DATE: Saturday, May 3, 1997                 TAG: 9705030869

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Guy Friddell 

                                            LENGTH:   55 lines

OH FUDGE! SWEET ARE THE MEMORIES

It came to me suddenly the other evening that chocolate fudge, old-time fudge candy, has disappeared from America.

Now honestly, had you noticed that?

The hostess was passing around in the company a silver salver, arrayed with all kinds of goodies, including - I couldn't believe my eyes - five pieces of honest-to-goodness chocolate fudge candy!

The second surprise, even more unbelievable, was that nobody was taking a piece of the fudge.

It hit me that an entire hapless generation has grown up in this broad land without eating fudge candy. The poor darlings don't know what homemade fudge is.

What has displaced this formerly regnant candy on the American palate? Brownies and chocolate chip cookies, that's what!

I well remember their sudden, all-encompassing advent, back in the mid 1930s.

When you reflect upon it all, the great discoveries of the 20th century - popsicles, bubble gum, Gummy Bears, Velcro and men on the moon - have occurred in my lifetime. It makes one feel right humble.

Anyway, all of a sudden, every blessed woman in the United States was whipping up chocolate chip cookies and browning brownies.

An overwhelming, all-devouring onslaught, by Jove!

What brought this breakthrough, this sudden rush to the kitchen, do you imagine?

Was it simply a mass outbreak like the measles? Ponder it; let me know your findings.

Well, one thing was the innovation of chopping chocolates into bits and putting them into packages. The next thing somebody thought was to dump the bits into batter and bake it.

And suddenly, in the frenzy of baking brownies and chocolate chippers, nobody was making chocolate fudge anymore.

I'm not knocking brownies or chocolate chip cookies.

When handmaidens bring them around the newsroom graciously, you will find me first in line.

Maybe fudge is evanescing because women are busy working out and out working.

It's just that, being a conservative, I grieve when old customs, old things, and crabby old men fade from the scene, particularly those crabby old men.

Seeing those five chunks alone on the silver salver - forlorn, deserted - made me want to weep.

In the noble spirit of self-sacrifice, I ate every last one of them, like the walrus devouring the oysters, sobbing as he ate.

Or maybe it is, as a clever young friend philosophizes:

Who can budge after eating fudge?

You move like sludge if you eat too mudge.

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