September 30, 2021 • 32 mins
You might not associate cacti with candy -- on the surface, they seem to have very little in common, mainly because candy is sold in stores around the world, and cacti have a well-deserved, literally prickly reputation. Yet not too long ago the US was in the midst of a genuine cactus candy craze, one that almost drove the poor barrel cactus to extinction.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. There's the one and only.
Max Williams are super producer on the other side of
the zoom. I'm Ben a big, big fan of Halloween
because it means a lot of things to a lot
of people. But uh, you know what it means to
a lot of kids, right, no can Yeah? Oh, I
(00:48):
was gonna say, uh, um, prank's like like like like
like vandalism, tracts of yes, exactly, tricks. Now it's true, Candy.
I was thinking, what do you do you dress up for? Hell?
Are we? Ben? Is anything that you do? Yeah? I do.
It's one of my It's one of my favorite holidays,
absolutely other than everybody's birthday. Everybody listening now, your birthday
is one of my favorite holidays. You are such a sweetheart. Um,
(01:11):
you know, I really really enjoy Halloween too. It's one
of my favorite holidays. I think, probably my most favorite.
But I'm not a dresser upper, and some people like
to shame me about that. I don't think that's right, Ben,
I don't think that's right. Yes, let a man. Let
a man enjoy his holiday in his own way. Yeah,
send him to me. Uh, what are you gonna do?
You're you gonna rough him up for me? I'll dress
him down at the very las Um. Yeah, the costumes
(01:34):
are a huge deal. The laziest costume I do is
um what's his name from? I think Ryan Gosling from
dr Because he's just like the jacket and that's a
nice jacket. Bad. I mean, that's a jacket. It's a
nice jacket. But you know, maybe that's something that is
helpful to like finding finding you go to easy costume.
(01:56):
We have an ex Max yet though, Max, are you
uh would you call a dresser rupper Halloween? I gotta mit, no,
I'm not. I mean, Halloween just wasn't that pig of
a holiday in my family. So it's just never held
that important of a place for me. Like I go
hang out with people, but I'm usually the guy with
a really like pretty like you know, thrown together, Like
I put a jacket on and I am I don't know, Yeah,
(02:20):
all right, say some scary movie that no one's heard of,
and I'm like, I'm this guy even if that character
didn't exist, Like you know, but but, but, but again,
I feel like we should be able to enjoy our
holiday in our own way, and no one should give
us crap for not choosing to participate in the way
that they choose to participate. I really enjoy going with
my kid and her friends because they're super into Halloween.
(02:41):
I mean, Halloween is like every day for them. They're
into cosplay, so they always go full on with that
and I just kind of accompany them on the tricks
and or treating, and you know, they love to go
to the neighborhood and they mark them all these kids
that they got like a like a Charlie Day style board,
you know, with the pins and all of the houses
that have the poshest candy, that's the one that has
(03:01):
the full candy bars. But I'll tell you one thing
I have never encountered on a trick or treat excursion
is cactus candy. And there's a reason for that. This
episode is going to be about candy, which is why
we you know, we've got candy and Halloween on our minds.
Is no doubt some of our fellow ridiculous historians do.
(03:22):
But once upon a time, there was a very very
very popular candy that was made out of something called
the barrel cactus. Our story really begins in eighteen nine one.
There's this guy, well, he's a kid, he's twelve years old.
His name is Dominic Dinofrio, and he has traveled all
(03:44):
the way to Arizona from southern Italy. He's on a train.
He's looking out and he sees the southwestern desert extending
for miles and miles and miles, and it's an uninterrupted
forest of cacti, of different types of cacti, and everywhere
(04:06):
he sees this thing, this big, giant, round sort of
cactus called the barrel cactus. It was known to the
native people as the vis Naga. Yeah, and and Dominic
had a dream ben um, not like you know, just
to sleeping on the train. Dream like a big picture
like life changing dream, kind of a weird dream that
you can really only have if you were part of
(04:27):
a confectionary dynasty of sorts. He got to Phoenix, he
went to work for his older brother's candy factory or confectionery,
and he again had this dream. And he has this
quote in that that we found in this amazing Auntlass
obscure article where he says it came to my mind
that millions of dollars could be made out of cactus. Uh.
(04:48):
And so he concocted this plan where he would um
turn this cactuses, this cacti into whole cold, hard cash
cactus cash, but by way of and the cacti into candy.
Very specific He's looking out, he's seeing these very prohibitively
spiky plants, and he immediately thinks candy. I don't quite understand,
(05:11):
but the kid had moxie, the kid had vision. But
there was precedent for this in n by the way
he bought the store from his brother and began to
make his dreams come true. But this precedent came in
the form of the history of the Native American people
that lived in this part of the country. Uh. The
Pima tribes and and several others used the vis Naga's
(05:33):
pulp as food. They would d spine um these these plants.
They would actually used the spines sometimes for fish hooks,
which is kind of cool. But then they would boil
the plants to soften the pulp and then they would
eat it and get you know, sustenance. But then Frea
kind of took this model and ran with it, but
(05:54):
in a slightly different and more confectionary direction. For sure. Yeah,
the seeing magic ingredient here is sugar and a lot
of elbow grease. So he hired a team of folks
to start hacking down these barrel cacti. And they would
(06:14):
find these plants anywhere from two to five ft tall,
and again, to give you a sense of how big
these are, they could weigh anywhere between eighty two a
hundred pounds. And then they would knock all the spikes
off them, de spike them. They would haul them back
to the factory. Then they would peel and core and
slice up this vis naga into these small cubes, and
(06:36):
they would boil them and boil them and boil them
until they were tender, and then they would cook them
repeatedly in sugar syrup. And each time they cooked them
it would be the temperature would be higher. And then,
I love this, and it seems like so many candy
makers have something like this. Donofrio had a secret process,
(06:56):
and through this top secret process, his team would then
take those cubes and crystallize them, cooked them, crystallize them again,
and then let them sit out to cool and hearten
and what they got if you saw it was kind
of you've probably encountered something like this before, folks. It's
a it's a little bit like a gum drop. It's
(07:18):
got this kind of sugary, crunchy crust, and then it's
got a little like a jelly like gelatinous core. And
people were amazed by this. And also there's some really
good marketing because one of Donofrio's earliest ads clearly talks
(07:38):
about how unexpected it is for cacti to produce candy,
or at least in the popular culture of the time.
The ad has a headline that says that man's name
will go down in history who first converted the ugly
desert plant into such a delight for delicacy. And people
loved it. People loved it. They did and highly recommend
(08:00):
Anatlas Obscura article in their gastro Obscura offshoot by tal mcfeenia.
They were pulling some good information from and on the
very top of that article you can see an image
from one of Dinofrio's early marketing campaigns that shows what
looks to be an aztech gentleman. Uh mean, he's wearing
like a cloak and has the kind of traditional like
(08:20):
az tech like headband and like an arm band, and
he's handing a giant box of Dinofrio's cactus candies to
a lady, presumably to win her heart. And yeah, it's true,
there was this whole like lore wrapped up in the marketing,
but it was all total bs. But it definitely, you know,
made for a good story. He actually leaned more on
these toll Tech legends, this idea that there was the
(08:43):
sun god who had imprisoned a maiden's soul inside the
cactus that we're talking about, the Viznaga cactus, and it
was to protect her purity, and as legend would have it,
according to Didofrio. Anyway, uh, the toll Tech wedding ritual
where prospective grooms had to make cactus candy by tearing
(09:04):
the thorns out with their teeth and then crystallizing the
pulp in wild honey was was born of this whole
sun god situation. And he printed images like to what
I'm talking about all over sures and marketing materials. He
also claimed that the Dinofrio family was not Italian, but
in fact that they were descended from a line of
(09:25):
Mexican candy makers, beginning with what din Afrio the royal
candy maker to the ancient Toltec king um Man and
you know, and again Alice Obscure points out, and I
completely agree that these claims could have been explained away
as being the sort of satire, kind of funny tongue
(09:47):
in cheek, but folks mainly took them at face value, right, yeah,
they did. I want to step back for a modern
example of this kind of mythology, because he's not the
only candy maker who did this. How Gondas is a
made up word. Haggenas was invented that you everybody knows.
The ice cream haggenda is very popular here in the US.
(10:09):
It was invented by a guy named Ruben Mattis because
he wanted a name that sounded Danish, and so he
just made up the word kind of the same way
uh din Afrio made up this legend, and the gimmick
paid off, because if you've seen Madman, or if you've
read propaganda by Edward Burns, then you know that at
(10:32):
its height, advertising is really selling an idea, a concept,
a story, and so this story became part of what
people were buying. I would pose it with Donofrio as candy,
and his business started booming. It wasn't just people ordering
it through the mail, stores were ordering it candy stores
(10:54):
across the US. In just the company ended up producing
fifteen thousand pounds of this stuff, and soon enough other
people would try to get in on the game because
they thought this cactus candy thing was a pretty good gig.
(11:19):
That's where George Karameros comes in. George was also an immigrant.
He was originally from Greece, and he and his brother
in law started their own cactus candy operation over in
El Paso, which is about four hundred miles away from Donofrio.
(11:40):
They had made candy in Mexico City previously until about
eighteen and then they fled north during the Mexican Revolution
and when they got to the US, when they made
it to Texas, they started bottling beer and soda, and
then prohibition came in and these guys are like, can't
we just catch a break? So George is walking through
(12:03):
this market, the South Door market, and he's thinking, what
am I gonna do? What? Why is? Why is it
always something? And we've all been there emotionally, you know,
sometimes you just need to win. And that's when George
sees ah cactus candy stand and he goes to the
guys selling the cactus candy, gives them five bucks, and
(12:24):
he says, all right, teach me how you make this.
Also five bucks pretty significant some of money at the time.
And this story is reprinted. You can you can read
this in uh we found it in this excellent piece
by Steve Frango's writing for the National Herald, George Karameros,
(12:45):
The Forgotten King of Cactus Candy. You can see this
like this was printed widely and this excerpt nol if
you'll do the honors comes from MA and the Amarillo
Daily News. I love the Forgotten King of Cactus Candy,
big fan of literation. Yeah, dress like him for Halloween.
It'll be way better than my hh huld's costume, which
(13:07):
was real. I could probably pull that off. I probably
would just need like a sweater of some kind, maybe
a hat, you know, some lollipop st total people. People
will completely recognize that. Well, here he goes. Thirty years ago,
George D. Caramaros a seven dollar a week. So the
fountain clerk was walking through South El Paso when he
(13:27):
saw an outdoor stand selling homemade candy bars as big
as his fist for a penny. He was curious to
know what kind of candy sold for that price, even
thirty years ago. That was cheap. He sampled a piece
and it was good. He offered the standowner five dollars
to show him how it was made. That led to
the building of a business that now sells cactus candy
in every state of the Union and abroad. UM. And
(13:49):
he was pretty good at a at a marketing kind
of stunt. So he got three hundred pounds of the cactus,
the viz Naga cactus, and he displayed them in downtown
El Paso. And he actually kind of had din Afrio
beat in some ways because he diversified, you know. He
(14:10):
Dinofrio was just making this little gum droppy thing, whereas
Carameros decided to take it to the next level. Um.
He made preserves and ice cream. UM, and he would
make different flavors um, you know, infused the candy with
different fruit flavors, and he even coated them with chocolate.
And he claimed that he also had a secret um
(14:32):
recipe that would keep them from molding. Right, Yeah, preservation move,
I do wanna I do want to note that, yes,
you're not mishearing ridiculous historians. I did have an H. H.
Holmes costume if you're familiar with HS Holmes and nailed it. Max.
It's true. I know you don't believe me, but it
was the spitting image. Anyway. Uh, maybe I'll maybe I'll
(14:55):
find that picture and post it. But that this aside,
like you see how people people were super into cactus candy.
The El Paso Times even talks about what you were
talking about and all that preservation method that was really
his secret sauce, they say in November write in retrospect,
(15:20):
they say, somewhere along the line, a secret process was used,
a process Karameros invented to preserve the candy. The old days,
all such cactus candy quickly molded, but not after Karameros
is innovation, and here we must pause. Caameros must certainly
did not come up with his method of preventing cactus
candy from molding overnight. For six years, he experimented with
(15:43):
his candy cooking before developing a preservative process that remained
his secret during many, many years of successful merchandizing. So
six years. Whatever his secret was, it wasn't just like
marketing fluff like the toll tech story. He got in
the actus candy trenches and he figured out how to
how to make it well last much longer, not forever,
(16:06):
but longer exactly. So of course, you know, Karameros, he
didn't really know about Dinnfrio, I don't think particularly. Maybe
he did, but he found his inspiration just walking around
at more of a local, kind of artisanal version of
cactus candy. But um, there were others. They were trying
to copy these guys and jump on the cactus candy cavalcade,
(16:27):
the candy bandwagon whatever. Um, so there we go boom.
So throughout the twenties there were smaller, much more fly
by night kind of operations that sprung up around the Southwest,
even into Texas and California, because again this was all about,
you know, using an indigenous plant that was available there
(16:50):
and nowhere else in the country. And while you know,
optimistic outlooks on it considered the cactus supply to be
almost in exhaust stable, you know, nothing last forever. This
trend was raging. These products were flying off shells. People
love the stuff. Then in four we have this journalist
(17:11):
from El pasto named Norman Walker, who sort of throws
a wet blanket on this cactus party. He says, quote,
eating Mexican cactus candy is like kissing your sister, which
is a weird American saying that refers to like coming
in second place A lot of times it fails to satisfy. Um.
He also had a problem with a lot of the
marketing and a lot of this kind of co opting
(17:33):
of uh indigenous culture. Um. And then he says, quote,
some success has been attained, but it does not repeat
it stuff in the sales. So essentially he's saying that, Um,
this was a fat and it was not going to last.
I think I think you're being a little too kind
to Norman Walker. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't
see him talking about the very real concerns of appropriation.
(17:57):
To me, he just seemed like a cranky candy hate here.
But maybe he was. Maybe he just woke up on
the wrong side of the of the cactus bed, or
maybe he got maybe he got done dirty by a
cactus in his past, you know, and he was confronting
that trauma like one of those cartoon moments where you
fall into the cactus patch and you know, and then like, oh,
(18:17):
you grab your button, pull out the spikes and he
shook his fist at the skies. That never again, Max,
what's up? I gotta ask? Then you said the wrong
side of the cactus that? I mean, I'm just thinking
about laying on cactus? What what? What is the right
side of that bed? That's the thing. Yeah, it's like
it's like a one hand clapping kind of it's a
very lazy version of his own cone. But it's it's
(18:39):
it's a good image though, bed, because a cactus bed
would would presumably be, you know, a bed of cactus,
like a plot of cactus plants. So I think he's
said cactus cactus bed. Yeah, it doesn't look super pleasant
if you just do his quick image search. But here's
the thing, Norman Walker and their anti cactus candy people
(19:02):
were not the majority. We can tell, because the cactus
supply in this area began to run dry. The trend continued,
and by the late nineteen twenties, again this is coming
from that Atlas Obscura article. By the late nineteen twenties,
the desert supply of this once abundant plant looked to
(19:26):
be on the way out. Papers started reporting about this
news of the day. They were running headlines like, oh
a sweet tool, the eating up cactus. Uh, they didn't
have a question mark. I just I like picture that reporter.
And people in l a we're also complaining about it,
you know, and other folks were conservationist. We're starting to
(19:50):
have a problem. People were concerned about the environment. We're saying,
you know, barrel cactus is being taken out by their
truckloads for what to make candy. And eventually in both
San Bernardino and Riverside County put in a law banning
the removal of desert plant life. But no, I don't
(20:13):
think it really worked. They think at that point people
just started stealing the cacti. Yeah, that's true. And they
were stealing it for reasons other than candy making. I mean,
if you've ever been to l A, um, you've certainly
seen lots of really cool cactus beds in people's yards
(20:34):
with all varieties. Um. So folks were taking them for
gardens for even like lining their goldfish bowls. Uh. And
it seemed as though a mass extinction of the particular
cactus of the barrel cactus might have been on the horizon.
There were groups kind of the fellow of the umbrella
of Friends of the Desert that started to become very
(20:55):
popular across southern California, and they would lobby lawmakers to
offer protection, um, you know, and to to you know,
give these plants protected status under you know, the same
way you would like an endangered species of animal. And
they also did a lot to sort of overhaul the
image of the desert. For a lot of folks, it
(21:15):
would seemed like a very bleak, sad place, you know,
they associated with like the dust bowl, uh and like
grapes of wrath and stuff like that. But instead they
tried to get people to shift uh their perception of
the desert to something more along the lines of a
bio diverse kind of you know, wonderland, which it can
be both, right, but it really is pretty incredible place
(21:39):
out there with all of the way those uh, these
species of plants can survive with such a little water
and thrive and they just like take on these like
dr Susian type shapes and and and array is really
really cool stuff. But Arizona starts doing the same thing,
and they begin to protect the status of desert plants, uh,
and that includes the already and danger this point giant
(22:01):
barrel cactus. But that didn't bother our friend din a Frio.
This was his bread and butter and he was not
going to go easily into that. Good night, sir, So
for the next twenty years he would be working specifically
with a individual in the Native American community to get
(22:24):
cacti from this guy's reservation, because on the reservation you
could still harvest barrel cactus if you had a permit.
And over in El Paso, Karameros would send his workers
way into the mountains of New Mexico the Oregon Mountains
(22:46):
for vis Naga. And he did this until he sold
his candy business entirely in the early nineteen fifties. It's
so interesting, Ben. This remediately makes me think of the
movie adaptation Um, which was an adaptation of The Orchid
Thief of the book by Susan Orlean the journalists from
The New Yorker, and in it, one of the main
(23:06):
characters Laroche, who was like an orchid harvester the book
was called The Orchid Thief Um. He gets around orchid
protection laws by hiring Native Americans to pick them off
of their land, off of off of land that's like
protected of you know, reservation swamp lands, and that's the
only way that he can get around it too. So
(23:27):
it's very very clever little loophole there. I would I'm
not a fan. I consider it plant poaching. So anyway,
it wasn't, as I said, wasn't until fourteen that this
region of New Mexico finally got federal protection. So it
wasn't until that the barrel cactus in this area was
(23:51):
protected by environmental laws. It came very close to going
extinct the vis naga, and it's extinction wouldn't have been
entirely for candy, as we said, but candy was a
major factor. Luckily, this cactus is on the spiky rebound
and you can find it today across the southwestern deserts
(24:15):
and in Mexico. It definitely had a tough battle for survival.
It's still listed the species that's used for candy as vulnerable,
and trends indicate the population is still decreasing, and you'll
see authorities in both Mexico and the US arguing that
(24:37):
further legal action needs to be taken to protect it.
And I gotta say, have you, either of you guys,
ever been out to the desert to the southwest. You
have been through California and I've taken a train from
Los Angeles to San Francisco, so you see a good
bit of of of desert e stuff through there. But
I haven't really been to Arizona or New Mexico. You
(24:57):
see the Grand Canyon if you get a chance, I mean,
go out to New Mexico. Uh. The first time I
saw it, even as a kid, I thought, wow, this
is where God got into abstract arts. It's beautiful, it's
in a very minimalist way, and its and it's you know,
I think a lot of people who aren't familiar with
the desert me confuse it because it can look minimalistic.
(25:19):
That may confuse it with an empty place. But it's
very much not. It's a rich, rich ecosystem, and like
any other ecosystem, it needs to be protected. But if
you go out Arizona way and you want to think
about the size of the desert and all these beautiful
notions of the universe and or place within it, stop
(25:40):
by a roadside you know, roadside stands, Stop by a
gas station or something. Because in Arizona you can still
pick up cactus candy. Of course, yes, you can also
find it on Amazon, but where's the adventure in that. Also,
it's not barrel cactus anymore. I think, I think most
of it now is is uh, prickly pear fruit. Most
(26:02):
of the stuff you'll find, yeah, which is way more
sustainable and a pretty good stand in for the barrel cactus. Yeah,
you'll see it in grocery stores and restaurants, you know,
like the little candy dish when you leave. And actually,
the Hohokam people of South Arizona would eat the entire
body of the prickly pear cactus, including the pads, which
(26:23):
they had to de spine, and they would roast the
pits um, while members of the Tohono Odoha nation from
Arizona and Mexico would eat the fruits and the pads.
And actually, much like the weird loophole we were talking
about earlier, have indigenous rights to harvest them in Tucsons
Saguaro National Park. So if you want to learn more
(26:45):
about this, highly recommend checking out another gastro Obscura article,
this one by Bevin Dunn called how an Arizonan and
company turns cacti into candy. You can get a look
at the process of taking this from you know, from
the ground all the way to the delicious delicacy it becomes.
(27:10):
And you know, looking at this, I'm pretty sure that
I've had this cactus candy before and it was good.
I don't have the biggest sweet tooth, but but I
love novelty foods. You guys knew that, So I am
super down to try even more cactus candy. And like that.
You know, what, what are the odds that somebody is
listening to this now eating cactus candy? I don't know,
(27:32):
probably pretty pretty reasonable in certain parts of the country. Prepare, uh,
they make you can make You can get like juice
versions of it too, or at least as the flavoring.
And it is. It is tasty. And just to be clear,
the pads, I believe are the cactus e cactus parts
of the prickly pear cactus. And then the fruits are
like the little kind of nubbins that they come off
the top. They're like really cool looking little red fruits.
(27:56):
And that's the part that is harvested to make the candy.
But you can also the cactus themselves. Yeah. Oh, and
speaking of eating there's one thing that I thought it
would be fun to hit. And this is also something
This is something gave Founds to credit. Credit to him.
The Smithsonian and NPR did looked into something that will
(28:18):
be of interest to many of our fellow ridiculous historians.
As Halloween gets closer and closer. It turns out that
there is a a physics to eating candy. And this
came this. Uh, these articles reference a story or a
paper in physics education. So the thing with candy is
(28:42):
it doesn't last forever, right you eat it spite sized,
it's gone, or you know, like it's cotton, candy just
sort of dissolves in your mouth, etcetera, etcetera. This team
of physicists in Austria wrote an actual paper, scientific paper
applying physics to eating candy to figure out how how
you can make the experience last for the longest time.
(29:05):
And they said, if you do everything right, you can
enjoy just one single piece of candy for up to
nearly half an hour. And the secret, I don't think
it's super surprising, Max. The secret is just don't bite
or chew. That's they just just hold it in your mouth.
(29:27):
They just they wrote a whole paper on this. Uh.
In their paper get this, they said they're going to
investigate the quote serious questions on the optimal strategy of
enjoying a candy. And I picture that in kind of
a Christopher Walt's voice, you know, the guy, the amazing actor.
He's also a goody goody to move strategy will enjoying
(29:51):
your candy. Yeah, that's the secret. And I think that's
that's also our show. You think it is our show,
but not our our show show, just our episode show
right episode episode episode show? Um, well, cool man, this
is a fun one. It makes me I don't know.
We've definitely got some pretty cool specialty grocery stores here
(30:13):
in Atlanta. On Buford Highway Way, there's a place called
the Buford Highway Farmers Market that has lots of cool
imported candies and you know, confections and like, you know,
all kinds of cooking ingredients and sauces from all over
the world. I would not be surprised if in the
Latin American section perhaps they had some of these cactus candies.
(30:34):
I think I want to check it out next time
I go there and give him a try. But ship
oh yeah, yeah, also go to UH North decade Ur.
There's some great Indians sweet shops that I highly recommend
checking out UH and let us know what your favorite
regional candies are, because so many places have this candy
(30:54):
that's like well known or confection that's well known in
that part of the world or even in that city community,
but isn't very well known outside of that region. So
we'd love to hear about that with I personally, I'd
love to hear about your favorite Halloween costumes, some of
your creepy costumes. Feel free to post pictures or costumes
(31:14):
that you put your pets in, as long as your
pets are cool with it. You can post those over
on the Facebook, where we've got a page called Ridiculous Historians.
You can also find us online, not just as a show,
but as individuals. That's right. You can find me on
Instagram pretty much exclusively, where I am at how Now
Noel Brown. You can find me on Twitter where I
(31:36):
am at Ben Bolan hs W. You can get a
behind the scenes look at some of my many sketchy
and non sketchy various projects and endeavors by heading over
to Instagram where I am at Ben Boland Bow l
I N. Thanks as always to Mr Max Williams. Thanks
very much to our own Prickly Cactus Man, miss Off
(32:00):
Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister, and thanks, as we said,
to Gabe Luizier, our awesome research associate. Huge thanks to
Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Alex Williams who composed our theme,
and anyone else that we've we've forgot my mom. I'd
like to take my mom. She's cool. UM wouldn't be
here without her. Thank you Ben for being um my
companion on this uh delightful Cactus E Confectionery journey. I've
(32:24):
got to think, you know what, I think I might
go into ridiculous historians and post this thing my mom did.
I'm so proud of her. She made a snoopy pumpkin
for these kids she volunteers with, and she nailed it.
It looks so good. Check it out. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(32:49):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. There's the one and only.
Max Williams are super producer on the other side of
the zoom. I'm Ben a big, big fan of Halloween
because it means a lot of things to a lot
of people. But uh, you know what it means to
a lot of kids, right, no can Yeah? Oh, I
(00:48):
was gonna say, uh, um, prank's like like like like
like vandalism, tracts of yes, exactly, tricks. Now it's true, Candy.
I was thinking, what do you do you dress up for? Hell?
Are we? Ben? Is anything that you do? Yeah? I do.
It's one of my It's one of my favorite holidays,
absolutely other than everybody's birthday. Everybody listening now, your birthday
is one of my favorite holidays. You are such a sweetheart. Um,
(01:11):
you know, I really really enjoy Halloween too. It's one
of my favorite holidays. I think, probably my most favorite.
But I'm not a dresser upper, and some people like
to shame me about that. I don't think that's right, Ben,
I don't think that's right. Yes, let a man. Let
a man enjoy his holiday in his own way. Yeah,
send him to me. Uh, what are you gonna do?
You're you gonna rough him up for me? I'll dress
him down at the very las Um. Yeah, the costumes
(01:34):
are a huge deal. The laziest costume I do is
um what's his name from? I think Ryan Gosling from
dr Because he's just like the jacket and that's a
nice jacket. Bad. I mean, that's a jacket. It's a
nice jacket. But you know, maybe that's something that is
helpful to like finding finding you go to easy costume.
(01:56):
We have an ex Max yet though, Max, are you
uh would you call a dresser rupper Halloween? I gotta mit, no,
I'm not. I mean, Halloween just wasn't that pig of
a holiday in my family. So it's just never held
that important of a place for me. Like I go
hang out with people, but I'm usually the guy with
a really like pretty like you know, thrown together, Like
I put a jacket on and I am I don't know, Yeah,
(02:20):
all right, say some scary movie that no one's heard of,
and I'm like, I'm this guy even if that character
didn't exist, Like you know, but but, but, but again,
I feel like we should be able to enjoy our
holiday in our own way, and no one should give
us crap for not choosing to participate in the way
that they choose to participate. I really enjoy going with
my kid and her friends because they're super into Halloween.
(02:41):
I mean, Halloween is like every day for them. They're
into cosplay, so they always go full on with that
and I just kind of accompany them on the tricks
and or treating, and you know, they love to go
to the neighborhood and they mark them all these kids
that they got like a like a Charlie Day style board,
you know, with the pins and all of the houses
that have the poshest candy, that's the one that has
(03:01):
the full candy bars. But I'll tell you one thing
I have never encountered on a trick or treat excursion
is cactus candy. And there's a reason for that. This
episode is going to be about candy, which is why
we you know, we've got candy and Halloween on our minds.
Is no doubt some of our fellow ridiculous historians do.
(03:22):
But once upon a time, there was a very very
very popular candy that was made out of something called
the barrel cactus. Our story really begins in eighteen nine one.
There's this guy, well, he's a kid, he's twelve years old.
His name is Dominic Dinofrio, and he has traveled all
(03:44):
the way to Arizona from southern Italy. He's on a train.
He's looking out and he sees the southwestern desert extending
for miles and miles and miles, and it's an uninterrupted
forest of cacti, of different types of cacti, and everywhere
(04:06):
he sees this thing, this big, giant, round sort of
cactus called the barrel cactus. It was known to the
native people as the vis Naga. Yeah, and and Dominic
had a dream ben um, not like you know, just
to sleeping on the train. Dream like a big picture
like life changing dream, kind of a weird dream that
you can really only have if you were part of
(04:27):
a confectionary dynasty of sorts. He got to Phoenix, he
went to work for his older brother's candy factory or confectionery,
and he again had this dream. And he has this
quote in that that we found in this amazing Auntlass
obscure article where he says it came to my mind
that millions of dollars could be made out of cactus. Uh.
(04:48):
And so he concocted this plan where he would um
turn this cactuses, this cacti into whole cold, hard cash
cactus cash, but by way of and the cacti into candy.
Very specific He's looking out, he's seeing these very prohibitively
spiky plants, and he immediately thinks candy. I don't quite understand,
(05:11):
but the kid had moxie, the kid had vision. But
there was precedent for this in n by the way
he bought the store from his brother and began to
make his dreams come true. But this precedent came in
the form of the history of the Native American people
that lived in this part of the country. Uh. The
Pima tribes and and several others used the vis Naga's
(05:33):
pulp as food. They would d spine um these these plants.
They would actually used the spines sometimes for fish hooks,
which is kind of cool. But then they would boil
the plants to soften the pulp and then they would
eat it and get you know, sustenance. But then Frea
kind of took this model and ran with it, but
(05:54):
in a slightly different and more confectionary direction. For sure. Yeah,
the seeing magic ingredient here is sugar and a lot
of elbow grease. So he hired a team of folks
to start hacking down these barrel cacti. And they would
(06:14):
find these plants anywhere from two to five ft tall,
and again, to give you a sense of how big
these are, they could weigh anywhere between eighty two a
hundred pounds. And then they would knock all the spikes
off them, de spike them. They would haul them back
to the factory. Then they would peel and core and
slice up this vis naga into these small cubes, and
(06:36):
they would boil them and boil them and boil them
until they were tender, and then they would cook them
repeatedly in sugar syrup. And each time they cooked them
it would be the temperature would be higher. And then,
I love this, and it seems like so many candy
makers have something like this. Donofrio had a secret process,
(06:56):
and through this top secret process, his team would then
take those cubes and crystallize them, cooked them, crystallize them again,
and then let them sit out to cool and hearten
and what they got if you saw it was kind
of you've probably encountered something like this before, folks. It's
a it's a little bit like a gum drop. It's
(07:18):
got this kind of sugary, crunchy crust, and then it's
got a little like a jelly like gelatinous core. And
people were amazed by this. And also there's some really
good marketing because one of Donofrio's earliest ads clearly talks
(07:38):
about how unexpected it is for cacti to produce candy,
or at least in the popular culture of the time.
The ad has a headline that says that man's name
will go down in history who first converted the ugly
desert plant into such a delight for delicacy. And people
loved it. People loved it. They did and highly recommend
(08:00):
Anatlas Obscura article in their gastro Obscura offshoot by tal mcfeenia.
They were pulling some good information from and on the
very top of that article you can see an image
from one of Dinofrio's early marketing campaigns that shows what
looks to be an aztech gentleman. Uh mean, he's wearing
like a cloak and has the kind of traditional like
(08:20):
az tech like headband and like an arm band, and
he's handing a giant box of Dinofrio's cactus candies to
a lady, presumably to win her heart. And yeah, it's true,
there was this whole like lore wrapped up in the marketing,
but it was all total bs. But it definitely, you know,
made for a good story. He actually leaned more on
these toll Tech legends, this idea that there was the
(08:43):
sun god who had imprisoned a maiden's soul inside the
cactus that we're talking about, the Viznaga cactus, and it
was to protect her purity, and as legend would have it,
according to Didofrio. Anyway, uh, the toll Tech wedding ritual
where prospective grooms had to make cactus candy by tearing
(09:04):
the thorns out with their teeth and then crystallizing the
pulp in wild honey was was born of this whole
sun god situation. And he printed images like to what
I'm talking about all over sures and marketing materials. He
also claimed that the Dinofrio family was not Italian, but
in fact that they were descended from a line of
(09:25):
Mexican candy makers, beginning with what din Afrio the royal
candy maker to the ancient Toltec king um Man and
you know, and again Alice Obscure points out, and I
completely agree that these claims could have been explained away
as being the sort of satire, kind of funny tongue
(09:47):
in cheek, but folks mainly took them at face value, right, yeah,
they did. I want to step back for a modern
example of this kind of mythology, because he's not the
only candy maker who did this. How Gondas is a
made up word. Haggenas was invented that you everybody knows.
The ice cream haggenda is very popular here in the US.
(10:09):
It was invented by a guy named Ruben Mattis because
he wanted a name that sounded Danish, and so he
just made up the word kind of the same way
uh din Afrio made up this legend, and the gimmick
paid off, because if you've seen Madman, or if you've
read propaganda by Edward Burns, then you know that at
(10:32):
its height, advertising is really selling an idea, a concept,
a story, and so this story became part of what
people were buying. I would pose it with Donofrio as candy,
and his business started booming. It wasn't just people ordering
it through the mail, stores were ordering it candy stores
(10:54):
across the US. In just the company ended up producing
fifteen thousand pounds of this stuff, and soon enough other
people would try to get in on the game because
they thought this cactus candy thing was a pretty good gig.
(11:19):
That's where George Karameros comes in. George was also an immigrant.
He was originally from Greece, and he and his brother
in law started their own cactus candy operation over in
El Paso, which is about four hundred miles away from Donofrio.
(11:40):
They had made candy in Mexico City previously until about
eighteen and then they fled north during the Mexican Revolution
and when they got to the US, when they made
it to Texas, they started bottling beer and soda, and
then prohibition came in and these guys are like, can't
we just catch a break? So George is walking through
(12:03):
this market, the South Door market, and he's thinking, what
am I gonna do? What? Why is? Why is it
always something? And we've all been there emotionally, you know,
sometimes you just need to win. And that's when George
sees ah cactus candy stand and he goes to the
guys selling the cactus candy, gives them five bucks, and
(12:24):
he says, all right, teach me how you make this.
Also five bucks pretty significant some of money at the time.
And this story is reprinted. You can you can read
this in uh we found it in this excellent piece
by Steve Frango's writing for the National Herald, George Karameros,
(12:45):
The Forgotten King of Cactus Candy. You can see this
like this was printed widely and this excerpt nol if
you'll do the honors comes from MA and the Amarillo
Daily News. I love the Forgotten King of Cactus Candy,
big fan of literation. Yeah, dress like him for Halloween.
It'll be way better than my hh huld's costume, which
(13:07):
was real. I could probably pull that off. I probably
would just need like a sweater of some kind, maybe
a hat, you know, some lollipop st total people. People
will completely recognize that. Well, here he goes. Thirty years ago,
George D. Caramaros a seven dollar a week. So the
fountain clerk was walking through South El Paso when he
(13:27):
saw an outdoor stand selling homemade candy bars as big
as his fist for a penny. He was curious to
know what kind of candy sold for that price, even
thirty years ago. That was cheap. He sampled a piece
and it was good. He offered the standowner five dollars
to show him how it was made. That led to
the building of a business that now sells cactus candy
in every state of the Union and abroad. UM. And
(13:49):
he was pretty good at a at a marketing kind
of stunt. So he got three hundred pounds of the cactus,
the viz Naga cactus, and he displayed them in downtown
El Paso. And he actually kind of had din Afrio
beat in some ways because he diversified, you know. He
(14:10):
Dinofrio was just making this little gum droppy thing, whereas
Carameros decided to take it to the next level. Um.
He made preserves and ice cream. UM, and he would
make different flavors um, you know, infused the candy with
different fruit flavors, and he even coated them with chocolate.
And he claimed that he also had a secret um
(14:32):
recipe that would keep them from molding. Right, Yeah, preservation move,
I do wanna I do want to note that, yes,
you're not mishearing ridiculous historians. I did have an H. H.
Holmes costume if you're familiar with HS Holmes and nailed it. Max.
It's true. I know you don't believe me, but it
was the spitting image. Anyway. Uh, maybe I'll maybe I'll
(14:55):
find that picture and post it. But that this aside,
like you see how people people were super into cactus candy.
The El Paso Times even talks about what you were
talking about and all that preservation method that was really
his secret sauce, they say in November write in retrospect,
(15:20):
they say, somewhere along the line, a secret process was used,
a process Karameros invented to preserve the candy. The old days,
all such cactus candy quickly molded, but not after Karameros
is innovation, and here we must pause. Caameros must certainly
did not come up with his method of preventing cactus
candy from molding overnight. For six years, he experimented with
(15:43):
his candy cooking before developing a preservative process that remained
his secret during many, many years of successful merchandizing. So
six years. Whatever his secret was, it wasn't just like
marketing fluff like the toll tech story. He got in
the actus candy trenches and he figured out how to
how to make it well last much longer, not forever,
(16:06):
but longer exactly. So of course, you know, Karameros, he
didn't really know about Dinnfrio, I don't think particularly. Maybe
he did, but he found his inspiration just walking around
at more of a local, kind of artisanal version of
cactus candy. But um, there were others. They were trying
to copy these guys and jump on the cactus candy cavalcade,
(16:27):
the candy bandwagon whatever. Um, so there we go boom.
So throughout the twenties there were smaller, much more fly
by night kind of operations that sprung up around the Southwest,
even into Texas and California, because again this was all about,
you know, using an indigenous plant that was available there
(16:50):
and nowhere else in the country. And while you know,
optimistic outlooks on it considered the cactus supply to be
almost in exhaust stable, you know, nothing last forever. This
trend was raging. These products were flying off shells. People
love the stuff. Then in four we have this journalist
(17:11):
from El pasto named Norman Walker, who sort of throws
a wet blanket on this cactus party. He says, quote,
eating Mexican cactus candy is like kissing your sister, which
is a weird American saying that refers to like coming
in second place A lot of times it fails to satisfy. Um.
He also had a problem with a lot of the
marketing and a lot of this kind of co opting
(17:33):
of uh indigenous culture. Um. And then he says, quote,
some success has been attained, but it does not repeat
it stuff in the sales. So essentially he's saying that, Um,
this was a fat and it was not going to last.
I think I think you're being a little too kind
to Norman Walker. Maybe I missed it, but I didn't
see him talking about the very real concerns of appropriation.
(17:57):
To me, he just seemed like a cranky candy hate here.
But maybe he was. Maybe he just woke up on
the wrong side of the of the cactus bed, or
maybe he got maybe he got done dirty by a
cactus in his past, you know, and he was confronting
that trauma like one of those cartoon moments where you
fall into the cactus patch and you know, and then like, oh,
(18:17):
you grab your button, pull out the spikes and he
shook his fist at the skies. That never again, Max,
what's up? I gotta ask? Then you said the wrong
side of the cactus that? I mean, I'm just thinking
about laying on cactus? What what? What is the right
side of that bed? That's the thing. Yeah, it's like
it's like a one hand clapping kind of it's a
very lazy version of his own cone. But it's it's
(18:39):
it's a good image though, bed, because a cactus bed
would would presumably be, you know, a bed of cactus,
like a plot of cactus plants. So I think he's
said cactus cactus bed. Yeah, it doesn't look super pleasant
if you just do his quick image search. But here's
the thing, Norman Walker and their anti cactus candy people
(19:02):
were not the majority. We can tell, because the cactus
supply in this area began to run dry. The trend continued,
and by the late nineteen twenties, again this is coming
from that Atlas Obscura article. By the late nineteen twenties,
the desert supply of this once abundant plant looked to
(19:26):
be on the way out. Papers started reporting about this
news of the day. They were running headlines like, oh
a sweet tool, the eating up cactus. Uh, they didn't
have a question mark. I just I like picture that reporter.
And people in l a we're also complaining about it,
you know, and other folks were conservationist. We're starting to
(19:50):
have a problem. People were concerned about the environment. We're saying,
you know, barrel cactus is being taken out by their
truckloads for what to make candy. And eventually in both
San Bernardino and Riverside County put in a law banning
the removal of desert plant life. But no, I don't
(20:13):
think it really worked. They think at that point people
just started stealing the cacti. Yeah, that's true. And they
were stealing it for reasons other than candy making. I mean,
if you've ever been to l A, um, you've certainly
seen lots of really cool cactus beds in people's yards
(20:34):
with all varieties. Um. So folks were taking them for
gardens for even like lining their goldfish bowls. Uh. And
it seemed as though a mass extinction of the particular
cactus of the barrel cactus might have been on the horizon.
There were groups kind of the fellow of the umbrella
of Friends of the Desert that started to become very
(20:55):
popular across southern California, and they would lobby lawmakers to
offer protection, um, you know, and to to you know,
give these plants protected status under you know, the same
way you would like an endangered species of animal. And
they also did a lot to sort of overhaul the
image of the desert. For a lot of folks, it
(21:15):
would seemed like a very bleak, sad place, you know,
they associated with like the dust bowl, uh and like
grapes of wrath and stuff like that. But instead they
tried to get people to shift uh their perception of
the desert to something more along the lines of a
bio diverse kind of you know, wonderland, which it can
be both, right, but it really is pretty incredible place
(21:39):
out there with all of the way those uh, these
species of plants can survive with such a little water
and thrive and they just like take on these like
dr Susian type shapes and and and array is really
really cool stuff. But Arizona starts doing the same thing,
and they begin to protect the status of desert plants, uh,
and that includes the already and danger this point giant
(22:01):
barrel cactus. But that didn't bother our friend din a Frio.
This was his bread and butter and he was not
going to go easily into that. Good night, sir, So
for the next twenty years he would be working specifically
with a individual in the Native American community to get
(22:24):
cacti from this guy's reservation, because on the reservation you
could still harvest barrel cactus if you had a permit.
And over in El Paso, Karameros would send his workers
way into the mountains of New Mexico the Oregon Mountains
(22:46):
for vis Naga. And he did this until he sold
his candy business entirely in the early nineteen fifties. It's
so interesting, Ben. This remediately makes me think of the
movie adaptation Um, which was an adaptation of The Orchid
Thief of the book by Susan Orlean the journalists from
The New Yorker, and in it, one of the main
(23:06):
characters Laroche, who was like an orchid harvester the book
was called The Orchid Thief Um. He gets around orchid
protection laws by hiring Native Americans to pick them off
of their land, off of off of land that's like
protected of you know, reservation swamp lands, and that's the
only way that he can get around it too. So
(23:27):
it's very very clever little loophole there. I would I'm
not a fan. I consider it plant poaching. So anyway,
it wasn't, as I said, wasn't until fourteen that this
region of New Mexico finally got federal protection. So it
wasn't until that the barrel cactus in this area was
(23:51):
protected by environmental laws. It came very close to going
extinct the vis naga, and it's extinction wouldn't have been
entirely for candy, as we said, but candy was a
major factor. Luckily, this cactus is on the spiky rebound
and you can find it today across the southwestern deserts
(24:15):
and in Mexico. It definitely had a tough battle for survival.
It's still listed the species that's used for candy as vulnerable,
and trends indicate the population is still decreasing, and you'll
see authorities in both Mexico and the US arguing that
(24:37):
further legal action needs to be taken to protect it.
And I gotta say, have you, either of you guys,
ever been out to the desert to the southwest. You
have been through California and I've taken a train from
Los Angeles to San Francisco, so you see a good
bit of of of desert e stuff through there. But
I haven't really been to Arizona or New Mexico. You
(24:57):
see the Grand Canyon if you get a chance, I mean,
go out to New Mexico. Uh. The first time I
saw it, even as a kid, I thought, wow, this
is where God got into abstract arts. It's beautiful, it's
in a very minimalist way, and its and it's you know,
I think a lot of people who aren't familiar with
the desert me confuse it because it can look minimalistic.
(25:19):
That may confuse it with an empty place. But it's
very much not. It's a rich, rich ecosystem, and like
any other ecosystem, it needs to be protected. But if
you go out Arizona way and you want to think
about the size of the desert and all these beautiful
notions of the universe and or place within it, stop
(25:40):
by a roadside you know, roadside stands, Stop by a
gas station or something. Because in Arizona you can still
pick up cactus candy. Of course, yes, you can also
find it on Amazon, but where's the adventure in that. Also,
it's not barrel cactus anymore. I think, I think most
of it now is is uh, prickly pear fruit. Most
(26:02):
of the stuff you'll find, yeah, which is way more
sustainable and a pretty good stand in for the barrel cactus. Yeah,
you'll see it in grocery stores and restaurants, you know,
like the little candy dish when you leave. And actually,
the Hohokam people of South Arizona would eat the entire
body of the prickly pear cactus, including the pads, which
(26:23):
they had to de spine, and they would roast the
pits um, while members of the Tohono Odoha nation from
Arizona and Mexico would eat the fruits and the pads.
And actually, much like the weird loophole we were talking
about earlier, have indigenous rights to harvest them in Tucsons
Saguaro National Park. So if you want to learn more
(26:45):
about this, highly recommend checking out another gastro Obscura article,
this one by Bevin Dunn called how an Arizonan and
company turns cacti into candy. You can get a look
at the process of taking this from you know, from
the ground all the way to the delicious delicacy it becomes.
(27:10):
And you know, looking at this, I'm pretty sure that
I've had this cactus candy before and it was good.
I don't have the biggest sweet tooth, but but I
love novelty foods. You guys knew that, So I am
super down to try even more cactus candy. And like that.
You know, what, what are the odds that somebody is
listening to this now eating cactus candy? I don't know,
(27:32):
probably pretty pretty reasonable in certain parts of the country. Prepare, uh,
they make you can make You can get like juice
versions of it too, or at least as the flavoring.
And it is. It is tasty. And just to be clear,
the pads, I believe are the cactus e cactus parts
of the prickly pear cactus. And then the fruits are
like the little kind of nubbins that they come off
the top. They're like really cool looking little red fruits.
(27:56):
And that's the part that is harvested to make the candy.
But you can also the cactus themselves. Yeah. Oh, and
speaking of eating there's one thing that I thought it
would be fun to hit. And this is also something
This is something gave Founds to credit. Credit to him.
The Smithsonian and NPR did looked into something that will
(28:18):
be of interest to many of our fellow ridiculous historians.
As Halloween gets closer and closer. It turns out that
there is a a physics to eating candy. And this
came this. Uh, these articles reference a story or a
paper in physics education. So the thing with candy is
(28:42):
it doesn't last forever, right you eat it spite sized,
it's gone, or you know, like it's cotton, candy just
sort of dissolves in your mouth, etcetera, etcetera. This team
of physicists in Austria wrote an actual paper, scientific paper
applying physics to eating candy to figure out how how
you can make the experience last for the longest time.
(29:05):
And they said, if you do everything right, you can
enjoy just one single piece of candy for up to
nearly half an hour. And the secret, I don't think
it's super surprising, Max. The secret is just don't bite
or chew. That's they just just hold it in your mouth.
(29:27):
They just they wrote a whole paper on this. Uh.
In their paper get this, they said they're going to
investigate the quote serious questions on the optimal strategy of
enjoying a candy. And I picture that in kind of
a Christopher Walt's voice, you know, the guy, the amazing actor.
He's also a goody goody to move strategy will enjoying
(29:51):
your candy. Yeah, that's the secret. And I think that's
that's also our show. You think it is our show,
but not our our show show, just our episode show
right episode episode episode show? Um, well, cool man, this
is a fun one. It makes me I don't know.
We've definitely got some pretty cool specialty grocery stores here
(30:13):
in Atlanta. On Buford Highway Way, there's a place called
the Buford Highway Farmers Market that has lots of cool
imported candies and you know, confections and like, you know,
all kinds of cooking ingredients and sauces from all over
the world. I would not be surprised if in the
Latin American section perhaps they had some of these cactus candies.
(30:34):
I think I want to check it out next time
I go there and give him a try. But ship
oh yeah, yeah, also go to UH North decade Ur.
There's some great Indians sweet shops that I highly recommend
checking out UH and let us know what your favorite
regional candies are, because so many places have this candy
(30:54):
that's like well known or confection that's well known in
that part of the world or even in that city community,
but isn't very well known outside of that region. So
we'd love to hear about that with I personally, I'd
love to hear about your favorite Halloween costumes, some of
your creepy costumes. Feel free to post pictures or costumes
(31:14):
that you put your pets in, as long as your
pets are cool with it. You can post those over
on the Facebook, where we've got a page called Ridiculous Historians.
You can also find us online, not just as a show,
but as individuals. That's right. You can find me on
Instagram pretty much exclusively, where I am at how Now
Noel Brown. You can find me on Twitter where I
(31:36):
am at Ben Bolan hs W. You can get a
behind the scenes look at some of my many sketchy
and non sketchy various projects and endeavors by heading over
to Instagram where I am at Ben Boland Bow l
I N. Thanks as always to Mr Max Williams. Thanks
very much to our own Prickly Cactus Man, miss Off
(32:00):
Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister, and thanks, as we said,
to Gabe Luizier, our awesome research associate. Huge thanks to
Christopher hasiotis here in spirit, Alex Williams who composed our theme,
and anyone else that we've we've forgot my mom. I'd
like to take my mom. She's cool. UM wouldn't be
here without her. Thank you Ben for being um my
companion on this uh delightful Cactus E Confectionery journey. I've
(32:24):
got to think, you know what, I think I might
go into ridiculous historians and post this thing my mom did.
I'm so proud of her. She made a snoopy pumpkin
for these kids she volunteers with, and she nailed it.
It looks so good. Check it out. We'll see you
next time, folks. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
(32:49):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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