Back in the days before my 12-year molars grew in, Chiclets were a mainstay of my candy regimen. Of course, they were not the only teeth-rotting treat in those days before Fluoride treatments and sealants. I also greedily consumed Bonomo's Turkish Taffy, Jujubes, Junior Mints, Goobers, Pez, Sno-Caps, Wax Bottles, and 3 varieties of starter cigarettes: red-tipped white candy, chocolate, and bubble gum. But I always came back to Chiclets.
Chiclets offered a full candy experience. You could peek through the crinkly cellophane window and see the shiny little white rectangles that clicked reassuringly inside the thin cardboard box. The first few crunchy bites released a minty-sweet explosion, but the shattered candy shell dissolved too quickly, and left you with the lamentably bland chewy center. I performed rigorous experiments, champing and chawing my way through long summer afternoons before I determined that chewing just one piece was too scanty, not taking up enough mouth-space to be gratifying, but two, or perhaps even three pieces yielded a gratifying combination of mass, crunch and juice. Other excitable kids I knew chose to empty the entire twelve pieces into their mouths all at once in a giant, unwieldy wad, sugary spit escaping from their straining lips. When the box was empty, you had the fun of blowing into one end to make a cool buzzing sound, kind of like playing a comb. This was especially satisfying when joining a box-blowing chorus in the movie theater during a sticky Saturday matinee of cartoons and continuous performances.
But there came a time when I stopped chewing Chiclets. It happened about the same time that Frankie Avalon sang shamelessly about a girl changing from bobby sox to stockings. When I lost my skate key for the last time, let my pink bounce-ball roll down the sewer without bothering to fish it out, and cut off my pony tail. When I started making mandatory monthly trips past the Sweet Shoppe to the drugstore and scuttling home hunched over the embarrassing bulky brown bag. The inevitable time came when I spit out the Chiclets and defiantly snapped my way into womanhood chewing Beechnut Gum.
Babyish pastimes were replaced by the much more mature activity of walking the streets with my best friend in our adolescent uniforms. While we didn't need to line up and pass muster in front of a drill Sergeant, our regalia was nonetheless subject to rigorous standards. Hair was teased to a predetermined and ridiculous height using a metal rattail comb usually stolen from Woolworth's in a girlie rite of passage. Crop-dusting clouds of Breck hairspray rendered the structure immutable. Dark eyeliner rimmed the eyes in quasi-Egyptian style, with Erase applied under the eyes to camouflage any dark circles. In our regiment, pink lipstick was disdained and lips could be left unadorned, but for those aspiring to true bad girl status, Erase was applied to the lips for a look approaching the cadaveric. The face muscles were slackened into a mask of studied sullenness, too bored even for eye-rolling. Short shorts were topped with a matching shell top. Strapless pumps revealed as much toe cleavage as possible, and the shoe backs were smashed down to allow the required sulky foot dragging. The right hand held a perpetual portable radio up to the ear, and the left grasped a wallet fat with captioned photos and stuffed with the mandatory package of gum.
But the insolent snapping and popping that was the hallmark of our new and sneering identities could never be performed with Chiclets. The gum that was de rigeur in the Bronx in 1961 was Beechnut Gum. This was plain stick gum, in a soft wrapper. No candy coating, no cellophane window, no reassuring click. Just a soft shiny paper package of long thin stick gum, each piece wrapped in an enticing silver foil covered by a paper sleeve that pronounced the brand and could be folded into long chains. This wasn't a baby gum to stuff your mouth with or get stuck in your braids. It was a gum to get caught chewing in school. A taunt in the mouths of the cheap girls with their death stares. A gum with attitude.
It took determination and practice to meet the communal requirements of this army of adolescents. Passing Algebra was a breeze compared to mastering the subtleties of hair-teasing, shoe-dragging and gum-snapping. The consequences of failing to fit in, of ineptly imitating the paradigm, were devastating. We knew this instinctively. We couldn't understand why the grown-ups couldn't see it. We wouldn't be caught dead chewing Chiclets. What we didn't really know was that Beechnut gum was our transitional object, our blankee, our talisman, our mascot. With Beechnut we could gnash our jaws against the hidden fears that lurked on this mass exodus that we were obligated to make, a journey that we rushed into as much as our chaotic bloodstreams drove us to it.
I left The Bronx when I was 16. Nearly four decades have passed, and I have long since forgotten my teasing comb and hairspray. I keep my shoes on my feet when I walk, and I rarely chew gum. But when I do chew, look out! Even though I try to be genteel and ladylike, my mouth cannot unlearn it's adamant adolescent lessons. My gum pops and snaps with a defiance I have otherwise tirelessly tamed. It seems the old adage is true. You can take the girl out of the Bronx, but you can't take the Bronx out of the girl. Especially not out of the girl's mouth.