Volume 7 , Issue 25

Candy Bob...

"Most people know that Colonel Bob (Candy Bob) Kirkbride made candy for the kids at Christmas time, and I found the following passage in a small paperback book that I thought you might like to use.

Muleshoe Ballads of Oklahoma Bob by Marjorie Sawyer Munson in collaboration with Colonel Bob Kirkbride, pp. 30-34, Maxwell Printing Company, Alva, Oklahoma, 1944 -- CANDY BOB

To the Old-Timers I'm still "Candy Bob,"�
For I've made a heap o' taffy in my time
And peanut brittle 'nough to bog a mule
In quicksand.

Yep, forty years I've been catering to sweet teeth,
Ever since I learned the gentle art
Of candy-makin'!
Learned it at Custer City, Oklahoma,
From an old man in a carnival
That I seed throwin' taffy around a hook
With kids all around him.
He told me how he learned the trade
Back in the nineties:

A little homeless waif he was
In New York City. His first recollection
Was sleepin' in a barrel and eatin'
At a near-by chapel. Didn't know no name,
So named himself "Bill Chapel."
Only thing he knowed
Was how to pick a pocket:
Used to pick mine every day
Just to show he could.

Well one day Bill
Picked the wrong guy's pockets -
A millionaire's, to be exact.
And the old boy took the kid
And made a man of him.
Through him they pinched a whole pick-pocket ring
And busted up the gang:
And the millionaire sent this kid to Italy,
Where he learned the candy business;
And I learned how from him.

I came to Alva in 1908
And went to a rodeo picnic at Divers' Ranch
When Jim Sullivan and Roy Moyer
Won the ropin' contest:
They sure could do the stunts,
But it hadn't got to the movies then.

That day I had my kettle full
With ten pounds of sugar sirip.
Had it cooked just right
And poured it out onto a marble slab
With all the kids around -
For where there's candy, there is kids -
And I'd put my hook in a locust limb
When a cowboy Mike came sauntering along.

"What's that?" he asks,
Pointin' to the ten-pound chunk.
"That's That's sweetness long drawn out."

"Huh!" he counters. "You can't draw that far.
Why don't you leave that to the women
And come rope a steer?"

"Could do that, too," I answers, and picks up
My coolin'� chunk of sweets,
And puts it on the hook
Ready for the pull.

"Throwin'� it, eh? I'd like to see you
Throw a rope! Why don't you do some bull-doggin'
Or some real ropin'? You can't pull that ten feet!"

By now the candy was growin' white,
And I was standin' back about five feet;
And I give the candy another hitch
Around the hook,
And offers, "What you bet?"

He looked a little scared,
For the batch was lengthenin' out.

"Twenty feet!" he says, "I bet you can't!
Ten dollars I bet you Candy Bob -
Ten good sweet plunkers, Candy Bob!"

"That's good with me," says I.
"And if you mean just what you say,
Call the champion to hold the stakes!"

So they all yelled, "Moyer!"� and over he come,
Just having won the ropers' contest;
And each of us planted him with a ten-dollar bill,
And then I started on my project.

The candy was gettin' airy and light by then,
And never did stick to my hands
Same as I've seen sometimes;
And the crowd sure gathered 'round,
And the stuff began to stretch and stretch
Long and slim from the locust limb.

By now I was standin' full ten feet back
Showin' what I could do with a candy rope:
Curled it right, and curled it left.
I sent it in waves, in ringlets, in twirls.
I coulda done the Great Crinoline, like Will Rogers,
If after all it hadn't been sticky stuff;
And all the time I was steppin' back,
Farther and farther from the tree,
With all the kids yellin' fit to kill.

And now I had to work fast as a termite
For fear the stuff would cool on me;
And when I made the twenty feet
Everybody cheered as loud as the siren.
But I knowed I could throw that far;
I was bettin' on a sure thing -
But I didn't know how much farther.

Thinner and thinner spun the rope,
Now as white as snow.
And farther and farther I steps back,
With my candy rope draggin' as though'twould break.
And finally, when I didn't dare to make it thinner,
I called a halt.
And Moyer brought his tape-line out,
And there it was, away from the tree,
Twenty-seven feet and two inches over!
And I had won my bet.

Then I threw on the marble slab
The whole shootin' works.
And I folded Mike's ten-dollar bill
Inside my purse, and said,
"Ten dollars was all I wanted for it, anyhow;
Kids, I'll be Santa Claus,
And here's your candy!"

And I've been Candy Bob
Forever after."

-- Jim   |  View or Add Comments (1 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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