I know they aren’t in any food group.  They are probably the worst food product you could put in your body.  And you would never add them whole or chopped up to a salad.

But you can’t say “Twinkie” without smiling and that’s my point.

I was sad when I heard that all the little Hostess products will now disappear from grocer shelves.  That includes Twinkies. They have shut down the plant, cut off the supply, pulled the plug!

I have a special memory about Twinkies that goes back to the l960s when my husband and I were struggling to raise six kids in a drafty old house in Harper. Some of the neighbors got their mail at the Southworth post office. But we all know where we lived: Harper.

As I said, we were struggling to keep shoes on their feet and food on the table and that’s where the Twinkies come in.

We had some very good friends, Jack and Bev, who helped us out while Jack was driving a delivery truck for Wonder Bread. We would see Jack drive into our driveway once a week with products slightly past the pull date (he said) and drop them off in my kitchen. This included bread for sandwiches and the aforementioned wonderful little Hostess products, namely Twinkies.

The older girls and I would spend Saturday mornings making and wrapping sandwiches. We had this large chest type freezer out in a shed behind the house and we stashed all the sandwiches in the freezer in a special bin. There were boxes of apples and Italian prunes from the fruit trees, and a huge container of Twinkies.  The kids would grab a lunch sack or lunch box on the way to catch the school bus, fill it with a sandwich, piece of fruit or two and a twin-pack of Twinkies.

I’m sure they were the envy of all the kids in the school lunchroom in those days, but of course with a two-pack you would have one Twinkie to share.  If you wanted to, that is.

Twinkies.  Try saying it without smiling.  Can’t do it, can you?