Irrissa Semler weaved a ribbon of candy gingerly through the crimper, as her grandmother eyed her technique. The 7-year-old bunched the pliant strip carefully together before placing it among oodles of pink and green-striped confections.
Irrissa was helping her family make candy at the Depot in downtown Duluth on Saturday, an annual tradition for the Grambsch family since 1982. Old-fashioned candy is stretched, rolled and twisted into canes, curlicues and pillow-shaped orbs by the Loyal, Wis., family once a year before the holidays.
"The grandkids argue over who gets to go every year," said Clyde Grambsch, 89, Irrissa's great-grandfather.
Four generations of the family helped Saturday, using the candy-making machinery that once belonged to Clyde's father, who owned the Candy Kitchen in Loyal, in central Wisconsin, east of Eau Claire. The Depot purchased the equipment in 1981 and set up the candy store display. The family name is painted on the store window.
Grambsch grew up helping in the family store, earning a penny for rolling candy and two cents for picking up candy canes when they were finished.
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"Pa was in a tough business. If you didn't have enough to eat, you didn't buy candy," he said. "But at Christmastime it was always good."
Two of Grambsch's children, Carmella Anderson of St. Louis Park, Minn., and Bob Grambsch of Loyal, helped him Saturday.
The three worked as a team, with other family members watching, eating and offering advice. Bob pulled the warm concoction of sugar, syrup, food coloring and flavors of cinnamon, sassafras, clove or wintergreen, by hanging it on a hook and winding it around several times. It turned the transparent red into a creamy opaque pink. Then Clyde and Bob laid out stripes of green to meld with the pink, turning it into a log of soft candy. Clyde expertly rolled and twisted pieces from it and handed them to Anderson. She put the long strips into either a Buttercup cutter, made in 1892, to make strings of pillow-shaped candies. She crooked others into canes.
Both Anderson and Bob Grambsch learned the art of candy making at their grandfather's store, but don't pretend to know more than their father.
"I did simple jobs like rolling candy and wrapping it," Bob said. "The master is pulling it," indicating his father.
The family doesn't sell the candy, but those lucky enough to partake in family day at the Depot on Saturday enjoyed a complimentary abundance. And the Grambsch family takes home the leftovers.
"We hang the candy canes on our tree, unwrapped," Anderson said. "It was the way we grew up."
JANA HOLLINGSWORTH is a general assignment reporter. She can be reached Tuesdays through Saturdays at (218) 279-5501 or by e-mail at jhollingsworth@duluthnews.com .
