Thursday, December 9, 2010

Bringing Home the Bacon

I saw this box of Aplets & Cotlets in a lovely, holiday display in my local grocery store's produce section.


I just had to buy a box and bring it home.

Aplets & Cotlets are not my favorite sweets. They are very similar to, if not indeed actually Turkish Delight candies which I could take or leave (obviously I couldn't leave them this time). The founders of Aplets & Cotlets were two Armenian immigrants who settled in Cashmere, Washington in 1920, so my guess is that the sweets are indeed Turkish Delight candy with a catchy, Americanized name.


Seeing the box took me back to the 1989 holiday season and the only time I "brought home the bacon" since becoming The Colonel's wife.

The Colonel and I had an understanding that I would not work (to me, work is a four-letter word) outside the home once we were married unless our finances dictated it a necessity. It never became a necessity, thank God. I have always been a stay at home wife and mother. According to mom.salary.com, all my duties as a stay at home mom (and wife) would equate to an annual salary of $117,867.00. That's a lot of "Virtual Bacon" being brought home.

Which brings us back to the only time I brought home the "real" bacon back in 1989.

A friend of mine was working for Liberty Orchards, the company that makes Aplets & Cotlets, and it was the height of the Christmas Season and she needed help with setting up displays in stores. We worked together for about 3 weeks.

In the trunk of Lisa's car were cases of Aplets & Cotlets as well as cardboard display towers we had to build once we arrived in the stores (put tab A into slot B). Lisa would talk to the store manager first and ask them where they wanted us to build the candy display. Usually they wanted us in the produce section but sometimes they would put us at the end of an isle, the end cap, a highly coveted area in stores.

I remember one set-up in particular in a K-Mart store. Lisa was on her knees on the floor, putting the finishing touches on the cardboard display tower as I was opening a case of candy, getting it ready for the tower, when a young man with Down's Syndrome came up to Lisa and started petting her hair (I really couldn't blame him, Lisa had long, thick, wavy hair, it was beautiful). As he was petting Lisa's hair he informed me that Lisa was his girlfriend. The tress touching lasted a few minutes until the young man's mom arrived and pulled him away without a scene. Lisa was a real trooper about it.

I made around $900.00 dollars helping Lisa out.

The Colonel likes to lovingly tease me about not working outside the home except for that one time, 21 years ago...according to my ciphering, I'm worth more being a stay-at-home-mom and wife.

2 comments:

  1. That salary doesn't sound like it is enough. I think we are priceless!
    When I worked we routinely (like every 6 months!) saw patients from a children's group home. These kids were severly mentally and physically disabled. I never had a patient pet my hair, but I did have one PULL it!

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  2. I agree with Kim, that salary doesn't sound like near enough LOL
    I've never heard of these before but am going to be on the look out for some. They really look tasty.

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