Candy Bars

For more than a week, reporters have dogged the footsteps of Gov. Casey and Barbara Hafer as they campaigned in the nooks and crannies of Pennsylvania. For more than a week, they have saved vignettes of campaign life that sometimes shed more light on the gubernatorial election than speeches and news releases. Following are gleanings from reporters' notebooks: There were occasions along the campaign trail when Republican Hafer was treated like an unknown, mainly because people did not know who she was. In Bethlehem one night there was room at the Holiday Inn, but Hafer got less than a celebrity's greeting.

What do you get a prison inmate for the holidays? While a better lawyer or a key to the jailhouse door might top most prisoners' wish lists, Philadelphia Prisons wardens instead showered them with sugar and salt. In a tradition so old its origins are forgotten, shift officers on Dec. 23 distributed bags filled with candy, cookies, cakes, crackers, doughnuts, chips, popcorn and instant coffee to each of the 8,000-some inmates in the city's six prisons. The bags also held body wash and laundry detergent.

IT'S NOT that Phils' tickets are too expensive, as some writers complain, it's that wages are too low. In 1964, candy bars were 5 cents, so were newspapers. Quarter-pound burgers in a restaurant with waitresses were 30 cents. Comic books were 12 cents. Soft-cover books were 35 cents. And the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. And the only people who worked or minimum wage were kids and bored housewives. Men made enough in factories to support themselves, their wives and their kids, plus save money.

The folding tables are gone in the supermarket lobbies and train stations, which means one thing: Girl Scout cookie season is over. It was not, we read, an entirely happy affair in certain climes. In Michigan, for instance, some strapped inner-city troops hiked prices to $3, while well-heeled suburbs stuck with the traditional $2.50 a box. This seemed to cause some marketing bad blood, especially in workplaces where parents with differently priced boxes ended up in price wars. We've got no quick-fix for the Girl Scouts.

A tractor-trailer laden with about $300,000 worth of items, including Lenox china, dialysis medicine and Good Lad children's clothing, was reported stolen from the PJAX Trucking Co., 1427 Radcliffe St., in Bristol Borough. The theft, which was discovered after anxious customers began calling Monday to track goods that had not reached their destination, occurred between 11:55 p.m. Friday and noon Sunday, police said. The trailer itself was valued at $7,000, police said. The 1984 Dorsey trailer had been backed up to a loading dock.

Every Sunday evening, Anne Kelley trades her clarinet for candy bars and thinks Hawaii. The Medill Bair freshman walks door to door with her mother, asking neighbors to purchase goodies. She's an official pitchwoman for the Pennsbury Marching Band. Students have raised $180,000 over seven months to pay for the June trip, more than half of the $350,000 needed for a trip to Honolulu. The band will play naval hymns at a cemetery June 11, then march in the King Kamehameha Parade June 13. Each of the 190 students is required to raise $1,700 for the trip by April 1 - about $100 a month.

After school, the halls of Cherry Hill High School East had fallen silent and empty, but one corner of the building echoed with music. The sweet, full tones of a Dvorak serenade filled the music room on a recent day as the wind ensemble rehearsed vigorously, diligently - as it has done daily for weeks. In long afternoons of practice, the 47 members readied a repertoire that they will soon play in the Soviet Union. On Monday, they leave Cherry Hill for a two-week concert tour of Moscow, Tallinn and Leningrad.

William C. Reily, 64, owner of Reily's Candy in Medford, died of heart failure Monday at Presbyterian Hospital, Philadelphia. Mr. Reily, a lifelong Medford resident, founded Reily's Candy in 1963. He always liked candy - "I eat about a pound and a half a day," he told The Inquirer in a 1989 interview. He said he had started making it when he was a teenager, "fooling with it as a hobby . . . on a marble slab in my mother's kitchen. " At first, the business was part-time in a renovated one-car garage, producing candy bars for civic groups for fund-raising sales.

A friend inquired as to what subject I was going to write about this week. When I said "chocolate covered and other candies," her astonished reply was, "Candy?! There's no such thing as leftover candy!" I reminded her of last Halloween when we both bought too much and had lots leftover. "Oh," she said, "I ate mine. " Well, perhaps you did too, but for times like that, and on holidays like Valentine's Day and Easter, when there is more candy around than you'd like to have your family eat in one sitting, remove the temptation and freeze some.

As a coach at youth basketball camps in Atlantic and Gloucester Counties, Rich Marcucci has seen firsthand the apathy many youngsters have toward developing proper eating habits. "Kids don't think about what they're eating," said Marcucci, who lives in Williamstown. "Sometimes, the only way you can get them to think about it is to have them think of it in terms of performance. " Just as science teachers frequently turn to discussions of dinosaurs and space to keep youngsters interested in the more abstract concepts of science, Marcucci and others increasingly are turning to athletics to teach proper eating habits to youths.

What do you get a prison inmate for the holidays? While a better lawyer or a key to the jailhouse door might top most prisoners' wish lists, Philadelphia Prisons wardens instead showered them with sugar and salt. In a tradition so old its origins are forgotten, shift officers on Dec. 23 distributed bags filled with candy, cookies, cakes, crackers, doughnuts, chips, popcorn and instant coffee to each of the 8,000-some inmates in the city's six prisons. The bags also held body wash and laundry detergent.

I've lived half my life in the city and the other half in the suburbs. From a practical standpoint, trick-or-treating in the city is better - much better. Since rowhouses are stuck together, kids receive more candy per footstep. In the suburbs, detached housing means long treks for little legs and less candy booty. Don't get me wrong. I love the burbs, but when I was 8 years old and wearing a pirate costume, I knew I could hit the 60 homes on my block in Philadelphia and 60 homes on the next block before my bag became so heavy that I would need to return home to empty it. Seeing and sampling the first round of goodies - humongous Hershey bars, big bags of Sugar Babies, and green apples (What were those people thinking about?

IT'S NOT that Phils' tickets are too expensive, as some writers complain, it's that wages are too low. In 1964, candy bars were 5 cents, so were newspapers. Quarter-pound burgers in a restaurant with waitresses were 30 cents. Comic books were 12 cents. Soft-cover books were 35 cents. And the minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. And the only people who worked or minimum wage were kids and bored housewives. Men made enough in factories to support themselves, their wives and their kids, plus save money.

William C. Reily, 64, owner of Reily's Candy in Medford, died of heart failure Monday at Presbyterian Hospital, Philadelphia. Mr. Reily, a lifelong Medford resident, founded Reily's Candy in 1963. He always liked candy - "I eat about a pound and a half a day," he told The Inquirer in a 1989 interview. He said he had started making it when he was a teenager, "fooling with it as a hobby . . . on a marble slab in my mother's kitchen. " At first, the business was part-time in a renovated one-car garage, producing candy bars for civic groups for fund-raising sales.

First, let's debunk a few myths. Teflon did not come from the space program. Neither did Tang. And Velcro was sticking together a decade before NASA was formed. Those aside, there are tens of thousands of products and technologies that do owe their existence, or at least their evolution, to space research. Telemedicine - which allows a doctor to diagnose an ailment from hundreds of miles away - is one example. So are scratch-resistant plastic sunglasses, rechargeable pacemakers, heart-rate sensors on exercise machines, infrared ear thermometers, and those cool "force feedback" joysticks for computer games.

America has become dependent on the prosperity of strangers. That's one way of describing the increasingly interwoven pattern of international trade and finance that is the world economy. Probably none of that is a surprise to you, after years of talk about global economic interdependency. But Washington's dirty little secret, though - one far more important than Monica Lewinsky's having failed Dry Cleaning 101 - is that the world economy is sicker than most Americans realize.

The couple was getting married in five days - could Janet Matrone help? Not with the dress, the food or the seating arrangements, the soon-to-be newlyweds said, but by supplying 125 customized favors. Matrone, mother of three, eight months pregnant with number four, and owner of All About Me! Publications, agreed. "We've had more than a few burnt dinners, but it's fun," Matrone said. "The best part is meeting new people and being creative," she said. When she was a dental assistant, "the people were afraid and upset.

Every Sunday evening, Anne Kelley trades her clarinet for candy bars and thinks Hawaii. The Medill Bair freshman walks door to door with her mother, asking neighbors to purchase goodies. She's an official pitchwoman for the Pennsbury Marching Band. Students have raised $180,000 over seven months to pay for the June trip, more than half of the $350,000 needed for a trip to Honolulu. The band will play naval hymns at a cemetery June 11, then march in the King Kamehameha Parade June 13. Each of the 190 students is required to raise $1,700 for the trip by April 1 - about $100 a month.

Candy bars don't do it anymore. It used to be that buying a few boxes of candy bars was considered a respectable contribution to a soccer team or Little League. But in this election year, Cheltenham commissioners have proposed something much bigger - giving all the money the township will make from ads in new bus shelters to youth sports organizations. The move is expected to generate $18,000, nearly double what is in the current budget for these groups, township officials said.

The folding tables are gone in the supermarket lobbies and train stations, which means one thing: Girl Scout cookie season is over. It was not, we read, an entirely happy affair in certain climes. In Michigan, for instance, some strapped inner-city troops hiked prices to $3, while well-heeled suburbs stuck with the traditional $2.50 a box. This seemed to cause some marketing bad blood, especially in workplaces where parents with differently priced boxes ended up in price wars. We've got no quick-fix for the Girl Scouts.