All The World's A Stage Plank ... Part Two

During those times on the road when we stopped to stretch our legs, I know that often our parents went without so we girls could have a treat. But if there was enough spare cash for all four of us to get a snack, frequently Mama would end up with a Dr. Pepper and a Mounds bar. (She still loves coconut, especially in candy. If I am out and about and see a Chick-O-Stick, I get her one.) Daddy generally went for a short Coke in a bottle -- pulled from the depths of the freestanding bright-red cooling machine that sat on stubby galvanized metal legs -- into which he liked to upend a little cellophane sleeve of peanuts. The nuts floated like miniature dead beige fish on the surface of the brown fizzy liquid, their salt crystals dissolving within seconds. Gulp crunch, gulp crunch. He had it down to a science.

You ate a Stage Plank with great care and finesse, holding it vertically in the portrait orientation as opposed to landscape, and beginning with the scallop in the top left corner.

My sister and I, still hoping Mama had it in her heart and mind (not to mention her coin purse) to let us each pick out our own individual cold drink, would walk quickly right on by the bins of apples and potatoes and melons, dodging fruitflies, looking for the fragrant Sweets region of the store. We were partial to all manner of junky candy -- those tasteless necklaces on stretchy string you ate right off yourself as you wore them, until all that remained was damp elastic that your sister would then pull and snap! to torment you; the chalky "cigarettes" we pretended to smoke before they disintegrated in what saliva we had left; and fat red wax "lips" come to mind -- but like as not, given free-agent status and cut loose to make a selection, and based of course on their availability, on good days I came away with a package of Stage Planks.

I can still see them. Stage Planks were huge molasses-brown gingerbread cookies -- edible rafts as it were, two per package -- football-field sized oblongs elegantly scalloped around the edges and painted with icing the color of Pepto-Bismol. As fetching as they certainly were, however, I was almost as attached to their wrapping as I was to the giant confections themselves. You almost never see anything packaged in waxed paper anymore, but these were. The slightly slippery, opaque paper featured the words "Stage Planks" in dark blue block letters next to a picture of two free-spirited teenagers who, judging by the hash marks punctuating their shoulders and feet, were doing the Twist or some other newfangled dance step (no doubt to a Beatles tune). It was so breathtakingly worldly and grown-up, so groovy, so cool, so far-out! And I wasn't even allowed to use such terms! I just knew it would be all kinds of neat to be like the girl on the waxed paper package in her shirtwaist dress, penny loafers, and pageboy coiffure.

But as enamored as I was of the package and the racy lifestyle depicted thereon, it wasn't long before I was carefully tearing into the crackly paper to get at the dark dense gingerbread with its hard coating of glossy pink icing that was cool to your tongue for a blessed second or two before it melted away, leaving you the crunchy bite of cookie. You ate a Stage Plank with great care and finesse, holding it vertically in the portrait orientation as opposed to landscape, and beginning with the scallop in the top left corner. I favored consuming one delicious arc at a time, leaving the remainder with edges as smooth as my determined teeth could make them, then devouring the warmed-and-softened-from-my-now-sticky-hands center part. I don't remember if I ate both cookies in one sitting, but I doubt it. If you had some self-control you could enjoy the first with your carbonated beverage (whether shared or not) and save part deux to augment a carton of cold milk later that night or the next day.

I traveled many a mile with naught but my intimidating big sister, my few treasured books, my stuffed monkey with the vinyl banana, and Stage Planks to cheer me.

Last spring my mother handed me a gift bag with several items inside. Mind you it had been 40 years since I had seen a Stage Plank, although I remembered them often and fondly. So imagine my surprise when I saw the familiar words "Stage Planks" in large dark-blue block letters, and the garish pink icing adorning the molasses-ey scallops ... but wait! What in the world ... there were no Twisting teenagers on the package, and it was made of, not waxed paper, but ordinary slick, clear cellophane. Not only that, but whose bright idea had it been to reduce the size of Stage Planks by more than half? Instead of being measurable in square feet, like a parking lot, these things were not much bigger than a saltine cracker! The scallops were so tiny, it would have been a challenge to break off just one without crumbling a portion of its neighbor. It was wrong ... so wrong, all wrong.

Completely disillusioned and feeling very old, I thanked Mama, dutifully oohed and aahed, briefly reminisced aloud for my kids about my memories of the cookies, then laid them aside. For at least two months they sat on a sideboard in my kitchen, their offensively updated and graphic-less package acquiring a sheen of dust. One day in the summer, however, I decided to give them a whirl. It was mid-afternoon; I had just poured the remnants of my morning carafe of coffee into a mug and heated it in the microwave. I wanted something sweet to nosh upon, and there were only the Stage Planks. I sat in my favorite chair, placed my steaming mug on the table beside me, and dubiously regarded the wrapping. Presently I broke the adhesive seal, stretched the sides apart, and put the open end to my nose expecting a heady whiff of the spicy redolence I had remembered.

But it only smelled like ... like something faded, a ghost of itself, the idea of what it had once been. Stale, maybe, you say? Perhaps ... but even so, the faint aroma resembled a memory of a cookie more than a cookie. Still, having come this far, I removed the top Stage Plank from the cellophane and held it in my fingers. When I was a child the Planks had been twice the size of my hands, which themselves were not small. Now my hands dwarfed the treat, as if it had been intended not for a human but for a doll. The icing was still loudly pink but somehow thin looking, as if there had not been enough to properly coat that batch of Planks and someone had cheated by watering it down. Slowly I oriented the cookie the way it was supposed to be and lifted the top left scallop to my lips. I extended my tongue and licked at the frosting. Nothing. No flavor whatsoever. I took a cautious bite.

The cardboard from a box of day-old donuts would have been a tastier accompaniment to my afternoon reheated coffee. The staleness factor could not account for all of it; these were simply not the cookies I had eaten as a child. They tasted half-hearted and dim, as if they had been made from a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of their ancestors, of what their predecessors had been in their heyday. The glory was departed. The package was not the only thing that had been rethought and reinvented and reworked into oblivion. The name was the sole element of my beloved Stage Planks that remained unchanged. It made me sad.

How many times have you and I heard it repeated -- wisely, wistfully, mournfully -- "You can't go back." ? Well, you can, but don't expect much when you get there. Like returning to your childhood environment after adulthood to find somebody shrunk the whole thing down to Munchkin-scale in your absence, the most cherished memories get pillaged when you attempt to recreate them. I'm sure there are wonderful exceptions to this as there are to almost every rule. But for the most part, those growing-up experiences belong where they usually remain: in the past where remembrances are apt to be more emotional than they are accurate. But still sweet. Still good.

Sorry you came this far and this is all you got. Here ... have a Stage Plank ... uhm, I mean, a small stale squarish scalloped gingerbread cookie with thin pink icing. Enjoy.

Comments

[iflylowsc]

So glad you put a picture in because I don't ever remember Stage Planks--but then again, I went for candy not cookies.

[Keli]

Ooh, I love gingerbread and your description of the original Stage Planks sound utterly delightful! But I so understand the downward evolution of childhood treats. It's best to remember them as they were.