This Month's Story

“What’s wrong?”

This was Stella. I was staring at a piece of left-over Halloween candy Sue had given me. It was a Tootsie Roll. I love Tootsie Rolls. I put on a great big smile when she tossed it to me as she was leaving, telling me: “Something for your sweet tooth.”

Now that she had left and I had looked at it, I found that it was different; it wasn’t what I thought a Tootsie Roll should look like. I hadn’t had a Tootsie Roll in a while, it’s true, but this one was different.

Let me explain. Years ago, Groucho Marx (of the Marx Brothers fame. You remember; Harpo and Chico were the other two brothers) had a radio show. The show wrapped around Groucho asking a contestant an easily-answered question (e.g., “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”). The show relied on Groucho’s banter with the contestant rather than the actual question. On one show he asked the contestant what his occupation was.

“I’m a Tootsie Roller” the man said.

Well, the audience roared. After a pause Groucho made the following remark: “Now I don’t think that’s so funny. Think about it. Someone has to roll those Tootsies.” Again the audience roared.

I was just a boy, but I didn’t laugh. I thought that what Groucho said was very wise. His remark lingered with me as one of life’s wise tenets. In fact I have let it become one of the cornerstones to my life. Now Sue, in giving me a Halloween treat, a left-over Tootsie Roll, had sent my universe spinning a little more off kilter than it was yesterday.

Later, as we drove by one of the Highway 90 filling stations, I had Stella stop. Getting out, I told her to wait that I wanted to check something.

Once inside, I asked the young cashier, “Where are your Tootsie Rolls?”

She smiled and coming out from behind the counter, led me to the candy aisle. There, well displayed, were two rows of Tootsie Rolls. I looked at them for a moment and then picked one up and looked at it more closely.

“These Tootsie Rolls are square!”

“Sure, what did you expect?”

“Well, I thought that, you know, they’re called Tootsie Rolls, I thought they would be long and round, in a roll sort of. These are bars, long square bars, not long round rolls”

“As far as I remember, they’ve always been like that.”

I looked at her. She was in her early twenties. I thanked her and went out and climbed in the car. Stella looked at me the same way I had looked at the girl and then started the car. I sat quiet thinking on the drive home. What in the world have we all come to? We’re in a recession, jobs are going overseas, factories are shutting down, the money counters are cutting back on everything, what will be next?

We were almost home, when Stella asked me the question she had asked me earlier.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, all the Tootsie Rolls they make nowadays are long and square; they’re still long but they’re not rolls. A machine slices them into long square bars from a flat slab. Bang, Bang, Bang, and you have thousand Tootsie Rolls”

“So?”

“They should be rolls not bars. They call them Tootsie Rolls, so they should make them into rolls. They were rolls at one time, I remember. Now, someone has changed them…”

“Paul, Tootsie Rolls have been made in square bars for years.”

“Well, I liked it the old way; and besides …”

“What?”

“What happened to all the Tootsie Rollers? What did they do with them?”

Stella got out of the car and headed for the house, “They probably sent them to Florida to play checkers with the buggy whip makers.”

I guess she was trying to be funny, but it’s not funny. Not if you’re a Tootsie Roller.

Where are you Groucho? We need help.