The Candy Kitchen was on the corner of Main Street and Broadway in Denison, right next to the Ritz Theater, which is now the Donna Reed Center and Heritage Museum. It had an entry to the theater lobby in the rear of the store. Large curved windows displayed the numerous varieties of candy, from licorice (red and black) to hard candy and everything in between. But the thing I remember most about the Candy Kitchen was cherry phosphates.
Many of my friends would go for a malt or shake, or even a chocolate soda, but my preference was always the cherry phosphate. It’s not something you can get in a can or bottle; it has to be made immediately in front of you. Unfortunately, there are very few places anymore where you can order one. However, I know I can get one at Bauder’s Pharmacy on Ingersoll Avenue in Des Moines. And, if I want to travel to Denison, I can get one at the same location where the Candy Kitchen was located, The Bake Shop and Hollywood Café. There are eight more locations in Iowa listed on a site called Only in Your State. However, I have made my own for several years now.
I used to mix six ounces of club soda with eight ounces of Old Orchard Diet Cherry Juice. I quit using club soda because soda is derived from sodium. Today, I use seltzer water. It’s not the same, but I kid myself that it is. I’m the only one who knows the difference.
Grace Lindberg opened up a small café in Vail called Grace’s Drive-In. It wasn’t a drive-in whatsoever, but the food was good, and she had a soda fountain. Whenever I could afford it, I sat on a stool by myself and savored every drop of a cherry phosphate. It was always in the afternoon, once the farmers had emptied the booths, tables, and counter to get back into the fields or wherever they go after lunch. I didn’t want to take up a seat drinking a fountain drink when hungry ag workers needed a place to sit while indulging in a hot beef sandwich. For those of you not familiar with a hot beef sandwich, let me first tell you that I have heard over the years that it is “a heart attack on a plate.” A piece of white bread is laid on a plate. It is topped with several ounces of roast beef and another slice of white bread. The sandwich is cut diagonally, and a huge scoop of mashed potatoes is plopped down in the middle. The entire plate is then smothered in gravy. It’s delicious!
Back to the cherry phosphate. Cherry is my favorite flavor. When I was a kid, I sat in George Powers’ cherry trees for a long time eating the cherries right off the limb. He would come out of the house and yell at me. I didn’t move. Neither did he. Smith Brothers’ cherry flavored cough drops cured me of any cough I had during grade school. Of course, not until the box was empty.
Stephanie and I took road trips back before we were married (and a few after). On a trip to western Iowa, we found Small’s Fruit Farm, a few miles east of Mondamin, on the bottom of Loess Hills. We purchased a few quarts of cherry cider. It wasn’t long after that we went back to buy several gallons of cherry cider for our wedding, and a few quarts of apple cider. I couldn’t believe that I lived not that far from it for forty years and the only thing I knew about it was that a Small’s Fruit Farm truck was often parked outside of Clete’s Open Market on the east end of Denison (a few businesses down from the Tipsy Pine). I stopped at Clete’s once in a while but knew nothing of Small’s. Clete had Pearl Beer for a buck a six-pack.
Today, everything has to blended with something else. Pomegranate/banana, wild berry/lemon, passion fruit/orange lemonade, if you can imagine it, it must be available. Take me back to the time when flavors were simple, like cherry. I don’t want vanilla in it; I don’t want apple in it; I just want cherry. By the way, the cherry juice I buy has apple juice as the ingredient listed after water. Whatever!
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