Losing Jobs In My Hometown

Can you remember your first fieldtrip in school? I can’t remember what grade it was—either first or second, I’m sure—but I clearly remember climbing on board the school bus and traveling twenty miles to Eastman and a Stuckey’s candy plant. For a little kid, seeing an amazing array of machinery, conveyors, and packaging was pretty neat. Getting free samples was even better. But after about fifty years of making candy, the plant is closing.

Eastman is a quiet town. 5,400 residents. A handful of traffic lights. A regular slice of Americana. But by the standards of many, there’s not much to do there. High school football, hunting, and local politics are highlights. But to many folks around the country, one Eastman icon was easily recognizable… the home of Stuckey’s Candy.

When I was a kid, Stuckey’s stores lined the freeways. It all started with a roadside pecan stand opened by Mr. W.S. Stuckey. But Mrs. Ethel Stuckey thought if folks would stop to buy pecans, they would buy pralines, divinity, souvenirs, and gasoline. Turns out she was right. Ultimately, around 350 stores were built, some as far away from Eastman as California and Oregon.

Stuckey’s Candy was ultimately purchased by Standard Candy, the maker of Goo Goo Clusters. But over the decades the plant where it all started stayed open. And there are not a lot of places to work in Eastman. With 250 jobs, Standard Candy was one of the biggest. But Standard is closing the plant and, to their credit, relocating those jobs to Nashville.

With luck, the good folks of Eastman will attract another industry to the town. But for now, I’m sure town leaders and plant employees are pretty sad. The little kid inside me that remembers a tour, some free candy, and a place I still call my hometown, is a little sad, too.