“Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream

Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream

The Candy Man can, oh the Candy Man can

The Candy Man can ’cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good”.

I used to wonder about the old man in the candy store.

Really, the old man was the candy store. He wore dull colors; tattered greys and blues. The kind of garb you might find a typical blue collar laborer wearing. A long gray beard and a creased visage reminded me of the picture of the Steipler Gaon we have in our living room. And I used to wonder about him.

What does he do at night? Where did he come from? With his coarse European accent, why did he decide to open up a candy shop in America- here in the heart of Flatbush, of all places? What was the secret behind this man who rose at 6AM each morning to open up the small candy shop that served just one or two customers in the smoggy gray unpicturesque Brooklyn mornings before sunrise. Sometimes, if I came early enough, I would catch him opening up the shop. An extended ordeal that was made only more torturous by his arthritic arms. He’d carefully roll down the heavy steel gates that reminded me of the old man himself. Both clanking, monochromatic affairs that creaked at the joints. And in my mind, I would glorify him.

I would imagine him as the survivor of countless troubles and a miracle or two. Tales I made up to glamorize and romanticize the Old Candy Shop owner. Visions of him fighting hand to hand with some German Wehrmacht officer in a musty, hay filled barn on the Continent would fill my imagination. His extended journey to America, than land of the free. And his arrival in the golden medina, sleeping in the streets for his first few nights here. There was no end to the tales he featured in.

And then I would wonder why he didn’t modernize his shop to catch up with the new, cleaner competitor’s grocery that had opened up across the avenue. It always bothered me, that newer store across the street. So when Mommy gave me a dollar to buy a candy before yeshiva, I would defiantly make my way to the old man’s store; my little contribution to the slowing of the inexorable march of progress, and the inevitable shuttering of the little candy store run by the old man.

I’d walk into the store, feeling like a patron saint of old, carefully choosing the red package of Sour Sticks, and extend my small hand with the solitary dollar bill in it to the old man. And to match the excitement in my face- I was getting 20 whole sticks of that sour and sugary confection- he would painstakingly drawer the bill. Slowly he moved. So slowly. Once I told him that I was in a rush; that I was trying to catch the bus. “There will be another bus after this one”, he said, also slowly. How many buses had he seen? For him, the endless parade of buses meant little, or nothing. Why should they mean something, to this man who’d seen that other parade, that parade of trains.

And I used to wonder about him. Did he ever smile? Would I ever be able to catch him at it? I tried to make him smile, I really did. In my own little way. I’d wish him “Good Morning” in the cheeriest voice I could muster in that dank, dark store. He’d pause, only for a moment, and look up from his sefer, but monosyllabic unidentifiable grunts were all I ever received in reply.

And then one day the old candy store with the tan plastic sun protectors was shuttered by the metal gates that normally only worked at night. And soon, I moved away to attend Yeshiva out of town. When I came back, the store had been renovated; it was now home to a group of real estate offices for a franchise firm out of Jersey that I’d never heard of. The new grocery across the street was no longer the upstart; it was now being challenged by a themed emporium that sold fruits and vegetables and even candy: all organically hand grown, whatever that meant. The inexorable march of progress.

And the candy store was no more. And the old man of the candy store was no more.

And these days, I no longer wonder about the old man in the candy store.

(Photo Credit: ryanthejones)