Steve’s dad got a job as an electrician on an Air Force Base a few hundred miles to the North. It was the “Cold War” that provided the jobs. A Titan Missile Base was being built for National Defense. So Steve’s dad would leave early in the morning, work his shift, and then drive back home arriving late at night. Steve didn’t see his dad much, except on weekends.
Sometimes his dad would bring something home to show the kids. Once it was an electrical plug with twenty small prongs in it, and they were all plated with real gold. That was exciting. Another time his father came home with some stuff that looked and felt like firm putty. His father explained that the putty-like substance was packed around the electrical connections in the pipes down inside the missile silo to keep the connectors from burning when the missile blasted off. One of the men had accidentally dropped some of the putty and it almost bounced out of the silo. This stuff was great. You could roll it into a ball and bounce it off the floor and it would hit the ceiling about three times, and keep on bouncing, literally right off the walls. A year or two later someone turned the putty into a toy called a “Supper Ball”.
Steve’s new school was only a few blocks from the new house. Located on the West Side of the main street through town, and less than a block from a hamburger stand. Back then French-Fries cost fifteen cents and you could get five Hamburgers for one dollar; with sauce and all.
On the East Side of the main street, directly across from the school was an Avocado orchard. During the growing season you couldn’t pick any of the Avocados, but you could eat all you wanted as long as they had already fallen to the ground. It was a great place to play.
One summer, Steve and Sheryl dug a large hole between two Avocado trees in the orchard, placed some pieces of wood over it and covered it with a piece of tin roof, then they covered the whole thing with the dirt from the hole. It was a great underground fort, with enough room for four kids if they all stayed on their knees or sat down. It even had a place for cooking carved out of the side in the dirt. One burning candle in its dugout shelf was enough to light the inside of the fort.
Early one weekend, Steve and some friends had gone over to the Walnut Packinghouse and loaded up on Walnuts from the big box hanging over the tracks and then brought them to the fort.
Sitting inside the under ground fort, everybody cracked and shelled Walnuts for a meal. Carl brought the sugar. Steve brought a cube of butter and Shawn had picked up a small frying pan, some spoons and one fork from the Hobo Camp. Sheryl had picked up some good Avocados from around the fort and cut them in half, then removed the large seeds from the middle.
Steve built a fire in the corner-cooking pit with some twigs and leaves collected from under the trees. Steve put some butter in the pan. When it started to bubble, he added some of the shelled Walnuts and fried them until they were golden brown on the tips. Then he dumped them onto an open napkin that was spread over some newspapers. Carl then sprinkled sugar over the Walnuts and set them aside to cool. After all the Walnuts were cooked and sugared, everyone sat around eating Avocado and sugar coated Walnuts. Steve got everyone to agree that they had discovered a great new treat and that someone should make some to sell.
A couple of weeks later, Steve saw a bottle of sugar coated Walnuts in a jar within the canned nut section of the local grocery store. That was very disappointing. Somebody else thought about putting sugar on roasted Walnuts long before Steve and his sister invented it.