Garbage Can-dy

Today Sylvia and I stopped at the Bulk Barn for provisions. I stopped in my tracks when I spotted ghosts from the past: neon-coloured cans of Garbage Can-dy, a sugary confection I first encountered as a child on a trip to Nipawin, Saskatchewan.

For nostalgia's sake I bought a can, and to my delight I discovered the contents haven't changed. Here are the discarded sneakers, pop bottles, soup cans and fish bones of my childhood, though I seem to remember there used to be bones as well. Of course these days the bottles and soup cans go in the recycle bin. Can fish bones be composted? Hmmm.

I'm munching on one of the fish bones now, but my memory isn't good enough to tell me if the flavours have changed. It's sweet, hard and chalky, in any case.

I'm almost certain I still have at least one or two Garbage Cans from the 1970s, because I used them to store the laser guns and other accessories of my Star Wars action figures. You can hold a lot of little plastic pistols in these bins, and they snap closed very firmly so there's little risk of losing your stash.

And now, having eaten all the Can-dy, I have another empty Garbage Can. Perhaps Sylvia can use it to store her earrings.