http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...052801299.html

Taffy and the Beach: Delectable Duo Is Forever Stuck Together

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 29, 2007; B01

OCEAN CITY -- There's something about taffy and the beach.

We like our caramel popcorn, we like our snow cones and we like our
french fries, but they aren't purely about the beach. They are
multitaskers in a harried modern life. Caramel popcorn evokes the
beach but also the stress of bobbing for apples at country fairs. Snow
cones, yes, they say beach, but also Little League and missed glories.
French fries, well, they're everywhere -- menacingly attractive and
always inflicting guilt.

But taffy, salt water taffy, is the beach and only the beach. She's
our boardwalk siren. She seduces us with carefree innocence.

Taffy goes with flip-flops and pop-tops, not wingtips and wine. Taffy
goes with beach chairs, preferably the '50s models, the webbed-plastic-
and-aluminum kind you've fallen through at least once in your life,
laughing. There's a bad snapshot of it in the family album. Turn the
page and see the snap of that infernal windmill hole on the putt-putt
course.

Each bite-size taffy kiss is so sweet -- sticky, gooey, but so sweet.
Chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Molasses, cinnamon and peanut
butter. Banana. Close your eyes and you smell creamy peppermint.

Keep them closed and you feel Mom rubbing Coppertone on your cheeks.
You wipe the sea salt from your eyes. Your hair blows in the sunset
breezes off the ocean. You feel free in your eternal youth.

When we arrive at Ocean City's boardwalk this summer, we make a
beeline toward Dolle's Candyland. Dolle's will sell 6 million pieces
of taffy before Labor Day.

"It developed as a souvenir treat," says Rudolph "Bunky" Dolle, 58,
the ponytailed patriarch of his family's taffy empire. "I think
everybody who goes home from Ocean City takes a box of salt water
taffy with them."

We find our favorite flavor and chew away, savoring the pleasure. We
savor moments at the beach, in a way we cannot -- or do not -- savor
them on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Why is that?

Perhaps the paramount question is: Why do we chew taffy? Is it the
beach's deceiving way of making us feel the invincibility of youth,
regardless of the risk?

"I love salt water taffy, but my fillings don't," says 69-year-old
Lois Smith of Fenwick Island, Del. "There's no such thing as sucking
salt water taffy."

Her friend Ethel Hurley says she is addicted to orange and vanilla.
And it's a costly addiction.

"I've pulled a couple of fillings out in my time with taffy," says the
57-year-old from Cambridge, Md. "My dentist loves to do the caps, so
he likes me eating taffy. He likes the business. It seems like every
summer I'm back with another filling."

Taffy.

It seduced Phoebe in an episode of the television hit "Friends." Ross
offered Phoebe a piece of salt water taffy, so she started chewing.

What "is up with this stuff?" Phoebe screamed. "Oh God, is it gum? Is
it food? What's the deal?"

She chewed a little more.

"Oh, it's nice," Phoebe concluded. "May I try a pink one?"

It is mesmerizing to watch taffy blossom from a kettle of corn syrup
and sugar.

Generations of Dolles have worked to perfect taffy since 1910. Let's
follow their recipe.

You cook, at 250 degrees, a mixture of corn syrup and sugar, with a
splash of water and a dash of salt -- but not salt water. Then you
cool it. You end up with something resembling a 35-pound block of
Silly Putty.

Next comes the fun part. You put the block on a pulling machine, which
stretches the taffy over and over. As the elastic taffy is pulled, air
circulates to make it softer. Like beating an egg white, the taffy
turns from a translucent yellow to a satin white.

Now you add flavoring and pastel coloring. Always pastels -- the
pinks, blues and sunny yellows of Bermuda shorts and plastic hair
clasps. You feed the taffy into the wrapping machine and voila! Bow
twists at the ends.

For the Dolles, taffy is big business. You can buy assorted kisses and
sticks for $6.99 per pound; a mini-tote for $7.35; sugar-free (does
selling taffy without sugar violate some taffy law?) for $7.50 per
pound.

Taffy became so popular at the beach -- inextricably connected --
because, unlike chocolate, it could withstand the blazing sun without
melting. Could that be why we chew it? Because it's so strong? So
tenacious? We chew and chew, but that sweet kiss stays glued to our
teeth. It won't give up. It won't back down.

If you ask, taffymakers will tell you how it got the name salt water
taffy. It was the 1880s, on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. A man --
his name was David Bradley, according to lore -- sold candy in a
kiosk. One night, Bradley forgot to board up his stand and a tidal
surge covered his candy with a salty, sticky sea mist.

The next morning, a child asked Bradley, "What do you have to sell,
sir?"

"How 'bout some salt water taffy?" he replied.

The name stuck.