# Childhood delights **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 13, 2025, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974 "2025-04-13T01:11:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/21 "2025-04-13T03:50:24Z")
A cola Slurpee, a bag of Cheetos, and a MAD magazine on a Saturday. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/22 "2025-04-13T04:17:23Z")
Getting a big stack of old comics from someone giving up on them. I don’t think that happens much nowadays. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/23 "2025-04-13T04:20:18Z")
Come and get ‘em. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/24 "2025-04-13T04:27:15Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Picnics with these silly cookies, I don’t even remember what they were called, but they were round and flat and had a hole in the middle that was the perfect size to stick your finger through and pretend it was a dancing ballerina in a cookie tutu. Keebler Fudge Stripes? I always pretended it was a lion. The cookie made a perfect (and tasty!) mane. ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/25 "2025-04-13T04:42:27Z")
I was 18, so not a child, but I was working full time so I could indulge myself every single working day that summer. Cherry coke freezes from Dairy Queen. It was like a cherry milkshake (and it wasn’t just cherry syrup, there were chunks of cherry in there) only with coke instead of milk. Or it was like a cherry coke float only all mixed up together. That was the only time I have ever had those. I was working with my best buddy, and we would always have one of those at lunch or else for a break. That’s my whole memory of that summer, working with my buddy (we were the cleanup crew for a small independent drywall contractor) and those freezes. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/26 "2025-04-13T04:52:07Z")
Going to the “Reindeer Place” for a frozen custard. No place before or since had better soft ice cream. > **[Photo: Reindeer Frozen Custard](https://www.hmdb.org/PhotoFullSize.asp?PhotoID=256743)** ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/27 "2025-04-13T05:05:37Z")
You can get Cherry coke fosties at Sonic. They’ll add cherries if you want. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/28 "2025-04-13T07:26:53Z")
Long cross-country drives with my dad during summer vacation. Reading my stacks of comic books and adding to them every month. A&W barbecued beef sandwiches and root beer. Deep-fried clams at HoJo’s. Watching _ **Dobie Gillis** _ at 6:00 pm on Tuesdays, knowing that _ **Combat!** _ and _ **McHale’s Navy** _ would follow immediately. _ **Rat Patrol** _ on Monday, _ **Batman** _ on Wednesday _and_ Thursday, and _ **Time Tunnel** _ on Friday. Putting on my army surplus gear and playing Sgt Saunders down by the railroad tracks. Spending Saturdays hanging around Flying Cloud airport and getting rides in Cessna 150s. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/29 "2025-04-13T07:36:13Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > Picnics with these silly cookies, I don’t even remember what they were called, but they were round and flat and had a hole in the middle that was the perfect size to stick your finger through and pretend it was a dancing ballerina in a cookie tutu. Nabisco Sugar Rings? #16 on this [site](https://soup2nutzblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-oh-why-did-you-leave-me.html). Also found references to Nabisco Butter Rings. When I was little, my mom took a cake decorating class and used to make elaborate birthday cakes, plus cakes for easter and other occasions. There would be leftover icing. She would break a graham cracker in half and slather it with icing and send me outside to eat it. That was the best! There’s a picture of me about 5 or 6, sticking my blue icing covered tongue out (to show the icing), standing on the back deck. The icing had coloring added, and she didn’t want me getting the icing everywhere. When we would go out to dinner, my parents would get a cocktail and I would get a Shirley Temple. I still love grenadine and maraschino cherries. Except now I have to limit my consumption because red food dye does horrible things to my insides. ☹ Going for hikes and finding, and eating, red huckleberries. > **[Pacific Northwest Native Plant Profile: Red huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium)](https://realgardensgrownatives.com/?p=5795)** > > Graceful, open, and vibrantly green, red huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium) is a quintessential Pacific Northwest native shrub. It’s not often used in garden situations, but it ought to be, consid… ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/30 "2025-04-13T10:48:42Z")
Santa Paula, CA, ca. 1961. High summer. The peach tree smack in the center of our backyard very graciously relinquished a ripe peach that was low enough for five-year old me to reach. Biting into its fuzzy, juicy perfection was sheer heaven. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/31 "2025-04-13T11:31:46Z")
Eating mulberries from neighborhood trees. Those huge Pixie Stix. In the fall we’d go to the Driftless area and buy fresh cheese curds, apples and fresh cider and eat as we enjoyed the fall colors and the drive. Salmiakki and Pihlaja every Christmas. ---
**Author:** ![Jaycat.again](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat.again/32/11525_2.png) [@Jaycat.again](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jaycat.again)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/32 "2025-04-13T12:02:37Z")
> [@SuntanLotion](#): > > Catching lightning bugs. > Running through sprinklers. > Using sparklers! And flipping baseball cards up against a wall. There was a huge junkyard somewhere in downtown Alexandria and a couple times a year my dad and I would bring piles of old newspapers there. I was allowed to wander around to my heart’s content to check out all the old junk. Later in life, roasted chestnuts on the Boston Common at Christmas time. ---
**Author:** ![Disinfectus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/disinfectus/32/11085_2.png) [@Disinfectus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disinfectus)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/33 "2025-04-13T15:30:50Z")
Snack-Pack pudding from a can. Not sure why, but it tasted much better before it was packaged in plastic. Firecrackers on the 4th of July. Water rockets - plastic rockets that you filled with water then used a pump to increase pressure before releasing. They usually ended up on someone’s roof. Two slices of cheese pizza and a small RC Cola for a dollar. Frozen Italian Ices from the ice cream man. I preferred watermelon and blue gelato flavors. The bottom of the ice was all slushy and syrupy and you could flip the entire ice over in the paper cup to get to the good stuff on the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/34 "2025-04-13T15:57:34Z")
The scent of Noxema. After spending all day in the neighborhood pond, I’d curl up on the sofa that evening and slather tons of the white cream on my sunburned shoulders. Even sitting still, I could feel the lingering movement of the water around my 10-year old body. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/35 "2025-04-13T15:59:58Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Family piling into the car because the local Dairy Queen is selling Dilly Bars at half price For me, when our parents took us on a DQ run it was always a chocolate malt. NOT a shake- a shake is to a malt as ground chuck is to filet mignon. DQ always used the real malted milk powder- some other ice cream stands used some weird off-brand stuff that didn’t taste like malt at all. But a malt made with real malt powder— ambrosia 😋 Got to be when I was a little older and would ride my bike up to an unfamiliar ice cream shop I’d look to see if that familiar canister of Carnation malted milk powder was sitting next to the shake machine. If not, I’d take a powder myself off to another ice cream stand. ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/36 "2025-04-13T16:16:19Z")
> [@purplehorseshoe](#): > > Keebler Fudge Stripes? > > I always pretended it was a lion. The cookie made a perfect (and tasty!) mane. > [@Die\_Capacitrix](#): > > Nabisco Sugar Rings? I would have preferred the Keebler Fudge Stripes because chocolate, but I think they were the Nabisco Sugar Rings. My mother would have happily murdered us in front of the relatives if I got melted chocolate on my clothes. Which I surely would have. @purplehorseshoe, a lion’s mane is wonderful! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/37 "2025-04-13T16:32:55Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > lion’s mane is wonderful! 😃 I have tiny lil’ lady hands, and last time I bought a package, they still fit on my pinkie. 🦁 No, I didn’t go all “RAWR!” in my quiet, empty house, at my cat. Not at all! /s ---
**Author:** ![ewomack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ewomack/32/19149_2.png) [@ewomack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ewomack)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/38 "2025-04-13T17:04:05Z")
Many of the tasty food items that inflame nostalgia in me now clash violently with my diet, so the pining for the past remains a little diluted and conditional. But these items come to mind: - **Chocolate Sports Shakes** - these are still available, and they tasted like nothing else. Sadly, I can no longer stomach the dailry they contain. The closest “safe” equivalent I’ve found is chocolate Oat-ly. - **Hostess Blueberry Fruit Pies** - I used to buy one of these every day from the school lunch cafeteria instead of buying the regular school lunch. They actually cost the same. I could have had an entire meal for the cost of a single fruit pie. I chose the fruit pie. Wisdom and youth often don’t reside together. I don’t think my mother ever found out, thankfully. - **Wendy’s Triple and a Frosty** - this still sounds fantastic to me, but I _very rarely_ eat meat these days and I couldn’t now process the dairy in the frosty. This was once my primary escape meal. When I was home sick from school, my parents would often bring me this dynamic duo. Non food nostalgia: lying in front of a box fan. Right in front of it, with my nose not far from the gate protecting me from the rotating blades. Playing very early video games, such as Atari 2600 _Adventure_ and _Space Shuttle_, and _Beyond Castle Wolfenstein_ (now are all available on the web for free). Reading books in my room and having absolutely no sense of any responsibility whatsoever. I read a lot of those Fawcett paperbacks of Peanuts and B.C. They were about $1.25 at the time. ---
**Author:** ![dirtball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dirtball/32/18772_2.png) [@dirtball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dirtball)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/39 "2025-04-13T17:19:39Z")
Getting off the school bus on Friday afternoon. There was a school behind the backyards on our side of the block (not the school I went to), and I could hear basketballs being dribbled at the goals that were set up in one corner of the parking lot. A quick look out the window, and depending on who was there, I could be out the door and playing in three minutes. _Lost In Space_. 'Nuff said. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Girlfriend](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.girlfriend/32/193_2.png) [@Dr.Girlfriend](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Girlfriend)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2025, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974/40 "2025-04-13T17:41:49Z")
The variety cheese and sausage packs from Hickory Farms or Swiss Colony. That was our New Year’s Eve treat at my grandparents’ house. Those and Shirley Temples. I know Hickory Farms and Swiss Colony still exist but the variety packs seem so much smaller now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childhood-delights/1016974.md?page=3)