Growing up an hour drive or so from Hershey, PA, chocolate has been a part of my life. When I was 8 and 9, nothing matched the feeling of going to the grocery store and buying a bar of pure Hershey's chocolate. Knowing that a world renown chocolate brand was local made me proud to be from Pennsylvania.

Being homeschooled for my elementary and middle school years, my mom would take me and my sisters to the Hershey factory once or twice a year. They don't actually allow people into the factory because, as they explained, it's secret stuff. They do have an automated tour, however. It was in an air conditioned building. The wait to get on was usually quite a while, but it was worth it to be in an air conditioned building.

The tour was basically a large spinning conveyor-like belt with carts on it to sit in. It slowly spun around in a large circle where an overhead pre-recorded voice explaining the cheap, museum-style exibits that we passed. Cheap manequins were frozen in time beside bad re-creations of the assembly line.

Then came the pay-off. As we stepped off the rotating cirlce, there was a real life Hershey employee there. She (or as it sometimes was, He) would stand there and give us a free sample of chocolate. Back when I was a young child they handed out an entire chocolate bar. Then as I grew up, and the rest of the world shrunk, so did the chocolate. Last I remember, they only handed out a small bite.

Of course, these trips to Hershey were always accompanied by my small fantasy of the book, Charlie and the Chocolate Facotory. I would daydream about being in the the great factory, being surrounded by Oompa Loompas and eating the growing sweets from the garden.

If only real life chocolate factories were like that.

peace.