“Things I’m Not Eating Anymore” is a photography project I hope will also serve as motivation to continue improving my overall health and eating habits. You can read the first post in this series that does a much better job of explaining all that, here.
Before they added some traffic lights on Route 93, my childhood hometown didn’t even qualify as a one stoplight town. We did, however, have one blinking red light at a t-bone intersection on Main Street. I often wondered what the blinker was accomplishing that the also present, and perfectly functional, stop sign wasn’t already achieving.
Across from that superfluous light was an independent convenience store I often frequented. Most visits came after spending hot summer afternoons endlessly repeating Steve Alford shooting drills on the basketball court of nearby Whispering Willows park. I would almost always purchase a large orange Gatorade and, if I was flush with an extra quarter, some Bravos. One fateful day patronizing the store, I was accompanied by a childhood buddy. While I selected my usual fare, he picked an intriguing little snack bag off the shelf. Unfamiliar with the brand, I asked what he was buying.
“You mean to tell me you’ve never had Middleswarth Bar-B-Q chips before?” he asked incredulously. I shamefully admitted I had not.
“Oh, these chips are going to change your life.”
Teenage hyperbole to be sure, but he wasn’t wrong.
Middleswarth bar-b-q Potato Chips
Prior to that moment, I wasn’t exactly a potato chip guy. I most certainly wasn’t a barbecue potato chip guy. In my estimation, there’s nothing on earth that tastes worse than Frito-Lay’s barbecue abominations. But that small 25 cent bag of Middleswarth chips pinged a gooey part of my brain like nothing else had before. They were the perfect combination of crispiness, tanginess, with just a hint of sweetness. I’m not prone to throwing the “p” word around cavalierly, but these chips were snack food Perfection.
A lifelong love affair was born in the Conyngham Uni-Mart that day.
Over the years there have been a select few foods I struggle to eat in “responsible” portions once I get started. Middleswarth Bar-B-Q chips are chief among those. No matter its size, if there’s an open Middleswarth bag within my reach, it’s in imminent danger of being polished off in its entirety. But sometimes even literal distancing proved ineffective in dousing my potato chip urges.
Later in life, having moved to Connecticut well out of Middleswarth’s hyper-regional distribution range, I had to go to extreme lengths to satiate my Barb-B-Q chip obsession. Long before the Internet could bring anything to your doorstep in two days or less, I implemented my own version of Amazon Prime for snack foods. I required visiting Pennsylvania relatives to bring three regional food staples unavailable in new England with them as payment to see their grandchildren:
- One box of cold Senape’s Pizza
- One box of Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets
- As many Weekender sized bags of Middleswarth Bar-B-Q Potato as their vehicle could safely transport over state lines
To this day, my love Middleswarth Bar-B-Q chips continues unabated. Unfortunately, their addictive quality severely interferes with my current goal of limiting caloric consumption. I’m no longer the amped up metabolism superhero who as a teenager once polished off two family-sized Middleswarth bags over the course of a double-header at the concrete pit that was Veterans Stadium.
So goodbye for now Middleswarth. Don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re not life changing.
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