My grandmother died in the 1950s, before I had seen my first Milwaukee Braves game, tasted my first french fry under the Golden Arches, or taken the training wheels off of my bike. I have few memories or photos of the woman who raised my mom. What I do recall is colored in a sepia tone.
But down through the decades, one connection to her has remained constant and kept my Grandma Susan alive for me: Buddy Squirrel nuts.
That is why I have followed with interest the current financial woes of Quality Candy/Buddy Squirrel of Wisconsin, Inc., the local candy and nut retailer and wholesaler that has asked a federal bankruptcy court for permission to sell all of its assets. Such a transaction might allow the brand, and for me the Buddy Squirrel mystique, to continue.
My grandmother led a difficult life. It's nearly impossible to now understand how large a social and religious taboo divorce was in the 1920s and ‘30s. My mother's Catholic elementary school classmates were advised to not play with her because her parents were divorced.
Grandma Susan, who supported her only child working as a bookkeeper for a local dairy, didn't own a car or take vacations. She lived with her widowed sister, and later in a small one-bedroom apartment.
The only extravagance my grandmother allowed herself, to my knowledge, was Buddy Squirrel nuts, purchased and eaten a quarter pound at a time. This was before the arrival of shopping malls, and before Quality Candy bought the Squirrel chain in the 1960s.
A tiny Wisconsin Avenue storefront next to the Riverside Theatre was my grandmother's Buddy Squirrel shop of choice, and I remember her speaking in reverential tones about the lip-smacking high quality of the products. I'm a little fuzzy about her favorites, but I think I remember her singing the praises of the brazil nuts and giant cashews.
More than a half century after she died, Susan's grandson is partial to Buddy Squirrel pistachios and trail mix.
So many of the take-them-for-granted Milwaukee institutions of the ‘50s -- Giant candy bars, Johnston cookies, the street car that ran down the middle of Wells Street -- have faded into dim memories. I was very pleased when a Quality Candy/Buddy Squirrel Nuts shop opened in the Third Ward, only a few blocks from my condo.
Every time I walked past, and sometimes into, the store, I thought of Grandma Susan. The shop's closure a few months ago, a symptom of the company's financial ills, saddened me.
But I am heartened that Buddy Squirrel may survive the current crisis and live to be nutty for another generation. That bushy-tailed critter keeps me close to my grandmother.
Damien has been around so long, he was at Summerfest the night George Carlin was arrested for speaking the seven dirty words you can't say on TV. He was also at the Uptown Theatre the night Bruce Springsteen's first Milwaukee concert was interrupted for three hours by a bomb scare. Damien was reviewing the concert for the Milwaukee Journal. He wrote for the Journal and Journal Sentinel for 37 years, the last 29 as theater critic.
During those years, Damien served two terms on the board of the American Theatre Critics Association, a term on the board of the association's foundation, and he studied the Latinization of American culture in a University of Southern California fellowship program. Damien also hosted his own arts radio program, "Milwaukee Presents with Damien Jaques," on WHAD for eight years.
Travel, books and, not surprisingly, theater top the list of Damien's interests. A news junkie, he is particularly plugged into politics and international affairs, but he also closely follows the Brewers, Packers and Marquette baskeball. Damien lives downtown, within easy walking distance of most of the theaters he attends.
