TWINKIES, TO GOOD TO FAIL!
Hostess Brands recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This decision means that millions of Twinkie addicts around the world will soon be without their daily, delicious, vanilla filled, golden sponge cake fix! The loss of this dietary icon cannot be allowed to happen in our free society! Citizens need to rally and demand a government bailout of Hostess in order to save the Twinkies!
I first tasted the extraordinary Twinkie at about age 10, after my family moved from Kentucky to Pennsauken, N.J. The only thing that kept me from Twinkie addiction was my lust for other Hostess products such as the chocolate vanilla filled cup cakes with chocolate icing and the squiggly lines of white icing on top. I saw many of my elementary school peers succumb to Twinkie addiction. These poor souls were easily identified, returning to school each year ever fatter and fatter. Twinkie addicts are known to have a sixth sense, the ability to identifying one another in a crowd. From 4 aisles apart in the grocery store, if they make eye contact, they just nod, maybe give a little salute or a thumbs up, somehow knowing that they are fellow Twinkie addicts.
When I moved from Kentucky to N.J., I experienced culture shock. My every day attire consisted of a white undershirt and blue jeans “to long”, rolled up above brown, leather work-boots. My blonde hair was buzz cut and kids were fascinated by my southern drawl. They would form a circle around me and ask me to repeat words like wire, fire and pillow. The girls liked me but the bullies picked on me and said I looked like a horses ass. They finally left me alone after I defeated the neighborhood tough guy in a little scrap when he tried to take my baseball mitt. After that some cool teenagers started letting me hang around with them. I think they only did this because they found out I had 4 older sisters. I was an excuse for them to drop by my house and flirt with my sisters.
These guys had hair slicked back on their heads and dressed like James Dean's character in Rebel Without a Cause. They had a hangout in the basement of one fellow’s house. He had very little parental supervision. They would listen to music, smoke cigarettes and sometimes get some beers and talk about the girls at the Junior High School. They had cases of dry goods down there, stuff like Campbell’s canned soup, laundry detergents and soap. I found out that they would go to the rail yards and steal stuff from the boxcars and then sell it cheap or give it away to people like old lady Lavish who had a brood of ornery kids.They thought of themselves as a modern day Butch Cassidy or Robin Hood and probably went on to become real gangsters, lawyers or maybe politicians. I had no desire to get involved with the train heists as they called it and luckily they didn’t ask me to help.
You might be wondering what this has to do with Twinkies. Well one summer I went to the hangout and the guys were hooting and hollering down there. They had just scored a butt load of Hostess Twinkies from a boxcar heist and in the process had nearly been caught by the rail yard Bulls. They gave me a whole case of Twinkies and said to share them with my sisters. Instead, I hid it in my closet at home. I guess I was now guilty of something by possessing stolen goods, but I knew I was not the first to break bad, falling to the allure of the addictive Twinkie.
I now could have Twinkies day or night and with such a large supply, I was able to experiment with the incredible Hostess Twinkie. One afternoon I boiled water to have tea with Twinkies and the steam burned my hand. It hurt badly, so I instinctively mashed a Twinkie onto my hand and was astounded at how it soothed and eased the pain! Could these things have medicinal powers?
In the spring I pulled out my bike to ride to school and had trouble pedaling. I stopped about a block from home and found the chain and sprocket was rusty. I took a Twinkie out of my lunch box and smeared that vanilla filling on the sprocket and chain and in short order I was pedaling freely. Converted to an aerosol spray, the Twinkie might prove superior to WD 40! That same week my teacher gave us an assignment. We were asked to design packaging for the inside of a shoebox that would protect an egg from breaking when dropped from a stepladder. Twinkies helped me earn an A+ grade. I was one of two students who solved the problem correctly. My solution was to surrounding the egg with 6 Twinkies! Could Twinkies replace those Styrofoam packing peanuts as a more desirable and recyclable, edible alternative?
When I went to middle school the Twinkie played a huge role in any cafeteria food fight. When placed on the hard surface of a table occupied by a group of mean girls, a hammer fist blow could deliver a spray of yellow cake and filling, showering the screaming, offensive, little snobs with goo. That action would usually get the party started, then to avoid all the flying mashed potatoes and pizza slices one could retreat to the perimeter and nail adversaries from a safe distance. With a bit of practice, Twinkies can be thrown with a perfect spiral and used to knock off eyeglass or can simply be bounced off the heads of fleeing victims. The gym teachers would eventually arrive, charging in to round up the usual suspects, the known troublemakers, who would be in the middle of the fray. I and my fellow Twinkie bombardiers, twenty yards away, could just feign disgust at the vulgarity of the unruly students and one time we were even falsely recognized by the peacekeeping teachers as good examples for the others. Because of the Twinkies versatility, it could be smeared in an adversaries face during hand to hand combat or hurled long distance, no other snack food came close to the Twinkie in a heated food fight.
I began to be impressed by the miracle that was the Hostess Twinkie. One night as I opened a pack before bedtime, I found an old MR. Potato Head Toy in my dresser drawer. Out of shear boredom, I had played with that stupid toy many years before. I would get a potato and then stick eyes, ears, nose, legs and arms onto the potato to make a character. After about a week the potato would start oozing and emit hideous odors. That night, for reasons unknown, I took a Twinkie and put legs on it and it stood upright. I added a cowboy hat a face and arms and it looked cool. The Twinkie cowboy stood tall and slim like a character out of a Pixar Movie. That Twinkie Cowboy sat on my nightstand for about six months and never oozed or rotted. Twinkies were incredible; unlike a potato they seemingly would last forever! I finally got rid of it when ants swarmed over it.
Months after I finally ran out of my Twinkie stash, I found one lone straggler unwrapped and buried under a pile of dirty laundry in the back of my closet. I examined it and it looked and smelled fine. I must have been going through Twinkie withdrawl because I ate it and it tasted as fresh as if I had just removed it from it’s wrapper. Twinkies are amazing! They had some type of mystical powers of preservation!
When I graduated high school and went to college I can’t tell you how many times I witnessed students eating Twinkies and drinking original Coca Cola to get a mega sugar boost for late night cramming. How many people would have failed college without the benefit of a Twinkie-Coke rush?
Twinkies have been around since 1930. They have survived the great depression, WW II, Korean War, racial integration, the Great Society, Vietnam and the Gulf Wars, fueling our troops and citizens alike, helping America to find common ground and to preserve freedom. If the government is willing to bailout Wall Street, the auto industries and mega banks, they can surely save the beloved Hostess Company and our Twinkies. Hostess, a brand name recognized across America since the 1930’s should be a much higher priority for government loans, grants and bailouts than the boondoggle government investments in companies like Solyndra or GM.
You must now realize that Twinkies truly are to good to fail! Who would want to live in a Twinkie less America? Before being banished to the back selfs and discredited by the health food Nazi's, Twinkies were once displayed proudly near grocery store entrances. Boxes were stacked high forming huge pyramids reaching toward the ceiling. This was an era when parents would allow kids to go outside and play all day without fearing for their safety not locked indoors playing endless video games. I believe that there is a direct link between the demise of the Twinkie and the demise of the wholesome American culture.
Michel Moore, the darling of the Occupy Movement and obviously a Twinkie addict, (no human could possibly get that fat without Twinkies) should use the Twinkie dilemma to rally the Occupiers around one central issue, Save The Twinkies. Congress could finally have an issue to unite behind, the Twinkie bailout. All Americans could come together once again as we did post 9/11.
Michelle Obama is an enemy of the Twinkie. Her healthy school lunch menu ends up in the school dumpster. Kids need Twinkies Mrs. Obama, not salads! We should march to the White House and demand that Michelle Obama add Twinkies to the school lunch program.
Because of the extraordinary shelf life, the government could stockpiled Twinkies in caves and hold a reserve, much like the strategic oil reserves, to be used in case of a worldwide famine.
These actions would provide a stimulus to one of the few manufacturing jobs left in America, the Twinkie Industry. Many jobs would be saved and an American Icon preserved.
Samuel Johnson; “A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out as good for nothing.”
Act now Mr. President; America needs Twinkies!
