So, does anyone in the Kansas City area remember the Green Mills Candy Factory?  Or, as I like to refer to it, the Green Mills Candy Factory of Repugnance and Disappointment?  That second title, the true one, you probably wouldn’t think that way about a place that makes chocolate.  You’d be wrong, and let me tell you why.

For those of you not “in the know” (which usually includes me–except in my blog, where I happen to know everything, and can edit posts later on in case I don’t), the Green Mills Candy Factory of Repugnance and Disappointment was a local maker of chocolates and other teeth-rotting goodies, holing up somewhere near the Plaza.  I think.  I mean, yes, I know it was a candy factory (of repugnance and disappointment), and I know it was in Kansas City, but I can’t swear that it was in or near the Plaza.  I just remember it that way, so there.

In an attempt to foster generations of addicts, Green Mills used to offer tours to groups of kids.  “Come hither yon Boy Scouts, elementary soldiers, and migrant labor off-spring!  Come see our treats and delight in our secret home base for the nefarious Captain Cavity!” It’s possible, however, they didn’t say it that way, and probably just stuck up a sign saying, “Tours open to the public.”  But my recollection is better.

One Spring day my elementary school in Prairie Village decided to load us impressionable yoots on to a giant yellow metal Twinkie (sure, call it a bus, but it’s lunch and I’m hungry) and field trip us all the way over to the Green Mills Candy… you know.  We got to see how they mixed the chocolates and poured the chocolates and cut the chocolates and separate the chocolates and lovingly tongue the chocolates and package the chocolates and otherwise prepare them for shipment.  So, we spend an hour–maybe two–wandering around the factory, listening to some middle-aged PR guy blather on about the factory’s history, its output, the people who work there, and yada.  All we wanted, however, was for the tour to end so that we could score ourselves the inevitable reward for acting decent and not setting fire to the place.  It’s a candy factory, right, so we’re bound to get candy as a treat (luckily, the next month’s field trip to the sperm bank was indefinitely postponed).

The tour, thankfully, comes to an inglorious and boring end.  Still, we were excited.  Candy!  Finally!  Would it be the fudge, or the chocolate malt balls, or the long-lasting chocolate suckers, or the three-course-meal chewing gum (some of us wanted to turn into giant blueberries)?

None of the above.

Seriously.  Know what we ended up with?  Go ahead.  Guess.

No, not that.  Not that, either. (I told you the trip to the sperm bank was postponed.)

Peanut brittle.  Yeah, you read that right: pea-the fucking-nut brittle.  That foul, stick-to-your-teeth plasticine-like concoction of dog poop and sugar.  It was a candy factory, not some proto-Abu Ghraib where good children who didn’t maim anyone don’t get their ration of cocoa bean goodness, but you couldn’t tell by the events of that day.  What’s worse is that they handed each of us a bag of treasure, tightly sealed and not to be opened until we left the factory.

We didn’t find out about their depravity until we were on the bus on the way home! See?  Seeeee the repugance and the disappointment?  There was no chocolate, no gum drops, no anything resembling sweetness and light.  Just pain and misery; so-called “candy” not even fit for violent dictators or politicians.

My inner-child is forever wounded by that unhappy memory, unable to heal because the factory is no longer in business; I can no longer invade the place, ninja-style in the middle of the night, and gobble up whatever chocolate to be found so my soul could mend from the terrible, destructive damage.  My salvation, wrest from my hands long before I could buy a ninja suit over the Internet.  Oh, how I weep for such travesty.

Alas, alas.