My only memory of the candy shop is going from the shop to the car parked at the curb out front. It was dark and raining. Newspapers were put over heads to keep them dry. In my memory I walked rather than being carried to the car but I would have been only two since I turned three after we moved to La Mesa, California. Most of what I remember of the candy shop was what I’ve heard others say about it. Genna shared her childhood memories here.
Dad told me he started J. A. Keeter Candy Company in 1932. He was 21 and had saved up $1,000. He may have gotten experience in making candy working for the Campbell Candy Company. I’m not certain of that but I believe that is correct. Those were depression years and everyone was struggling. Dad told me about driving around the Panhandle selling candy wholesale to small retailers. These were probably small grocery stores, drug stores and the like individually owned and long before the ubiquitous chain stores we have today. He would walk into one of these, see the display case for candy practically empty and say to himself, “Oh boy, I’m going to sell a lot of candy here!” But the proprietor didn’t have any money so Dad had to get back in his van and head on down the road hoping things would be better at the next stop. He might have done some consignment selling but I can’t be sure.
Some of Dad’s siblings worked with him making and selling candy. His sister Oma may even have been the one behind Sugar Isle, the retail portion of the candy business. Sometime later she, her sister Ophelia and Ophelia’s husband Delma decamped for California. There was a lot of that going on in those days. Sixth Street where the candy shop was located was also Route 66 at that time and lots of people traveled that highway headed for California in search of greener pastures during the depression and dust bowl days.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the US entered World War II, there was a lot of uncertainty. Dad would have been 30 then and, at least for a time, he didn’t know whether he would be drafted or not. That may have been the impetus for the family moving into the candy shop building. Ethel Clark told me how Mom and she considered their options if Dad did have to go off to war, including moving into to the rock house in McBride Canyon. I really doubt, though, that that was a serious consideration. No disrespect to Ethel but it was some 70 years later that she told me that.
As it turned out though, Dad didn’t go to war. His business was considered critical to the war effort and it prospered just as many businesses did during the war years. The war ended the depression and people had jobs and money to spend. Maybe the Keeter Candy Company faced less competition because of war rationing but whatever the reason that period of prosperity led to the purchase of Six Acres and the building of the house there.
After the war, things changed again. Mom told me how lucrative the war years were for the family and she also told me how after the war tough times returned. There was a recession after the war and increased competition may have played a part in reducing profits. Dad also went through a period of ill health due to severe allergies about that time, which must have made things just that much more difficult.
In a letter to Delma, Ophelia, Oma and Ronald, already in California, February 7, 1950, Mom wrote:
— Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just span the spaces with thought and be together now and then. It began to look as though we would for a while. Now it looks as though we are tethered to the plains.
— Arthur came down with his allergy in a business like way about Christmas, but we took him off dairy products, chocolate and pecans, and he gradually emerged looking much better around the waistline, though please don’t get the idea that the loss of ten pounds made him look skinny. I think if he could just get that darned candy business to make us about ten thousand a year, he would be in the pink of condition.
— I do pretty well, at least now that I have finally decided to quit trying to eat all the surplus candy I could and began eating 40% Bran Flakes instead.
The folks were early middle-aged by then and Mom told me how the work was getting her down. Dad and maybe the rest of the family made a trip to California to see why his hypochondriac sister Ophelia was always sick and came back enamored with the Golden State. In spite of just building a new house a couple of years earlier, the table was set for a move to Culowee Street.
In a letter to Delma, Ophelia and Ronald dated March 17, 1951, Mom wrote:
— I know you are wondering about us. So are we, really. We are not much closer to a solution of all our problems than we were when we left there. But things are bound to come to a head some time. We did sell a show case the other day. Arthur has painted the luggage trailer. Three or four prospective buyers have looked at the house — none interested. One man looked at Genna’s horse. If he had bought it, that would have settled at least one thing — whether we keep the horse or sell it. Art and Genna both want to keep it. Will you join us some night for a horse-meat hash?
Dad’s health improved, he found work and life was good on Culowee Street until the death of eldest son James. That must have taken all the fun out of living in California and we soon moved back to Six Acres. Most if not all of the candy making equipment was stored in the garage and barn on SA and some may have been stored somewhere else. Dad built a shed next to the barn, oh, maybe around 1958-1960, and filled it with candy shop equipment from the garage and maybe parts unkown. The knotty pine room, which was James’s room when the house was built, was filled with candy shop stuff, candy boxes mostly, after we returned from California. I shared Kathryn’s room with her until the knotty pine room was cleared. Years later when I asked him why he still had all the equipment he told me he had intended to get the business going again. Growing up on a farm and experiencing the depression, Dad was loath to get rid of anything and I’m sure that played no small part in the boxes, tables, and other items gathering dust for decades. Some of it went with the barn and shed when they were demolished to build the shop, but there are still many relics of the candy business around, much of it in the loft of the shop. We use several of the candy shop tables in the shop now and they come in handy. There are a couple of marble cooling slabs around and one that may be granite that Chris has his beehives on.
Growing up and even after being pretty well grown, now and then someone I was introduced to would ask me if I was related to the people involved in the Keeter Candy Company. There may still be a few people around that remember the candy shop but I doubt it.