We’d lost touch after college; separate paths, new interests, different lifestyles; marriage, kids, commitments.
I’d heard he’d nearly died back in 2012. His status as an urban legend would have simply faded away.
No way! Some might say he’s just a cream puff, but most know him to be made of much sturdier stuff. Stuff like . . .
Yes, that urban legend would have us all believe the Twinkie contains enough ingredients (37) to survive a nuclear attack or outlast mankind (check out Pixar’s adorable animated movie, WALL-E, if you don’t believe me).
The folks at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry seemed eager to test the theory. There was Twinkie, basking in the limelight of the YOU! The Experience exhibit, sans cellophane no less!
Apparently Chicago’s Twinkie (a home boy for sure, born and bred in River Forest, Illinois on April 6, 1930 by one James Alexander Dewar, manager for the Continental Baking Company) is not alone when it comes to perpetuating the shelf life of this urban legend.
President Bill Clinton and the White House Millennium Council selected this “enduring American icon” to be preserved in the nation’s millennium time capsule in 1999. And all this time I thought Clinton would have opted for preserving a burger and some fries!
But undoubtedly the record for Twinkie longevity would have to go to Roger Bennatti’s 37-year-old not-so-spongy cream-filled cake. Following his retirement in 2004, Bennatti bequeathed his science experiment on decay (or lack thereof) in preserved foods to George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, Maine, where his Twinkie had been a fixture in his classroom, circa 1976. Said Twinkie, now sans cellophane, proudly sits under glass in Dean Libby Rosemeier’s office at George Stevens Academy. Ms. Rosemeier was a student of Bennatti’s, there the day the Twinkie, now quite possibly the oldest Twinkie in the world, was placed atop Bennatti’s blackboard.
In the course of preparing this post, I found it necessary to purchase this snack we seem to equally abhor and adore. Mind you, research is often part of my blogging.
Those years have seen this quintessential American snack food shrink a bit. Haven’t we all. Longevity, Twinkie or otherwise, is often bittersweet.
My Jimmy?
He's my SWEETEST COMEBACK story EVER!