Local Kids Cash In: Trade Necco Wafers For Pepitas

"This is no fairy tale. I can tell you where Jack can stick that beanstalk," says Edmund Abernathy. The 70-year old Central Ohio man was less than amused when asked about a recent trade with three area children that backfired. Sure he only had his best interest in mind and was attempting to cash in on the gullibility of the kids, but this was not their first rodeo either.

It began last year when Mr. Abernathy was reminded of this favorite candy as a youth, Necco Wafers. The vintage round, potato chip-like combination of sugar, corn syrup (also sugar), gelatin (yup, still sugar) and gum (Hey look, its sugar!) that came in flavors like orange, lemon, lime, clove, chocolate, cinnamon, licorice and wintergreen. Realizing the candy still had a life delighted the man. With Mr. Abernathy not getting around as well as he once did, getting out and finding the coveted wafers had been difficult. Thus, his scheme began.

He thought he could fool neighbor kids during the upcoming Trick-or-Treat and trade them for what he says was "something special". His target were the brother/sisters trio of Calli, Abby and Reed Henderson. These three had a reputation and had been a nuisance to him since their birth. Little did he know, his beloved Necco Wafers had been the bane of all Trick-or-Treaters for the last half century.

The eldest of the trio, Calli (10), says she thought the wafers were simply scented sidewalk chalk. "People used to eat those things!? Why would they do that!?", she said amazingly. The middle child, 7-year old Abby, claims her school used them as a deterrent for bad behavior."What are 'clove' and 'wintergreen' anyway? They can't be real. Are those code names or chemicals of some kind?", she said confusingly, yet perturbed. Four-year old Reed could care less, as long as it has more sugar than anything else, he's happy with it - and the concentrated sugar discs hit the spot.

Mr. Abernathy did not understand that the children would have gladly given him their unwanted, sure-fire, holiday retaliation handouts. Knowing he was out of the loop, the kids played along. The man offered what he called "magic pumpkin seeds" as a trade for the wafers. The seeds were actually stale BBQ flavored pepitas left over from a Whole Foods gift basket from the previous year's Christmas.

Calli, Reed & Abby Henderson proudly showing 
off their Pumpkin Straw near their home in Orient, Ohio.

The ringleader, Calli, indicated they would have taken anything in order to get rid of the remnants from the candy hall of shame. "Hey, at least it saved old Mrs. Murch from future payback. She was the one passing that crap out. I think she found them under her refrigerator", she stated.

"How old is this candy?", Abby asked. When told the original recipe was developed in 1847, she quipped, "I think that crazy lady has been holding on to these for the last 168 years. They taste like they're from the original batch."

The youngest, Reed, seemed to be annoyed that in order to get his sugar fix he had to punish himself with a lack of actual taste. We wanted to know if the wafers reminded him of anything and with a mouth full of a colorful, soot-like substance, he replied, "Poop flavored dust!"

Once the trade of Neccos for pepitas (the "magic" pumpkin seeds) took place, Mr. Abernathy was overwhelmed with joy - feeling as if he had his revenge for the most recent havoc the trio had caused. Their game, called "Pine Cone", had left his juvenile coniferous trees devoid of their beloved woody offspring he uses to decorate with each fall.

Apparently, "Pine Cone" is played by simply plucking the items off of the trees and repeatedly pelting one another with them until you find something more constructive to do. Defending their most original game, Calli says they - too - were not unscathed. "Those pine cones can be pretty sharp, I got a real bad, deep splinter the last time we played," she said forcing back an obvious smile as only a child can do.

Almost sure that what they received was nothing, the children did - for laughs - plant the seeds. They were more than relieved to be rid of what Reed referred to as the "devil candy". And just like that, the trio grew the world's first Pumpkin Straw. They have become rich and famous for their unique, homegrown product. Their hometown of Orient, Ohio has - of course - become the hub of the Pumpkin Straw market overnight.

According to Abby, "We thought it was just a fluke, but the grass just kept growing. Folks purchasing the grass we've baled say it's like aroma therapy for their animals - it calms and pleases them." When asked her thoughts on the man who traded them the seeds and was, essentially, the reason for their success, Abby seemed to not understand the question, "Mr. Abernathy? Isn't that the neighbor's cat?" The three siblings then fell to the ground in hysterics.

In a world of pumpkin spice everything, these three children have added a new chapter to the gourd that turns fall into a nightmare. Who wouldn't want to taste, ingest or smell like a jack-o-lantern?

Beguiled by Necco Wafers and subsequently burned by his desire for them, Mr. Abernathy isn't too fond of his neighbors' new found business empire. When pointing out to him that this story was eerily similar to the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fairy tale we all know so well, he didn't budge. He just pointed to a recently opened box near his front door. The top flap said "Thank You! From The Hendersons" and inside was a pile of crunched up pine cones with what looked to be a pumpkin scented car air freshener sitting on top.

In the distance, several juvenile pine trees loaded with green foliage were swaying in the Autumn wind - but visibly missing their brown strobile brethren.

It CAN'T Be the Shoes!?

Fall, Harvest season, the Autumnal Equinox (FYI...thesaurus.com, you are seriously lacking in the synonym department); these are amazing in Ohio: the colors, the weather and the state's official tree scattering the landscape with the brown, poisonous nut that Ohio's flagship university has as its preeminent, fear-inducing mascot....the buckeye.

Each September the Aesculus Glabra (ESS-kew-less GLAY-bruh....when did science begin using Star Wars as its basis for explaining nature?), a.k.a the Buckeye Tree, spreads its achene like the Johnny Appleseed of the this-looks-pretty-but-its-toxic-and-the-joke-is-on-you world. Many folks, including my family, typically gather the buckeyes and use them as fall decor around the house. As kids, we kept them for good luck. Now we did not have a Buckeye Tree in our large yard growing up, but many of our neighbors did. This includes our church, which was about a half-mile down our street.

One fall, I think I was about 12 or 13, my mom suggested as we left church on a Sunday morning that she could use the buckeyes resting on the ground near our car. My brother, sister and I thought nothing more of it as we were more interested in doing jack squat the rest of the day. We were all in sports and other activities and Sunday was typically our only day without something scheduled. We wanted to be lazy, before being dragged back to school Monday morning.

Later on, possibly in an effort to get us out of her hair and the house, mom mentioned the gathering of those buckeyes again. Now she may have really wanted them, but Linda is famous for repeating requests, must-dos and you-need-to-dos so much that it would drive a sane person nuts (or to gather nuts as it would be). I had college roommates who acted as hostage negotiators talking me out of shoving my head into our mini-fridge freezer compartment after phone calls from mom. They would ask, "Why did she keep repeating that? You answered her like eight times?" Did she think I was hard of hearing? There were times I secretly wished I was.

This particular afternoon was warm and sunny and we had nothing else better to do (and really didn't want to hear her ask AGAIN). So my brother Chad (about 15 at the time) and I made our way back up the street to the Richmond Dale United Methodist Church to gather what we could from the giant Buckeye Tree jutting out of the church's lawn.

Upon our arrival we noticed many of the spherical brown nuts were gone - someone had beaten us to them. We garnered the few remaining felled decorative toxic balls, but if we were to get more we would need to have them come to us. This, my friend, was a challenge. Most mature Buckeye Trees are anywhere from 50 to 80 feet high with a long, round trunk. This means most branches, or limbs, are well out of the reach for normal human beings.

Chad and I had a bag for the buckeyes and the clothes on our backs. The question: what do we have, or can we find, to use as weapons against nature? Then it donned on us - shoes, we have SHOES! If we just throttle a shoe into this tree's massive canopy, we are bound to knock loose some of the noxious nuts that were being held from us....pure genius.

Soon we had buckeyes raining down on us like the sixth seal of the apocalypse - all we had to do as fling a shoe into the tree in our church's side yard. I'm sure this happens everyday. As it was, everything was going much better than we had anticipated, but apparently karma was not amused.

On his next throw, more buckeyes fell - but Chad's shoe did not return. Instead it was being held for ransom, it became lodged in between branches. We were stunned momentarily, but no worries we thought...we have other shoes. With decent aim, we're be back in business.

And we were - until shoe number two did not return. Undeterred, we keep at it. More buckeyes fell -but a force field of some kind was keeping us from dislodging our kidnapped feet protectors. Before we knew it, shoe number three was also occupying an excellent viewpoint of our hometown in the midst of this great buckeye topiary.

Now panic began to set in.

We had dozens of buckeyes - the tree had three of our shoes. Our only weapon was, of course, our fourth and final shoe. Do we risk walking the half-mile home, shoeless, with our tails between our legs and explain to mom that we were bullied by a tree? That we were on the wrong side of a Jack and the Beanstalk like trade? That we were the subject of a bible school lesson we were apparently not aware of?

I can only imagine what passersby were thinking seeing the two of us staring solemnly into the canopy of this tree that somehow spontaneously started producing a pair of Nikes and a left foot Reebok. Richmond Dale is a super small town -  we would never hear the end of it if we had to breakdown and call either Pastor Pete or knock on the fire department's door, which just so happened to be directly across the street from the church.

Visions of Pastor Pete mocking us the following Sunday telling the congregation about the program we started collecting shoes for a less fortunate grove of deciduous outside of town; or our volunteer firefighters explaining they had to save our sneakers after they were chased up the tree by a pack of rabid, stray cats; or the local newspaper's article about the miracle tree of Ross County that's producing shoes. Screw that turning water into wine thing! Christians from all around would descend on Richmond Dale waiting for the next sign from above.

We suppressed our impending embarrassment and decided to try our luck with recovering our captive shoes. It was like a reverse Wizard of Oz - instead the tree was collecting our belongings and not angrily tossing apples at us.

Along with our remaining shoe, we used some of the branches that fell during our rogue buckeye collecting exercise as ammunition toward knocking free our footwear. It was a challenge, but slowly our desperation and persistence paid off. One, then two, and what seemed to take forever, the third shoe was swiped from the clutches of the Aesculus Glabra.

Chad and I sat there in exhausted elation, our arms sore and necks stiff from having to look straight into the sky for the past two hours. Being at eye level with things gave us a vertigo-like experience until our senses gathered themselves and returned to normal. Once recovery set in, we gathered our buckeyes, put on our shoes and tied them as tight as we could - ignoring the lack of circulation to our extremities. We had our shoes, we didn't care if we could feel our feet.

Similar to wounded warriors returning from a successful, but disheartening battle, we marched the half-mile back up Market Street in relief that the ordeal was over - mission accomplished. Saddened, though, that our pride and humility continued to lie bloodied and motionless underneath the massive, sneering Richmond Dale landmark.

To this day our nemesis still stands, presiding over the United Methodist Church kingdom it rules without regard to anything or anyone - pelting passersby each fall with buckeyes, warding off ne'er-do-wells. I can feel it staring at me whenever I return to my hometown, I'm sure it hasn't forgotten.

Buckeyes, despite their history and beauty, are not worth your shoes.