Of Candy and Pickled Eggs
November 4 2023 Day Four
After all the Halloween hullabaloo, someone at the library kindly dropped off a handful of bite size Musketeers bars at my desk and I was transported back to a simpler time of arcade games and pickled eggs.
Back when I was a young man, still without a driver’s license, me and my nerd friends would go hang out at a bodega at the end of my street called Mesmer’s. We’d go there for two reasons, which became three reasons.
The two reasons were a Defender Arcade Game and those big brick-like 3 Musketeers bars. The third reason became pickled eggs.
Remember Defender? If Defender was literature, it would be Moby Dick. If it were art, it would be a Jackson Pollock. In other words, everybody acknowledged that it was PEAK arcade gaming, but it was tough game and took a long time and many quarters to master.
I read recently that Williams, Inc. actually produced and sold 55,000 Defender cabinets in the early 80s. Ours was located in a little tucked away corner of the store, near the newspapers and magazines and right around the corner from the bathroom. The game was far enough off any main aisle that the clerks just let us hang out there as long as we liked. So long, in fact, that we’d get hungry and buy snacks. (In retrospect, this is the reason they let us hang out for hours, of course!)
After a while, we befriended a youngish clerk and started trying to time our gaming excursions with him being behind the counter. I forget his name, I’ll call him Sam. Sam was not too much older than us, almost certainly smoked weed and always made sure the store had plenty of 3 Musketeers bars on hand.
And one other thing, Mesmer’s had this tall, glass jar near the counter of pickled eggs, just floating there in redish, murky… what… brine? Don’t know. Sam joked with us one day that nobody ever ate the eggs, and that was enough for us. In fact, he didn’t even make us pay for them. He’d get these long tongs, all crusty and unwashed and plop the red drippy eggs into a paper container, like the kind you’d use for fries.
And off we went, quarters in our pocket and a 3 Musketeers and pickled egg in each hand - mowing down aliens in our laser powered rocket ship and saving stranded astronauts as the pickled juice stained our flannel.
I can’t recall a single time that anyone beside our crew played that machine, but then again the site of three or four filthy teenagers eating candy and eggs shouting at a arcade game most likely would scare off any potential gamers.
A few years later, Mesmer’s was torn down to make way for a highway on ramp, but I still think about those days around Halloween or when I’m home for a visit. I must admit that I haven’t eaten a gas station pickled egg since then, though. I probably won’t. I want that memory to stay perfect.