Columnist John Moore’s grandmothers kept candy dishes on their coffee tables. Orange slices were a common treat found inside them. Photo: John Moore

From the 1940s through the 1970s, Southern grandmothers always had candy dishes on the living room coffee table.

The tradition dates back to the late 1800s, when Emily Post etiquette books dictated that you kept some sweets in the parlor for when company came. Simple sugar cubes or bonbons were the norm then. A hostess was expected to have something small and pleasant to offer visitors, and candy was inexpensive enough that almost any household could manage it.

Then, the candy wasn’t for the kids. It was for the guests.

By the middle of the twentieth century, candy dishes had become less about formal company and more about family.

Today, many grandmothers are careful what they feed their grandchildren. Thank goodness many of us grew up at a time when candy was plentiful on just about every Southern granny’s coffee table.

Both sets of my grandparents lived near us in Ashdown, Arkansas. When I was born, I was the first grandchild on both sides of the family. I have several aunts and uncles, and eventually there were dozens of cousins. But being the first grandchild meant I was also the first nephew. And that meant I could have just about any type of candy I requested.

Aunts and uncles tended to buy kids candy bars when we went to the Piggly Wiggly, and theater candy if we went to the movies. A Mars Bar or Three Musketeers was a common grocery store take home; usually handed over at the checkout line like a prize for good behavior.

If we went to Williams Theater to see One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword In The Stone, The Absent Minded Professor, or Mary Poppins, I could pick either popcorn or candy from the display case. I always picked candy. Jiffy Pop was an option at home, but theater candy was special.

Movie candy wasn’t available in most stores back then. So a kid never wanted to miss the opportunity to have Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, Dots, or Jujubes. Jujubes were a favorite because they could last until Julie Andrews sailed off with her umbrella.

Most kids loved getting candy from a store or at the movie theater, but hands down the best candy was always at grandma’s house. With my dad’s parents, it was both grandma and grandpa who had candy.

My grandfather had an affinity with Zero Bars. Frozen Zero Bars. I’m unsure why he liked them that way, but my grandfather loved Zero Bars straight from the freezer. He’d buy a carton of them and keep them on ice.

I found them difficult to eat that way. Come to think of it, that may have been why he liked them that way.

He would sit in his chair and bite off pieces as calmly as if he were eating a biscuit, while the rest of us waited for ours to thaw enough to chew. The center eventually softened if you were patient enough.

As for my grandmothers, they both kept candy in a glass bowl with a lid. Everyone called it a candy dish, and it sat on the coffee table. In all the years I went to their houses, I don’t remember anyone ever having coffee on the coffee table, but candy was almost always there.

The dishes themselves were worth looking at. Heavy pressed glass with little knobs on the lids, they caught the light from the living room lamps and made the candy inside look even better than it already was.

My dad’s mom had an affinity for Orange Slices and a candy called Circus Peanuts. Orange Slices look exactly like orange slices, but they taste like orange flavored granulated sugar. They were so good.

So were Circus Peanuts. Circus Peanuts looked like peanuts, but were about ten times larger. And soft. And chewy. They did not taste like peanuts. Oddly, they had a marshmallow texture and tasted like bananas.

Go figure.

My other grandmother liked a candy called Boston Baked Beans. Which aren’t, aren’t, and aren’t.

Boston Baked Beans are roasted peanuts, real ones, not circus ones, covered in a crunchy molasses flavored shell. They’re mostly made in Illinois, not Boston.

Not that it matters, because we’d eat them by the fistful and never questioned their origins.

Sometimes the candy bowl held wrapped peppermints or butterscotch disks, especially around Christmas. Those lasted longer because nobody liked them quite as much as the regular favorites, which may have been the point.

As kids, we had no idea that we needed to thank Emily Post for the candy dishes on the coffee tables. Maybe so, but I bet she didn’t know how sweet Southern grandmothers were eventually going to be on their grandkids.

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