In the 1930s and '40s, there were plenty of stores that sold penny candy. Five of these stores were within a 10-minute walk of where I lived on the hillside above the Allegheny River in Lawrenceville.

The penny candy store we patronized most was Paddy Sullivan's place on 57th Street. It was my first candy store, at the time just a few doors from our house. I started going there when I was barely 3, right after Pittsburgh's great St. Patrick's Day flood in 1936.

Sullivan's store was at the edge of the rising water on the steeply sloping street above Butler Street, which was engulfed in 8 feet of water. Grateful that his store was spared, Mr. Sullivan gave out free candy to lots of little kids that week. I went there every day.

Not yet able to read or write as I examined the sugary treats before me, I said: "I want some of these, those and thums." Mr. Sullivan soon had to stop being grateful and the candy windfall ended.

Even if you only had a penny, you could buy at least one of just about anything inside those candy counter cases. Just browsing along the glass cases in search of one's candy of choice was the greatest fun for a little kid.

Farther up the hill on McCandless was Mandel's corner grocery store. Their candy selections included row after row of more expensive candy bars like Oh Henrys, Bit O' Honeys, PayDays and Powerhouses.

Herman and Pearl Mandel charged a little bit more than most area grocers, but they gave out free candies to Halloween trick-or-treaters. Penny candy items only, of course.

A few streets farther away was a candy store that also sold ice cream. Kirschbaum's, on Camelia Street, was basically a grocery store, but it had a fancy candy counter with lots of different stuff we never saw at Sullivan's or Mandel's.

The display cases were covered with rounded glass so you could look down into the shelves and trays without stooping down. Just to see so many different kinds of suckers, chocolate bars and other candy treats all at once made a trip to Kirschbaum's store appealing and appetizing.

On a hot summer day, your reward after the longer hike to Kirschbaum's was a big scoop of ice cream in a cone ... if you had a nickel. For me, that was once a week while I was collecting from my Post-Gazette paper route customers. It so happened that my route began at the house across the street from the store, where I got my papers hours before the store opened.

Like many grocery stores that survived through the Great Depression, Kirschbaum's had credit customers. Some took months to catch up on their debt. Older folks told us many a story about families who Kirschbaum's helped through bad times. A sign in the store reminded everyone: "Brother, don't worry. Today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday."

Across from the Catholic elementary school on 54th Street was Vaughn's, a corner convenience store that sold penny candy. Scores of kids congregated there at lunchtime and right after school, searching the candy counter that stretched the length of the store. Besides penny candy, there were all sorts of snacks and pastries for the richer kids who didn't bring a lunch to school ... to-die-for favorites like Twinkies, Snowballs, Ring Dings and Moon Pies.

Bubble gum was Vaughn's most popular penny candy. This proved to be a messy nuisance at the school, St. Kieran's. The Sisters of Charity nuns would not permit any gum chewing, especially bubble gum. Boys, who bought the gum for the baseball cards inside, would stick the chewed-up gum into the girls' hair. This caused panicky commotions.

It wasn't long before enough was enough for the nuns. One day, they stormed into Vaughn's and demanded that the sale of all gum, especially bubble gum, be stopped. The edict went into immediate effect.

After the big flood of 1936, our family moved farther up the hill from Sullivan's store. Miraculously, there was another candy store right across the street. It was actually a little bungalow house that was converted into a store during the Great Depression to provide lunches and snacks for city and WPA workers. Later it became a candy store, a far cry from the convenience stores of the time. The owners were the Cares, but we called Mr. Care "Major Minor."

Near the end of its days, the Major actually gave out free penny candy on Christmas, one piece per kid. We heard it was stale. The Health Department soon closed the store and the place was fumigated and turned back into a rental house again. The kids around our house didn't seem to mind much. Paddy Sullivan's candy store was still going strong and his prices and selections were still the best.

All five of these candy stores went belly up with the start of supermarkets. Sullivan's was converted back into the two-family flat it was nearly a hundred years ago. Mandel's also was changed back to a two-family flat. A large new home was built on the site of Kirschbaum's store. Vaughn's was closed in the 1960s, several years before the demise of the school. Major Minor's bungalow house, sans candy store, was bulldozed nearly 40 years ago.

Surprisingly, it is one of only two houses in my section of the old neighborhood that have bitten the dust in a new era of new times in Pittsburgh.