Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 17, 1995 TAG: 9507180019
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHATTANOOGA,TENN. LENGTH: Long
Even folks on the other side of the Mason-Dixon Line are familiar with the Moon Pie, which has lasted through 75 years of fads in health and junk food.
"I'd buy a Moon Pie and an RC every day for breakfast," said Debbie Turpin of Christiansburg. Her elementary school bus stop was beside a small store, she explained, and her parents knew how she was spending her money.
"They knew I couldn't make it without my Moon Pie and RC."
The link with RC Cola goes back to a time when everything cost a nickel. It was simple economics, says Sam Campbell IV, head of the family-owned Chattanooga Bakery and a graduate of Washington & Lee University.
``When farmers would come in from the fields, they'd go to the cake rack and look for the biggest snack they could find and then they'd get the biggest drink they could find.''
That meant a Moon Pie and an RC.
``It was a working man's lunch,'' Campbell said.
It was certainly lunch for Charles Rachel, 59, of Kingsport, Tenn., who added a side dish of Nabs. ``I thought everyone ate Moon Pies,'' said Rachel, who stocks Moon Pies in Tennessee's vending machines. They sell, too.
Somewhere between the graham cracker and Elvis, the Moon Pie - a registered trademark of Chattanooga Bakery Inc. - has found its place in history.
Each year Americans consume more than 50 million Moon Pies - chocolate, vanilla and banana. Turpin likes the banana. Most folks favor the chocolate.
"We sell a couple of boxes a week," said Turpin, who works at Junction Express in Christiansburg. Moon Pies come 24 to a box.
``Young kids try `em and the older folks remember `em," said Janice Vaughn, who's worked for eight years at the Davy Crockett Truck Stop and Auto Restaurant just inside Tennessee on Interstate 81. ``I still eat them once in a blue moon,'' she said, no pun intended. ``I think they look like smiley faces.''
You get a candle in a Moon Pie on your birthday if you eat at Uncle Bud's Catfish, Chicken and Such in Chattanooga.
And in Oneonta, Ala., there's been a Moon Pie eating contest every October for the past 10 years.
John Love, assistant manager of the local Wal-Mart, which sponsors the contest, remembers its humble beginnings.
``We had just gotten in this new computer system and I ordered too many - I hit a few too many zeros,'' Love said. ``I hit 22,000 Moon Pies. I had enough for everyone in the county.''
They were stacked everywhere, he says. "I started telling people we were having a Moon Pie eating contest. ... Finally, we just had one.''
Love has worked in other places in the country and he's always ordered Moon Pies. But nowhere, he says, are they as popular as they are in the South.
``A lot of things have changed,'' said Elbert Allen of Rainsville, Ala. ``Moon Pies haven't. I don't reckon Chattanooga Bakery's ever changed.''
Not that the bakery - which, with its crusty, metal exterior, looks like it should be manufacturing auto parts - hasn't kept up with the times.
There are new microwave directions on the back of the Moon Pie package, for instance. And new flavors every year. (This summer, it's lemon).
``That's just to stir things up - keep `em fresh,'' Campbell says as he walks through the bakery, where just the smell of the coating could give you cavities.
Chattanooga Bakery started as a subsidiary of a flour mill that produced other sweet snacks: fig bars, ginger snaps and animal cookies.
The Moon Pie changed all that when it came along in 1917.
That was the year that bakery officials, in what was the great-grandfather of the marketing survey, sent a man to Knoxville to see what the country folk wanted in a snack food. He returned, Campbell says, with this assessment: ``They said they wanted something big and round with marshmallow and chocolate and it needed to be as big as the moon.''
Years later, the biscuits and fig bars were left to Nabisco and Keebler. The Chattanooga Bakery had found its niche. And it has kept it.
Why else would people like country singer Tracy Byrd croon about the sticky-sweet concoctions?
His song, ``Lifestyles of the Not So Rich and Famous'' hit the Country Top 5 last summer with the lyric ``Our champagne and caviar is an RC Cola and a Moon Piieee.'' He and his band have found their dressing rooms full of Moon Pies ever since.
``I don't eat `em anymore like I used to, but we've been getting all kinds of Moon Pies,'' said Byrd, who was born and bred in Vidor, Texas.
Says Campbell, ``You can't buy that kind of advertising.''
Not that he tries to: He relies strictly on word-of-mouth for his advertising. It helps that some Hollywood stars have been quite vocal about their appreciation for the finer things.
Dinah Shore, may she rest in peace, was a Moon Pie fan, and actor Burt Reynolds still is.
``Henry Winkler's secretary called us once,'' Campbell said. ``You know, the Fonz. She said, `Mr. Winkler would like to get some Moon Pies sent to Los Angeles.' So we Federal Expressed a couple of cases. We gave him the Moon Pies for free. We charged him for the Federal Express.''
Memo: ***CORRECTION***