My wife recently asked my son about his favorite treat. I think it was the first time this discussion was had in our household. We ended up talking about honey buns, donuts, and some other favorites. American treats are utterly processed trash. Everything is forty-five-thousand percent of your daily sugar intake. *le sigh*

Anyways, during the conversation, I reflected and was reminded of about the first time I had this kind of treat.

A little background to set the tone. I grew up in the sticks, no running water or electricity. Mom made bread on a wood stove along with carob brownies and other healthy and homemade goodies that I now would appreciate. We had hard candy at Christmas, and it was like encountering angels, trumpets and all the angelic trappings.

I went to work with my Dad one time that I remember. I don’t know what age I was, maybe… seven? He worked the night shift at a sawmill as a boilerman (I think). Five seems a bit young to take to a sawmill at night, and we had moved when I was around the age of nine… so.. Seven.

I remember the dark – it was night after all. The yard was small, it was a real, small-town sawmill in northern Washington state. Lots and lots of evergreen jagged against the sky. To this day, I still have a fondness for the evergreen forest.

There was a building of some sort there at the mill, and in its belly lived a boiler. It looked like one of the many wood stoves I grew up with, except there were a lot of pipes and tubes around it. Not very impressive, but I have a memory of Dad opening the front door of this hot, metal box and shoveling stuff inside. There was a metal staircase on the right that went up the side wall and connected to a catwalk over the rear of the boiler. There might have been a staircase connected on the left too, but the edges of my memory are all covered in shadow.

My dad’s co-worker was there. I don’t remember him at all. What I do remember was that there was eventually some kind of break. He broke out a metal lunchbox, sturdy and not very pretty. There was a thermos, a sandwich, and a treat.

He gave me a Little Debbie Cupcake. I think he had another one for himself, but I can’t be sure because I had never seen such a thing. and was highly focused. This cupcake was epic. Perfectly smooth chocolate cake with a little twirl of white frosting on top. I was entranced. When I bit into this beauty, I found it was filled with white cream that was unlike what Mom had ever made.

The memory ends with this treat. I haven’t had one in decades, and I am pretty sure they still make them.

It’s a weird memory, and surely amplified by the no-treat environment I was used to.