This year's Luminarias

Last night was our annual visit to the Botanical Garden for the Luminaras, lights and entertainment. The food was pretty good. Instead of a choice of entrees of varying price they had a single-price serve-yourself buffet. It was a bit awkward serving ourselves since they put the food so far toward our side of the table there wasn't much room to put down your tray. There was salad, ravioli, roast beef, mixed vegetables, and a hearty chicken-and-biscuit style pot pie. The price included dessert (a chocolate bread pudding plus a cookie) which I should have skipped, but it all tasted good.

There was a bigger crowd this year at all the entertainment spots. Last year there was a lot of jazz. This year it was more folk style. More Christmas music as well. Several of the groups playing were new this year and obviously were still disturbed by people listening to a couple songs then moving on instead of listening to a whole set. But, they'll be used to it by Christmas.

The oddest entertainment was a couple of young women calling themselves the Phoenix Firedancers. It was sort of a cross between fancy, fiery baton twirling and modern dance. It would have been interesting for D&D players especially since you could see what flaming swords and flails really look like. There were a wide variety of instruments in the other groups, lots of normal acoustic guitars, Mariachis with their whole class of guitars, a mandolin, a six-string fiddle, a flute, a harp and, of course, bell ringers.

Maybe there was a bigger crowd because the weather was warm last night and they had a lot of walk ups. Usually the event sells out on the weekends, but Thursday has been lighter recently.

The power of advertising

"Whiz, the best candy bar there izz" wasn't necessarily true but the slogan sticks with me -gone but not forgotten candy

As the list indicates some of them do reappear once in a while. You can occasionally find Mars bars, and Forever Yours sometimes returns as 'blond' or 'dark chocolate' Milky Ways.

Some on the list like Forever Yours and chocolate covered Payday were quite good, just not as popular as the better know variant. It's amazing some on the list lasted as long as they did. Seven Up had some nasty jellys to round out its seven parts. The Reggie Bar was a mushy off-flavored version of a Baby Ruth. I remember Clove Gum, but I think it was mostly for adults wanting to hide the smell of tobacco and/or booze. The same company made Beemans (immortalized in the movie The Right Stuff) and Black Jack Gum, which had a bad reputation. I don't know why. Maybe stained one's tongue black, which would steer adults and older kids away from it.