Stories About Molasses

I just love this picture of farmers making molasses out of sorghum. I ran across it today while working on a story about molasses. What's interesting about molasses that would lead me to do a story about it?

Read on and you'll see.

Pioneer Candy

Before I share a molasses story from someone else, I must share an experience I had in my youth with a piece of molasses candy at the Lion House, Brigham Young's historic house in Salt Lake City.

At the end of a tour, I gladly accepted a piece of candy that a tour guide said was popular with pioneer children. It was brown, round and coated with large sugar crystals. In short, it looked absolutely delicious.

I plopped the candy in my mouth and was surprised at how awful it tasted. My mouth watered tremendously. All I wanted to do was get the candy out of my mouth but there was nowhere to get rid of it without making a major scene.

I made a rash decision and decided to use the excessive amount of saliva it created to swallow it whole. It was a rather large piece of candy but I was confident I could do it.

I swallowed hard and the situation immediately became worse. The sugar crystals had not completely dissolved and they made it so that the candy lodged solidly in my throat.

I wasn't choking but I couldn't speak and it hurt bad, like I had a tennis ball in my throat. I started to get panicky and honestly thought I was going to die right there in a room full of tourists. The only thing that saved me was the drinking fountain.

I knew instinctively at that moment that I was meant to be born in this day. I think I could have made the trek but I could never had eaten the candy.

Country Living

Here is the story that compelled me to write about molasses today:

There was a family living somewhere in rural Texas between 1875 and 1925 that was so country the children only knew syrup by the term 'lasses. One day the daughter left home for a stay with some of her more educated kinfolk.

She returned excited to tell the family about all the enlightening things she had learned. Her first morning back she was eating breakfast with her family when her brother said, "please pass the 'lasses."

With disdain that was not possible a week earlier, the girl looked at her brother and said, "molasses!"

To which her brother replied, "how can I have mo 'lasses if I ain't had no 'lasses?"