Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Hershey Bar

© Thomas Wilson Shawcross 29 June 2005


Left to right: Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson, and their portly client

I admire the keen eye and highly developed powers of deduction possessed by Mr. Sherlock Holmes. This excerpt from The Red-Headed League will show what I mean (Dr. Watson begins the narration):

The portly client puffed out his chest with an appearance of
some little pride and pulled a dirty and wrinkled newspaper from
the inside pocket of his greatcoat. As he glanced down the
advertisement column, with his head thrust forward and the
paper flattened out upon his knee, I took a good look at the man
and endeavoured, after the fashion of my companion, to read the
indications which might be presented by his dress or appearance.
I did not gain very much, however, by my inspection. Our
visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace Brit-
ish tradesman, obese, pompous, and slow. He wore rather baggy
gray shepherd's check trousers, a not over-clean black frock-
coat, unbuttoned in the front, and a drab waistcoat with a heavy
brassy Albert chain, and a square pierced bit of metal dangling
down as an ornament. A frayed top-hat and a faded brown
overcoat with a wrinkled velvet collar lay upon a chair beside
him. Altogether, look as I would, there was nothing remarkable
about the man save his blazing red head, and the expression of
extreme chagrin and discontent upon his features.
Sherlock Holmes's quick eye took in my occupation, and he
shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning
glances. "Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time
done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason.
that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable
amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else."
Mr. Jabez Wilson started up in his chair, with his forefinger
upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.
"How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Holmes?” he asked.

I would love to possess such remarkable powers of observation and deduction! What I wouldn’t give to hear someone ask, “How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Shawcross?” In truth, however, there is a gap between my abilities in this area and those of Mr. Sherlock Holmes. This sad realization was rammed home to me this evening, as I cracked open the wrapper of a Hershey Bar.

I had gone to my local Publix Supermarket to buy some boneless pork chops. Due to my CADD*, my cooking skills are quite limited, but I have figured out how to turn on a Foreman Grill (plug it in) and use the oven timer to cook boneless pork chops for myself. Earlier, this week, my son Michael had visited me and cooked us some stir-fried rice (I don’t know how he did it; I did not pay attention), and he had grumbled because I did not have any peas or onions to add to the rice, eggs, and teriyaki sauce.

So, I made a special search of Publix to find where they hid their onions and their frozen peas, and I decided I would also get some candy bars as a treat for Michael (I knew where Publix hid their candy bars). Well, well, what have we here? Hershey Bars were on a buy-one-get-one-free sale. I bought two boxes of Hershey Bars with almonds.

Returning home, I cooked the pork chops and enjoyed a satisfying dinner of chops and bottled water. Then, I remembered the Hershey Bars. What if they had been poisoned? Remember about twenty years ago when someone poisoned some Tylenol capsules and some unsuspecting customer had died? I had better protect Michael by eating a Hershey Bar to see if it had been poisoned (or maybe two, just to be on the safe side). I had been secretly craving a chocolate bar since writing my story about Côte d’Or chocolate bars (Bread and Chocolate, 5 May 2005), and now I had two boxes of chocolate bars. It was too much to resist.

As I walked over to the pantry to get a box of Hershey Bars, I remembered the Hershey Bars of my youth. I would slide their black and silver paper outer sleeve off the bar, unwrap the foil inner lining, and break off one segment at a time, savoring the chocolaty taste experience to the fullest.

Now, I sliced open a box, took out a bar and carried it over to my computer. I would check my e-mail and eat a Hershey Bar. What fun! But wait a minute . . . this Hershey Bar didn’t have the familiar outer sleeve and inner foil. It had one-piece, self-contained plastic/paper hybrid packaging. I am not sure what the material is – it seems a bit like the packaging used in potato chip bags. And hey! The bar is not pre-formed in breakable segments; it is one piece, stamped with the word HERSHEY’S.

Hmmm . . . well maybe the bar with almonds had always been that way, and it was only the plain milk chocolate bar that had the segmented pieces? But when did the wrapper change? Was that a result of the Tylenol packaging scare?

I couldn’t recall. But, I knew that Sherlock Holmes would have known the answers to my questions, and I felt chagrined.

Then, it got worse. I remembered a conversation I had last month with my brother, Jim Shawcross. I was telling Jim about a flat tire that I recently discovered on my Jeep. I mentioned that the local gas station had repaired the flat by pushing a piece of plastic ribbon into the puncture hole. In passing, I said something like, “the inner tube must not have been punctured.”

There was a pause at the other end of the line. Then Jim said, “Car tires have not had inner tubes for the last forty years.” Jim is an engineer, so he knows things like that.

“What!?,” I shouted. “No inner tubes now?” I could remember patching the inner tube on one of the tires of my 1961 Ford Galaxy when I was in college. I had to fill a large metal tub with water and partially inflate the inner tube, then submerge it in water to see where the air bubbles escaped. Then, I had to patch the spot where the bubbles had come from. Was this a skill I had learned in vain? True, I had not used it since 1965, but it was nice to know I would know what to do if my local gas station was closed and couldn’t fix the tire for me.

I wasn’t ready to let this go so easily. “But Jim,” I entreated, “what about those “float trips” in which kids would sit in an inner tube and float down a river? Don’t they do that anymore?”

“No.”

Jim has always had a way of getting right to the point, while making it understandable at the same time. So, it was now apparent to me that inner tubes had not been around for nearly half a century, but I, with my keen powers of observation, had not yet picked up on this.

I bet Sherlock Holmes would have. Or Jim. Well, Jim did notice, so there is no need to speculate on that one.

Rats. How unobservant am I, anyway? I don’t know. I haven’t been paying any attention to this.

Ironically, I had been thinking of writing a Sherlock Holmes homage story one day. I suppose I would have to make the clues fairly broad:

My visitor bore every mark of being an average commonplace British super model. She wore a white cotton blouse, a black, pleated skirt, dark nylons and black patent-leather high heels. A single strand of pink pearls complemented her graceful neck. I thought I could detect a soupcon of Chanel No. 5 mixing with the aroma of coffee and bacon that was wafting into my office from the diner across the street.

“I suppose you will require a retainer fee,” she blushed. She reached into her purse, pulled out a Hershey Bar, and then a checkbook.

“You are a woman,” I said. “A beautiful woman who likes chocolate, if I am not mistaken. And, the tires of your car do not have inner tubes.”

"How, in the name of good-fortune, did you know all that, Mr. Shawcross?” she asked.



* TWS note: CADD is the medical acronym for Cooking Attention Deficit Disorder. I have written about this affliction of mine in several stories.