This very last Secret Spaces comes courtesy of my sister, Mrs Q.:
When I read the recent post about Yummies in Maine, my mouth started to water and my mind wandered to one of my favorite, sweetest places: Billy Boy's Candies.
For those of us with sweet-teeth in Southeastern Massachusetts, it's just a short drive to this local favorite in New Bedford. It's located in a rather nondescript building on busy Mt. Pleasant Street, right across from a huge cemetery, but the locale is quite an improvement from the trailer home that used to be Billy Boy's headquarters (OK, that was like fifteen years ago, when I was still in college, but us New Englanders pride ourselves on knowing where things USED to be).
In addition to today's favorites, like full cases of Laffy Taffy and Kit Kats and bags of gummy EVERYTHING, they stock the hard-to-find classics that you used to snatch from your grandma's candy dish: molasses puffs, NECCO wafers, old-fashioned throat drops and Mary Janes.
When planning my kids' recent "knights and princesses" birthday party, I knew exactly where to find gold chocolate coins and Ring Pops for the goodie bags. And, of course, I was able to find all sorts of little candies for decorating the castle cake, like those strange fake rocks I was always afraid to eat (Hey! Who knew? They are actually filled with chocolate!)
This spring, on a particularly dreary day, I took the kids for a field trip. Crazy talk, I know, but my son still remembers the aisles of colorful candy and that he was allowed to choose ONE thing before we left. So it just happened to be the three-pound bulk bag bag of rainbow lollies. Atta Boy.
I can't help but think that picking ONE three lb bag of candy is just GENIUS! Pure Genius!
Posted by: AMC | August 04, 2008 at 12:00 PM
My teeth hurt reading these posts about candy. I need to go brush :) I did notice on my recent trip abroad that at every meeting I went to, the English have plates of Kit Kats or Twix set in the middle of the tables. And they are individually wrapped with "Only 107 calories". I hadn't see so many candy wrappers since Halloween last year!
Posted by: Christine | August 06, 2008 at 04:05 PM
This sounds a lot like the shop in Harvard Square where Meg and I ended up when we were down there for her interview last winter. They had everything! And now we have ANOTHER place to hit up too!
I have soooo loved all the Secret Spaces!
Posted by: Auds | August 12, 2008 at 05:41 PM