Merrily They Rolled Along Their Malted Milky Way

During the busy Christmas season in 1972, I worked at J.C. Penney selling luggage and greeting cards. It was the custom that sales associates would fill in for clerks from different departments who were taking their breaks. When my turn came, I relieved the candy clerk. I hated working the candy counter because you had to weigh every ounce of candy manually to calculate the cost.

Every day, the candy department featured two specials loaded in bins at each end of the counter. Malted milk balls were one of the specials that day. My first customer asked for a quarter-ounce of them. I opened the bin, but realized too late I’d used the wrong door. Malted milk balls spilled out faster than coins from a slot machine, bouncing loudly onto the floor and rolling everywhere.

Several customers had lined up, and I was ankle deep in malted milk balls. I tottered in my high heels, murdering milk balls— crunch! crunch!—as I struggled to remain upright while trying to serve everyone.

Just then, the regular candy clerk returned from her break, and seeing my predicament, burst out laughing. The two of us scooped up the runaway candy as fast as we could. We may have eaten one or two (or 10)—purely in the interest of cleanup, of course. I kept thinking of that I Love Lucy episode where Lucy and Ethel can’t keep up with the conveyor belt of chocolates at the candy factory.

After that, I was happy to return to luggage and greeting cards, where no one could order a quarter-ounce of anything.