The bell dangles in front of the car.

It has been a long time since I heard that bell. Mixed in with the rustling morning wind, the sound of the small, humble bell, only one can hear it with great attention. The bell awakens childhood memories deep in a small corner of my soul.

The taffy candy is associated with many people's childhood memories - Photo: HCD

In those days, on the village road, we often gathered together to play children's games. Suddenly, somewhere, a tinkling sound of a copper bell rang out, and a moment later, a rusty bicycle leisurely approached. The children stared with longing eyes when the cyclist called out, "Candy candy here."

The candy seller’s name was Thoi, we often called him Uncle “Thoi the candy guy”. He was about thirty years old, and it was said that his family was poor because of his many children. He was tall and lanky, with a bony face that never smiled, and looked very scary at first glance. Any child who cried a lot was threatened by their mothers to “sell Uncle Thoi the candy guy”, and they would stop crying immediately. But when they learned to eat candy guy, they all loved Uncle Thoi very much. Sometimes he stopped the car, told someone to run into the house to pour him a cup of tea, and then he gave them a candy guy.

His bicycle was old and rusty, with all the paint peeling off. On the handlebars hung a small bell shaped like a rice cake. As the bike passed over bumpy, potholed village roads, the bell would ring and he would call out, “Candy candy here.” It sounded so familiar that even when he didn’t call out, the bell would be rung and children would know from afar.

Behind the car, on the luggage rack, there was a wooden box containing a large white candy that looked like tapioca starch, wrapped in a plastic bag and a thick layer of felt to protect it from the sun. It was a thick, sticky sugar syrup that had been kneaded to a smooth consistency, and required a skilled worker to make it. Stopping the car, he used a towel to wrap his right hand and pulled the sugar out into a piece. Then he suddenly broke the candy he had just pulled out and wrapped a piece of newspaper around it to keep his hand from getting sticky.

We loved watching Uncle Thoi pull the candy, sometimes we didn’t have money to buy it but still gathered around to watch. His hands were flexible, pulling and stroking at the same time. When he shook the candy from the sugar, he clicked his tongue in his mouth, making a cracking sound, like a crunch. In my childhood world , he sold the candy like a magician. With just a little stroking, the white sugar covered the roasted, peeled peanuts.

Children love to eat taffy, it is sweet and sticky when bitten into, with crunchy and fatty beans. It is a gift to soothe the deprived childhood and always crave for sweets. Taffy is made purely from sugar and beans so it is very safe for children's teeth. It has no preservatives, and back then there was no refrigerator to store it, so every afternoon when it was not sold out, the uncle's face would be sad.

Eating taffy also has to be fast because if left for too long, it will melt and stick to your hands, so you have to gobble it up, even if it gets stuck in your teeth, you still have to chew continuously. From eating taffy comes another idiom, anyone who talks sweetly is often teased "with a mouth as sticky as taffy".

A candy bar back then cost only a few hundred dong, but sometimes without money, children still had candy to eat. That was thanks to the cheerful and generous candy seller who could exchange candy for scraps. Children only needed to pick up empty bottles, cans, worn-out plastic sandals, rusty iron bars, or duck feathers to exchange for candy. So without money, we still had snacks to eat. It seemed that this very small job had trained the country children to be industrious and thrifty.

Children have more and more snacks, candy and cakes are now everywhere, so the image of bicycles carrying candy for sale is gradually decreasing and then disappearing completely on the village roads. Uncle Thoi is now old and no longer sells candy, but he still remembers his saying, "this job is wandering around in the hot sun, very hard".

But this morning I suddenly heard the sound of memories, saw the bell hanging from the handlebars of an old bicycle carrying taffy for sale. I thought that children nowadays no longer craved that kind of candy. But from the alley, a child ran out shouting, “Hey, Uncle! Taffy seller!” The candy seller hurriedly put his feet on the road and quickly braked. It was as if he was afraid of losing something, not just a piece of candy to sell, but more than that.

Hoang Cong Danh

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