I was recently visiting a pet shop in the Cities. They had two big, beautiful cats lying on the counter. I love all animals so I of course started petting them and the owner said that their names were Betty and Veronica. So I said “Oh you’re an Archies fan too?” and the owner said that I was the first person to ever guess that reference.
Who doesn’t remember the Archies? Betty, Veronica, Archie and Jughead were some of my favorite childhood characters.
My dad had a large collection of comic books so I grew up reading them too. Dad said when he first started buying them they cost a nickel a piece. It was a big deal when they went up to a dime.
I loved the Archies. They had a great song on Saturday morning cartoons called Sugar, Sugar. I could sing all the words. My brother and I would lie on my parents’ bedroom floor and read comics and eat dad’s candy after school. Dad had a treat basket on his headboard full of Brach’s candy. At the time Ben Franklin in Grand Marais had a Brach’s candy display and you could bag up your own treats and pay by the pound. I really liked the mint creams, so I would throw in an extra handful of those.
I have to believe reading comics when I was little led to my love of reading now. I haven’t bought a comic book in more than 30 years so I went to my go-to shopping site Amazon.com and found out that I can buy comic collections …now if only I could find a source for Brach’s candy…then I could recapture my youth.
So I told him I never kiss a boy on the first date, so buy
me another soda and we’ll start our second date.
Betty to Veronica
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
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