Hostess

Normally I skip the Business section of the newspaper. Doesn't everyone? Except today, riffling through, there was this article: "Hostess Declares Bankruptcy." Hostess? Hostess?? Maker of Twinkies, Ho-Hos, Ding-Dongs, and Cupcakes?

I'm bereft. Bummed. Broken-hearted.

Hostess??? Damn.

I know it's all bad for you--Ding-Dongs etc--disgusting and sugary and chemically and saturated fatty and well, just the aesthetics--but it's childhood, you know? At least my childhood.

Think of a Ho-Ho. That beautiful perfect roll. You carefully peel off the shreddy, really thin tinfoil wrapping; you nibble,strip, lift the thin overlay of chocolate product substitute off the sorta kinda cake-like substance; you carefully unroll the kinda cake. You aim for a single, untorn, strip of kinda cakelike stuff. And then you lick off the white chemically sorta like frosting cream, and eat the cakelike stuff. It's glorious.

But nowhere near as good as a Hostess Cupcake. I love Hostess Cupcakes. The allover chocolate almost-fondant-at-least-if-fondant-were-plastic icing, the sweet cake, the not-quite-Cool-Whip-but-close cream filling.  .  . I know I shouldn't love it, real foodies don't love it, but I do. Totally. I remember coming home on the school bus, enduring the filth of smushed peanut butter on white bread sandwiches and stale Kit Kats and sour cream and onion potato chip crumbles and the horror of third-grade boys, thinking/dreaming/fantasing about/hoping for that Hostess cupcake that I knew was in the kitchen pantry.  But it wasn't. J.C. had eaten it. And I remember the disappointment and outrage and utter loathing for my brother. It came close to the time he ate all the crunchy cheesy layer off the lasagne.

And then there are Twinkies. I know anyone with a shred of self-respect and grown-uppedness abhors Twinkies. But why? OK, maybe the ordinary Twinkie is a tad downmarket. But the chocolate Twinkie, available in select markets for a limited time only, is truly wonderful. It shouldn't be but it is.

Being a good mom, I kept Twinkies and Ho-Hos and Cupcakes from my kids. Apparently so did all the other moms. And now Hostess is bankrupt. And our grandkids will pay the price. A childhood without Ding-Dongs. Oh, the horror.