For most folks, Easter candy means chocolate bunnies and jelly beans. For Mama it meant horehound. I peeked into the black pot bubbling on the stove one spring morning and breathed in the minty scent of herbs.
“Perfect for sore throats and upset stomachs,” Mama said, giving the pot a stir with a big wooden spoon.
“Why can’t we have store-bought candy like other people?” I asked. “Must everything be good for you?” Horehound didn’t just act like medicine, it tasted like it too.
Mama fixed me with a sharp look over her glasses. “That store-bought candy will do nothing but rot your teeth,” she said. “You’ll be happy for this horehound when you’re suffering from spring ailments.”
I cut up some wax paper to wrap the horehound squares as they cooled, but my mind was on the real candy I was sure to get the following week at the church Easter egg hunt.
My head was so full of chocolate and jelly beans I almost missed what Mama said next.
“Before supper I want you to carry a bag of this candy over to Granny Tipton.”
“You mean Granny Witch?”
Mama fixed me with another glare. She didn’t approve of the nickname we school-age kids had for our elderly neighbor. But surely Mama couldn’t deny how much the nickname fit. Granny Tipton lived all by herself in a lonely, falling-down house with a big yard and only a scary black cat for company.
“What do you suppose that house looks like inside?” I asked my brother Buddy Earl once as we walked by.
“Full of cobwebs,” Buddy Earl said. “Nothing inside but her cauldron, her cat and her broom!”
“I am feeling kind of weary,” I told Mama, letting my voice tremble just a little. “Maybe someone else should take it?”
“A spoon full of castor oil should perk you right up,” Mama said. Instantly I felt better and shot out the door.
Granny Tipton’s house looked scary as ever, and now I felt sick for sure. But there was no fooling Mama. I had to deliver that candy. God, protect me from Granny Witch, I thought. I summoned all my courage, went to the door and knocked.
“Who is it?” a raspy voice asked on the other side of the door. The black cat watched me through the curtains at the window.
“My name is Douglas Clark from over on Bear Ridge,” I said. “Mama sent me with a bag of homemade horehound candy.”
“Step over to the window,” Granny Tipton ordered. “I want to take a good look at you, young man.”
Hoping she wasn’t measuring me for her cooking pot, I did as I was told. The curtain pulled back to reveal a shadowy face with two dark eyes. I was terrified, but grinned so it wouldn’t show.
“You are a Clark, that’s for sure,” the shadowy face said. “You look just like your daddy.”
A moment later the heavy door opened with a creak, just wide enough for Granny Tipton to step through. Close up she was almost childlike in stature, no more than five feet tall.
Her hair was dark, streaked with gray, knotted neatly on top of her head and held in place with shiny gold-toned combs. Her floor-length dress had puffy sleeves and swished around her as she moved. She could have stepped out of the early 1900s.
“This ain’t store-bought candy you brought, is it?” she asked.
“No, Miss Granny,” I said. “Mama and me made a fresh batch all ourselves this morning.”
She nodded in approval and smiled—a real friendly smile, the kind I never imagined Granny Tipton knew how to make. “I don’t get many social callers up here,” she said. “Come in and sit a spell?”
I’d read enough fairy tales to know that going into a witch’s house could be dangerous. “I better be getting on back home,” I said, inching away. “I don’t want Mama to fret about me.”
The smile disappeared, replaced by something sadder. Suddenly Granny Tipton didn’t look like a witch at all, just a lonely lady who needed a friend. “Well, maybe I can visit just for a little while,” I said.
Granny opened the door wide. I got ready for broomsticks and cobwebs. But stepping across the threshold was like entering another world—a kaleidoscope of color. The house was filled with glass objects.
A rainbow of goblets, tumblers and vases lined the windowsills. Glass plates shone on the walls like jewels. The afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows set each piece afire and made the colors dance.
“Kind of hurts the eyes, doesn’t it?” Granny Tipton said with a laugh. “Grown ups don’t take to it the way children do.”
I was hypnotized by the sight. Here I thought I was visiting a wicked witch, and I’d just stepped into a genuine fairy land.
“Would you like a piece of my own special homemade candy?” Granny asked, breaking the spell at last. “It will hold you over till supper.”
“Yesum, I would,” I said. “If it ain’t too much trouble.”
Granny offered me a glass dish with a top on it. “It’s a candy dish,” she explained, lifting the lid.
I’d never seen nor heard of such a thing. “When we eat candy at home, we eat it out of a fruit jar,” I said.
“It seems to taste better this way,” she said. “Can’t explain why.”
I’d only planned to stay for a minute, but when Granny Tipton went on about her own childhood in the mountains, and her family who were now all departed, I lost all track of time. Mama demanded to know what I’d been up to, gone so long.
At dinner I couldn’t stop talking about Granny. “I never would have guessed what she was hiding in that house,” I said.
“That’s how it is with people,” Mama said with a knowing smile. “You can’t tell what they’ve got inside until you see for yourself.”
As Easter approached, I couldn’t stop thinking about Granny, all alone in her beautiful house full of treasures. Granny Witch stories didn’t seem fun anymore, and I told my brother Buddy Earl so.
Even thoughts of the upcoming egg hunt couldn’t distract me. What kind of Sunday would Granny Tipton have?
The day before Easter I took a walk to Granny’s house. “Hello there, Douglas,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’ve brought more candy today?” “No, ma’am,” I said. “If it would be your pleasure, I would like to walk with you to church Easter Sunday.”
For a moment Granny didn’t say anything. She just looked at me, her eyes filled with tears. “I would be proud and much obliged to accompany you to church, Douglas.”
So the next day I arrived at Granny’s magical house in my Sunday best. “You are a beautiful rose in the garden of life,” she said when she saw me.
After that I visited Granny Tipton regularly. We ate lunch together on her porch and she told me of her adventures as a country school teacher.
Granny and I visited all through the spring and summer. When September rolled around and the time came for me to return to school, she had a surprise for me.
“A token of my appreciation,” she said, handing me a cardboard box taped tightly shut. “For you.”
More horehound candy? I wondered. School supplies? What really mattered was that it was from my good friend Granny.
Back home Mama laid the box on the kitchen table. I cut the tape with my pocket knife. At first all I saw was wadded up newspapers. Then I found what Granny had hidden inside. “How beautiful!” said Mama as I pulled out pieces of colored glass.
I lined the three dishes side by side on the table. In the sunlight they glowed like jewels from a fairy palace. “They’re called candy dishes,” I explained to Mama. “They make the candy taste better.”
These days, I’m the old timer with gray in my hair. But those candy dishes still glow like fairy jewels—and really do make the candy taste better.
They remind me of the friend that opened up my world all those years ago, and that if you take the time to get to know someone, you might just find an angel.
Try making Douglas’ horehound candy in your own kitchen!
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