kids, our favorite place to get something to eat was at the Tast-E-Freeze. Whether we stopped there after school or when out riding bikes, the Tast-E-Freeze was the local hang out.

For a buck, we could get a small bag of Fritoes to which the kid working the counter then added a ladle full of hot chili and then added grated cheese.

If you felt like splurging, you could wash that chili pie down with a chocolate malt or a Dr. Pepper with a cherry at the bottom.

When we moved to Texas, we discovered Dairy Queen. Small towns in central Texas might not have a McDonald's or Burger King, but they've all got a DQ.

In 1938, a father and son decided to launch their soft frozen dairy product and see if people were interested. From the very beginning, the Dairy Queen was a success.

The first time I went to a DQ, I was amazed when the young girl behind the counter filled a cone with vanilla ice cream, turned it upside down and dipped it in melted chocolate without the ice cream falling off.

These dipped cones seemed magical and, needless to say, the combination of ice cream and chocolate had me from that moment on.

Now that we know the dangers of saturated fats, high levels of sodium and the pitfalls of empty calories, I have to pass up those fattening Southern desserts.

But on this one day, that MoonPie with the crescent moon on the cellophane wrapper was impossible to resist.

That first bite was gooey and just as messy as I remembered as a kid. I looked down at all the graham cracker crumbs on the front of my blouse and smiled.

Some treats from our childhood are worth the mess they create. And on a hot day, when the world stretches out before you, a lazy afternoon is best when savored with an RC Cola and a MoonPie.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.