Like a kid in a candy store for Easter
Every Easter, a stainless steel chocolate rabbit mold that has been in my family for years makes an appearance on my mantel. I bring it out as a reminder of how the confluence of people flowing though life informs our own unique passage.
Growing up in a family business, I was surrounded by a bevy of great aunts, distant cousins, and uncles by marriage. They came to work in my grandmother’s shop from all parts of the city. Some took the trolley from modest brownstones dotting the rolling neighborhoods of Beechview and Brookline. Others were from Pittsburgh’s West End. One drove in from a farm in Peters Township. Another traveled from Squirrel Hill.
Largely from second-generation immigrant families, they were stoic, colorful characters with heartfelt personalities of insurmountable size. Some were skill specific; others just needed a job. They were unvarnished salts of the earth who could just as easily break out in hilarious raucous clock-stopping language or forfeit into quiet whispers without missing a beat. And I had a front-row seat.
The business began before I was born. During the Depression, to make ends meet, my grandmother dug in and created homemade chocolates in her Carrick kitchen. As teens, my father and his brother went door to door selling the chocolates she had carefully packaged. A family recipe coupled with word of mouth grew the venture into a business, enabling my grandmother to open a small shop along Brownsville Road. In the beginning, she hired her sisters, whom she trusted and had raised from the age of 14. The rest of the family was soon to follow. Grandma was tenacious and smart. By 1957, the business had grown to factory status servicing a network of mom-andpop stores across the Pittsburgh region. Around that time, my father stepped in to take the helm, seeking ways to expand the chocolate enterprise.
Enter the stainless steel rabbit mold on my mantel. Many chocolate molds popularized in the mid-20th century were made of steel in Germany. When World War II broke out, most German companies stopped production. The steel-made molds that were still accessible in the U.S. rusted easily. As the war ensued, it was hard to find replacements. Soon, the practicality of chocolate mold production fell out of favor.
In the 1950s, a growing market for the production of chocolate novelties made a resurgence. Designers introduced nickel and plattinol, a non rusting alloy, to make molds safer and more recyclable for consumers. Such innovations made investment by a small company, such as my grandmother’s, more amenable. This prompted my family to invest, join ranks with other chocolate producers and reintroduce the production of chocolate novelties to Pittsburgh. The business thrived.
Lent and the weeks leading up to Easter became our high season. My siblings and I were drafted to work after school and onweekends in the cooling rooms releasing the chocolate novelties from their molds (a delicate task), bagging each novelty in separate cellophane wrappings or packing the orders for delivery. At one point, we were producing over 60 different designs of rabbits, lambs, peeps and other Easter ephemera. Alongside my aunts, their neighbors, second cousins and temporary hires, we worked the cogs of the wheel that made the business spin the ledgers from red to black.
These were jobs that allowed for conversation to flow while the hands summarily worked. From these conversations, I learned the value of being present, the satisfaction of tasks completed, team work, and intuiting need. I also learned what to do on a first date, why girls are different from boys, and how being true to oneself is the ultimate compliment. As an aspiring creative, I drew upon these conversations for my narratives, finding their realities more compelling than anything I could ever conjure. Some of the conversations prompted me to seek books and music I may otherwise have never encountered. Later, as a teacher, this collective knowledge fostered an instinctual ability for assessing the needs of students. Public speaking became theater and talking with strangers an ease. I don’t know exactly when I learned this, but I know where and from whom.
For the 10 or 12 years I worked at the store until its closing in the 1970s, I didn’t anticipate the impact those individuals would have on the development of my character. An imaginary wink from a stainless steel rabbit on my mantel each year serves to remind me. I was privy to an unsuspecting education all those years, perhaps one more valuable than any of my advanced degrees. Yet, at the time, I was just a kid in a candy store.