Huey: The kid in the candy store whose name lived on
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There they are at the same time in the middle of the work day with the same boy who visits George Williamson’s Candy Store in downtown Chicago every day. Being an undistinguished lad except for his sharp wit, he rarely bought candy but he loved talking to the girls there, and in fact made himself a persistent pest. Mr. Williamson often admonished him that the girls were there to sell candy and NOT to joke around with annoying little visitors.
Mr. Williamson often asked him if he had anything better to do, to which the precocious young lad would respond, “Yes sir, I DO, but I’m not doing it right now.” The adolescent pipsqueak remained undiscouraged, and all through early 1920 as President Warren Harding’s depression wielded its ugly teeth, the boy from Kedzie Avenue would return to Williamson’s Candy Store every single day and make a general nuisance of himself.
So one fine day during the long hot summer the girls at Williamson’s had a breakthrough, a brainstorm, a way to relieve themselves of the annoying lad. Since this galling little weasel was determined to be there every day, they may as well make use of that the next time he came in to bother them. That’s it! What’ve we got to lose?
Whenever they had an errand that needed running they would wait until he showed up in the afternoon, then send him on his way. The task need not even be something that was pressing, it was just something to occupy this eager little guy, and if doing favors stopped him from being in the store, so much the better.
Next day, that nuisance of humanity arrived on schedule, but before he could say a word, one of the shop girls called his name and asked if he would please fetch a bowl from the pottery shop. That would get rid of him. Of course it was always a place that was as far away as they could come up with. The lad was eager to help though, so he would be happy AND they would be shed of him sometimes for the rest of the afternoon.
Whenever he walked in from that day forward, the designated girl for the day would call his name and send him on his way. So much for getting rid of him though. The more errands he ran for them, the more they began to realize that he was really a great kid and so they let up on the errands because they actually began to like him.
About a week into their newfound freedom, the boy vanished and they never saw him again. Nobody even had a clue where he went nor who he really was, and if any of them had ever known his last name, they couldn’t recall it, lost to time and long since forgotten. They never heard from him again nor from anybody who claimed to know who he was. Life goes on though, and so it was at the candy store.
One crisp afternoon in early November of that same year, Mr. Williams and the girls were debating a name for the new candy bar recipe they had acquired when somebody suggested they try to work the boy’s name into it somehow because of what a friend he had been. So after an unrigged democratic election, they unanimously decided on a brilliant name that showed how important he was during his brief life among them and if the candy bar DOES go over well, it would make his name a national treasure.
It was rumored in the beginning that the name was borrowed from a prolific North Carolina writer who was of questionable character. However, Mr. Williams assured patrons that it wasn’t true because there was no connection between them and that particular author, although they DID indulge in his paraprosdokians from time to time.
This concoction of peanuts, caramel, and fudge all coated in a thick layer of chocolate, honors a little boy whom they never really got to know, but now that this original creation has come out for public approval, people would at least remember his first name. This really IS how it came to pass. Whenever the candy store girls needed the boy to run an errand, they would simply yell out, “Oh Henry!”
