Remember This, a little shop on Main Street in Boerne, isn’t your normal antique shop. Most of the central business district has been converted to used-furniture stores, gift shops, and art galleries for the tourists. The businesses that the locals use have moved to strip malls on the edge of town.
Still, downtown Boerne is not a bad place to visit on a sunny weekend. In the last year or so the town has added a couple of new restaurants and even a brewpub on River Road (TX 46).
The main attraction is Main Street. There is one shop that specializes in selling all kinds of decorative angels. Another store carries a menagerie of animal-related items from sculpture to clothes hangers. One of the antique shops gives away free samples of pickles. Along with furniture, antique tools, and other items, Carousel Antiques sells homemade pickles that are like no other pickle on the grocery shelf.
With competition like that, Diane Vordenbaum and her sister Shirley Humphries had to come up with a creative twist when they opened their little shop seven years ago. “Everybody has a favorite candy from their childhood that they can’t find anymore,” Vordenbaum says. The candy shelves in the shop are stocked with blasts from the past that are sure to reveal the shopper’s age.
Big red wax lips and fangs sit next to Charleston Chews, a vanilla nougat covered with chocolate. Pop Rocks from just a generation ago are next to Necco Wafers, a roll of quarter-sized candies in assorted colors. Cherry Mash, Slo Pokes, and Chunky Bars are still big sellers here.
Some of the candies seem to have been regional favorites, like Chuckles, a jelly candy like gumdrops except in six different flavored squares to make a single bar. Reed’s Disks, a kind of individually wrapped Lifesaver-type candy without the hole, still come in cinnamon, butterscotch, and root beer. When was the last time you saw a box of Luden’s Wild Cherry Throat Drops? And of course, Chick-O-Sticks are still made in Lufkin, Texas.
Vordenbaum says that it is getting harder and harder to get some of the old candies. Fizzies, a powder that fizzed when added to a glass of water, isn’t being made anymore. “When we sell what we have, that’s it,” Vordenbaum says.
Clove gum was a popular favorite once produced by Adams Gums, Vordenbaum says. The company was purchased by Warner-Lambert Pharmaceuticals. For a while the company produced the gum every other year. “It was great, because it kept interest alive,” she says.
Now the recipe for the gum is owned by Pfizer, and they haven’t made a commitment to make the product. “I wish people would write or call Pfizer and tell them to make the gum instead of so much Viagra,” Vordenbaum says.
The most popular vintage candies are the wax lips, flat taffy, and Nik-L-Nips, wax bottles filled with flavored syrup. Even though they may be politically incorrect, Vordenbaum says she sells a lot of candy cigarettes.
What should be illegal are the kinds of candies that today’s children want. “For kids now it’s the grosser the better,” she says with a laugh. “They want extreme candy, whether it’s powder, liquid, or spray.” The big sellers for the current generation are Scum Balls, Extreme Pop Rocks, and Butt Ugly Martians. The worst has to be the Sour Flush: a tiny toilet that you dip tiny plungers in to swab up the sour powder. It’s enough to make those disgusting little wax bottles sound not half bad.
The candy sales may keep the lights on, but it is the assortment of nostalgia items that fills most of the shop. Vordenbaum sells clocks, picture frames, mugs, and other items that recall the pop icons from across the generational divide. “We’re just a fun place to shop,” she says to sum it all up.
Remember This is at 231 S. Main in Boerne. For more information, call 830/249-4125. To walk down memory lane with a complete list of candies that are still available, go to their Web site at www.rememberthistexas.com.
619th in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of Day Trips 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in April 18 • 2003.
