In my youth

Nostalgia is an emotion typically tinged with sadness: a favorite toy to be given away, long lost traditions over Christmas, riding a special carnival ride, reminiscing with childhood friends over one's youth. From a bright and optimistic morning, I've hit a late afternoon post-caffeine crash, and reading the news that Hershey's is closing the Joseph Schmidt and Scharffenberger factories in SF didn't help. The latter was never as closely connected to my younger days as Joseph Schmidt, however, I do understand that the many fans of the SB chocolates will be regrettably upset over the closure of the plants in the Bay area. But Joseph Schmidt was as close to nirvana when I was in college, beautiful belgian chocolate truffles, decorated, molded, boxed beautifully, rich and redolent, and hard to find. Nordstrom's carried them infrequently when I was in college, so I would sometimes wait for my sister up in SF to send me a box if she remembered. I took a factory tour one year, and how it opened my eyes to what real chocolate was all about, the velvety textures on the tongue, palate and back of the throat when it melts and lingers. How even the disliked alcoholic liquer-ed chocolates tasted better because they weren't using cheap harsh brandy or rum. And the smell... my olfactoral memories remember the heady depths of roasted cocoa beans in that space, seeped into the pores of the timbers of the walls and posts.
It's all going the way of what was. A day ending in nostalgia.