The Fudge-maker

Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

There’s not much about Halloween I like. I’ve never been a fan of the “dark side”. I don’t like costumes or weird make-up. I can hardly manage to keep my house décor up to the standards of the last century, much less do a complete overhaul for a holiday only a couple of months before Christmas. But there is one element of the Witch’s Night Out that I can get behind. Candy. And not any of the cheap stuff Costco sells in bulk. I like homemade, honest-to-goodness ingredients with plenty of butter, cream, sugar, and chocolate—(no nuts, please). I LOVE FUDGE. And I’m happy to eat it on a regular basis clear thru the New Year.

I learned to appreciate fudge (such a strange title for a confectionary, don’t you think?) at an early age because my dad made a wicked batch of the stuff whenever there was an excuse for celebration. Then I headed to BYU and became a regular customer at the candy counter where a dozen iterations of fudge are always available. I’m not much of a candy maker myself, so long after I graduated, I never made a visit to the BYU’s campus without a stop at that candy counter for a bit of self-indulgence.

Sadly, I don’t make it to down south very often. Fortunately, that void was filled when one of my daughter’s favorite people, a co-worker, out of the blue sent her home a batch of that colleague’s homemade fudge. Though I tried to be seriously retrospective about the size of my share of the family gift, I admit I may have eaten far more than my share. This information somehow filtered back to the creator of the fudge, and there began many years at the start of the long holiday season with a batch of fudge delivered to my personal hands—or mouth, if you will.

Then three or four years ago, I received a package from an unfamiliar address at Lake Havasu, Arizona—where I was certain I knew no one. Inside was a pound of freshly made, absolutely marvelous fudge. A little investigation revealed that the maker was the father of the colleague at my daughter’s office. He had heard how much I liked her fudge (which was his original recipe), so he told his daughter that he would take over providing our house with batch each year. And he did. Until this year.

He passed away over the summer. My daughter and I, out of love for his daughter who is an extraordinary person, went to his funeral. The attendees at the service were mostly family, the speakers a couple of his sons. His grandchildren sang. It was a lovely hour spent with a lovely family. But to me what was most impressive was the quality of this man’s life—which had not been easy. He’d lost a well-paying, satisfying job when the aerospace industry in the northwest tanked, but instead of whining and lamenting his situation, he moved his family to a smaller town where there was room grow a garden and some fruit trees, and there he found employment as a milkman. His children spoke of his legendary dependability in servicing his customers, and his habit of dropping off milk on the front porch, then stopping to lend a hand when he could see a customer had a need. He taught his children to work so successfully that his daughter, our friend, is totally remodeling a tiny farmhouse she bought on the edge of Bear Lake. By herself.

I met him only once just two years ago when he and his wife came with his daughter for visit. By then his wife’s mental capacity had begun to dwindle, and he had become her full-time caretaker. Even then he was elderly, but his eyes twinkled with good humor and his laughter filled our kitchen.

There was no fanfare when he passed away. No laudatory articles in the newspaper or plaques to honor his name on public buildings. Yet, in my memory, all future festive holiday seasons will not begin without a flash of gratitude for the kindness of that good man who didn’t know me but boxed up a package of his homemade fudge and addressed it to my home every year.

I understand why people decorate their houses and comb the local thrift stores for outrageous costumes during the second largest money-making holiday of the year. It’s a chance pretend, to take on the alter-ego of someone magical, or hilarious, or even, just for a moment, to acquire the imaginary power of a terrifying legendary figure. For me, should I be invited to a masquerade, I think I’ll choose the costume of a milkman I once knew—a superhero in disguise.