Bell hanging in front of the car

It has been a long time since I heard that bell. Mixed in with the rustling early morning wind, the sound of the small, humble bell, one has to be very observant to hear it. The bell awakens childhood memories deep in a small corner of my soul.

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

Back then, 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 rickety 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 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 and grandmothers to “sell Uncle Thoi the candy guy”, and they would stop crying immediately. But when they learned to eat candy, all the children 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 piece of candy.

His bicycle was old and rusty, with all the paint peeling off. On the handlebars hung a small bell shaped like a sticky 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 children would know from afar just by the sound of the bell.

Behind the car, on the luggage rack, there was a wooden box containing a large white candy that looked like tapioca flour, wrapped in a plastic bag and a thick layer of felt to protect against the sun. It was a thick, sticky sugar syrup that had been kneaded to perfection, 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 piece of candy he had just pulled out, wrapping it in a piece of newspaper to keep his hand from getting sticky.

We enjoyed watching Uncle Thoi pull the candy, sometimes even without money to buy it, we still gathered to watch. His hands were flexible, pulling and stroking at the same time. When shaking the candy from the sugar cube, he clicked his tongue in his mouth, making a cracking sound, like a crunching sound. In my childhood world, he sold the candy like a magician. With just a little stroking, the white sugar cube covered the roasted, peeled peanuts.

Children love to eat taffy, it is sweet, sticky and has crunchy beans. It is a gift to soothe a deprived childhood and always crave sweets. Taffy is made purely from sugar and beans so it is very safe for children's teeth. It has no preservatives, and at that time 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 a long time, it will melt and stick to your hands, so you have to devour it, even if it gets stuck in your teeth, you still have to chew continuously. From eating taffy, there is another idiom, whoever talks sweetly is often teased as having "mouth as sticky as taffy".

A stick of taffy back then cost only a few hundred dong, but sometimes without money, children still had taffy to eat. That was thanks to the generous and cheerful candy seller who could exchange the candy for scraps. Children only needed to pick up empty bottles, cans, old worn-out plastic sandals, rusty iron bars, or duck feathers to exchange for taffy. So without money, we still had snacks to eat. It seemed that this very small act had trained the country children to be hard-working 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, I still remember his saying, "this job is wandering around the sunny streets, 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, "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

Source