In April of 1994, I had the honor of sitting down with Carl-Ernst VonNougat for an interview. I am still in disbelief that I was the person to help break Von Nougat's extended silence. This was actually due to an item that appeared in my article on the Snickers bar in the Spring 1989 issue of Candy Time.

In that article, I made reference to H.A. Hershey's famous almond and chocolate synergy of the early 1920's as the first real attempt to expand the world of the candy bar beyond the pedestrian chocolate slab. Naturally, at the time, this was the accepted history of the candy bar. It was a fact as commonly known as "Lincoln presented the Gettysburg address"; it was as far from a controversial claim as one could make in the world of popular confections.

Shortly after "Snickers-Who's Laughing Now?" was published, I received a call from the Von Nougat estate attorneys. This was an understandable shock, since Carl-Ernst Von Nougat hadn't spoken publicly since the mysterious disappearance of his father, the mercurial Hans Von Nougat, in 1957. Von Nougat the elder's life was the subject of wild rumor, intense emotion, and hotly debated significance in candy bar circles. It has been said that

Hans Von Nougat was a powerful mystery man, the Rasputin of candy. It was difficult to attribute anything to him concretely, yet he was an object of incredible fancy and speculation in serious candy literature. Unfortunately, rather than clarify and continue his father's legacy (whatever that may have been), young Carl-Ernst instead chose silence and seclusion, leaving others to plot the course of candy in the last half of the 20th century. But my article, for whatever reason, stirred in Carl-Ernst a need to break the silence. The history, and perhaps future, of confectionary arts was to be altered permanently as a result.

It took over a year of negotiation before I was finally able to meet with Carl-Ernst Von Nougat at his Hudson Valley estate. Despite the amount of groundwork that had been laid, I was in no way prepared for the bombshells that he would rain upon my head on that remarkable day. I fully expected Von Nougat to speak about his father, the candy bar industry of yesterday and today, and perhaps even his own seclusion. After all, what more was there to tell? I would soon know.

It was Von Nougat himself, in his very first words to me upon our greeting, that first let me see what a special day in candy bar history, and indeed my own life, that this was going to be. I waited in his large library, surrounded by dark walnut paneling and what must have been many thousands of impressive volumes, stretching practically all the way to the vaulted 20-foot high ceilings. At last, Carl-Ernst Von Nougat burst into the room with a vigor no (rumored) octogenarian should possess. He strode to his large leather chair, sat down and folded his hands over his crossed legs.

For many moments, he simply gazed at me. I expected that he was evaluating me, asking himself if I looked worthy to hear his story. I dared not speak. At long last, in a thick Austro-German accent, Carl-Ernst cried out. "Your ignorance insults me. Everything you think you know about the art of the candy bar is wrong! Are you prepared to learn the truth?" and here, Von Nougat stood and turned toward the large window overlooking the Hudson

River in the valley below. He spread his arms wide and looked to the sky. "Are you prepared to learn the truth, and tell that truth to the world?"

I wasn't about to say no. Our conversation follows.

Herbert Lindstrom-"Why have you decided to speak after all of these

years?"

Carl-Ernst Von Nougat-"That is the wrong question! You do not begin with that question! You must first ask what I read in your trivial Snickers article that made me want to speak."

(Silence. Long, uncomfortable silence.)

HL-"What was it about the Snickers article that made you want to speak?"

CEVN-"Your article was filled with untruths and lies. Naturally, this is not your fault. You are only repeating what you have been told, what everyone has been told, about our common history. But the real history of the candy bar must now be revealed."

HL-"What truth is that? What are the lies?" My heart was racing; I could tell this was not going to be an ordinary interview.

CEVN-"In due time! Do you simply expect me to utter a sentence to reveal all that is hidden?"

At this point, Von Nougat stood and began to slowly circle the room. He continued:

CEVN-"Hershey, Reese, Nestle, these are the names we all associate with the great candy bars. It is true that they have a long history in this business, but what is not known is the debt that they all owe to my father, the great Hans Von Nougat"

Carl-Ernst turned to face me, with fire in his eyes.

CEVN-"Do you remember what you wrote about Hershey, the innovator? All lies! Hershey cowered in my father's presence. I saw this with my own eyes! He fawned over my father, begged for his approval. They all did. Until my father showed them the way, they called it "innovation" when they madetheir pathetic chocolate bars a different shape! My father laughed at them, as an adult would laugh at a stupid child. Then, one night, my father heard Hershey bragging about making chocolate with the Hershey name imprinted in it. Hershey was such a proud fool! Well, Hans Von Nougat had heard enough. It was at that time that my father revealed to them his masterpiece."

And with that, Carl-Ernst Von Nougat walked to the east wall of his library, part of which was obscured by red velvet curtains. He grabbed a thick, gilded rope hanging beside the curtain, and turned to face me. "Behold!" he cried, pulling the rope; the curtains parted, and it was then revealed to me.

Placed before me, on the wall, was the Candy Bar Table of Elements. I felt as Watson or Crick must have felt when the DNA sequence was first revealed to them, or how Neil Armstrong felt upon that first lunar step. I was peering into the very fabric of the candy being. There was no turning back.

I stared in disbelief, jaw hanging open, eyes wide. After a pause, I began to speak, stammering.

HL-"Wh…What is that?"

CEVN-"You know damn well what it is!"

Von Nougat was right, of course. Intuitively, we had all known that the CB-TOE (as it is now known), or something very much like it, must have existed. But it's presence and form had only been hypothesized, never formalized or even attempted, until that very day in Carl-Ernst Von Nougat's library.

HL-"It's incredible. Did your father do this?"

CEVN-"I do not believe it is correct to say that he "did" it. For the most part, the relationships represented here are natural ones; they exist in nature. But just as gravity was waiting for Newton to discover it's secret, so to this mystery waited for it's own inspired genius to translate and share it."

HL-"How did he find it? When did he find it? Why didn't he share it with the world? What about…"

CEVN-"Ah, ah. Yes, I know. So many questions! Come, look at the table." My mind was reeling. I was utterly unprepared for this. All my questions about what Carl-Ernst had done in his seclusion seemed pathetic, trivial, embarrassing.

I approached the CB-TOE as though it was the Holy Grail, and for that matter, I still think of it in those terms. For the first time, all the bases, elements, and nuts were laid out in their proper relationships, including their proper polarities. Even the unstable nuts were listed. It was truly a marvel to see that this knowledge that we have grasped for so clumsily for so long had existed, so long ago, intact. But how long?

HL-"When was it discovered?"

CEVN-"I cannot say for sure." A dark pall cast over his Von Nougat's face. "No one alive knows the full history of the table, or exactly how my father developed it."

We both stood in silence. There was clearly more to Hans Von Nougat and the CB-TOE than his son was ready to reveal at this time. There was a pain there, a darkness. It filled the room like a special dark chocolate.

HL-"I need to make sure I understand what this all means. While the rest of the confectionary world was applauding itself for printing names in chocolate, the only publicly-known medium for candy bars at the time, your father was discovering and testing these combinations."

CEVN-"Not just discovering and testing, but anticipating! Never forget that! My father saw things that no one could have fathomed."

HL-"Yes! Exactly! He was both discovering and anticipating combinations, and establishing the very laws of candy nature that would prove to guide candy creation for decades to come!"

CEVN-"That's exactly correct. He knew what the bases would be. Chocolate, of course, was well known at the time, but white chocolate? Caramel? English Toffee? Absurd! It simply was not done. He saw a world where these things were possible. He tirelessly researched all of the combinations and elements you see here. And did he do it for money or fame? No! He did it to advance the human condition, to help us unlock the mysteries of candy so that future generations could have better lives.

HL-"But how did he know? For example, how did he know that coconut and Mint were both polar negatives? How did he know about the instability of cashews? How could he have possibly foreseen BF; foretelling of the Butterfinger bar 30 years before its existence?"

CEVN-"Do not forget, Hans Von Nougat was an inspired genius! A genius sees things others cannot see. This knowledge is not known today because no one can compare to my father's genius." He paused, looking at the floor. "Not even me."

HL-"But you said he showed it to the others. Did they not remember the Table? Did they not copy it?"

CEVN-"You have to understand how seeing the Table impacted Hershey, Reese and the others. When my father first revealed it, they all immediately and quite literally went insane. Insane with rage. Insane with jealousy. Insane with their own inadequacies. Their only conceivable reaction was to deny what they had seen. They mocked him. 'A cookie in a candy bar,' they cried? 'Peanut butter and chocolate?' They literally laughed in his face. Understandably, he flew into a rage. He grew violent. He thrust the Table into their faces. He commanded them to gaze upon it. Their laughs soon turned to screams of horror. They resisted at first, but it was futile. They recoiled as though looking into the sun. They grabbed their heads with their hands and begged for mercy, but my father showed them none. 'Look at it!' he bellowed. 'Look at the truth!' His cruelty was terrifying, even to me.

"They all fled his lab in terror; it was pandemonium. But as they tossed and turned while trying to forget the events of that night, they were all haunted by the visions of the Table. The more they tried to resist its laws, the more they understood how powerless they were, and how brilliant my father really was."

HL-"But they eventually did make their own candy bars, candy bars which conformed to the laws of the Table."

CEVN-"Of course they did. They were bound to stumble upon the natural combinations sooner or later. But each of them only mastered a portion of what the table predicted, and they did so years down the road. My father saw all of the possibilities while they were still perfecting their meager and trivial chocolate bars."

HL-"Why didn't your father simply make the bars himself? What did he let them set the course of history?"

CEVN-"Something changed in my father after he revealed the Table. Something terrible happened to him that night. He was no longer content to be confined by the laws he helped discover. He had broken down the world into the most basic of building blocks. But can you expect a man who has peered into the very vortex of candy creation to be satisfied? It was not enough to establish the laws; he wanted to exceed them!"

HL-"He needed a new frontier?"

CEVN-"Yes, a new challenge. What are laws for but to be broken? But if it takes a brilliant man to reveal nature, it takes a brilliant and troubled visionary to break through those laws, whatever the consequences may be. At first he insisted on combining negative polarity elements. Candy bars with mint and peanut butter, or cherry and BF."

HL-"No! That cannot be! I don't believe you!"

CEVN-"Oh no? I was there. I saw this with my own eyes. I saw the test tasters. It was a nightmare. I begged him to stop. I knew that he was the one man capable of truly changing the world with a candy bar, but for the first time, I began to question whether that change would be for better or worse. Of course, he knew that even more than I did. I believe he knew the risks involved, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered to him was showing that he was the true master of the table! That he could not be bound by the natural laws he helped to discover! Eventually, I knew that something terrible…"

Carl-Ernst Von Nougat drifted for a moment, lost in a dark thought.

HL-"What? What did he do?"

CEVN-"It is painful to recount. Forgive me. It is so difficult." Von Nougat sighed, and continued. "He knew, by his own development of the law of Positive Correlation, that you could create a candy bar using any number of positive polarity bases and elements. In his view a common child knew that you could put chocolate, caramel, fudge, nougat, peanuts, peanut butter and wafers together and have a fundamentally sound, if not low brow candy bar."

HL-"That sounds like the Whatchamacallit Bar."

CEVN-"Indeed. But that bar is also proof of the axiom that just because a bar is theoretically sound, that doesn't mean it should be eaten. I only wish my father had ideas as mundane as the Whatchamacallit. My father's contempt for the easy way drove him to the other extreme. You see, my father attempted to validate the Law of Negative Correlation."

HL-"Surely, you don't mean…"

CEVN-"Yes, it's true! Mint! BF! Coconut! Marshmallow! Cherry! All in one bar, with no positive elements or bases whatsoever! He worked on it for months. I begged him to stop. He became obsessed with the Law of Negative Correlation. And then, late one night I heard screams from his laboratory, awful screams of terror and regret. The lights flashed; the estate's auxiliary power was activated. I ran up the stairs to the lab. I burst in, and my worst fears had been confirmed."

HL-"What? What happened?"

Von Nougat was shuddering, burying his face in his hands as the events of that terrible night came flooding back to him.

CEVN-"It's so horrible. I ran into the lab. There was only a small pile of olives, coconut, turnips and beef boullion. It was the most awful thing I have ever witnessed.

HL-"And your father?"

CEVN-"He was nowhere to be found. The window to the lab was broken. I have not seen him since that night."

HL-"You sound like you are skeptical."

CEVN-"I cannot say for sure, but I am one of the few who believes that he did not die that night in his lab."

HL-"What do you think may have become of him?"

CEVN-" I have some theories. Just theories, mind you. I do not know for certain. I believe he made his way to Brazil in the years after he disappeared. Do you recall the Ay, Caramba! candy bar that was sold there in the early 1970's?"

HL-"Of course! That was the bar with chocolate, coca powder, garlic and habanero peppers. Who could forget that? Wait. Do you believe your father created that bar? Of course! It makes so much sense to me now."

CEVN-"Well, we cannot know for certain that it was his work. No one has come forward to claim responsibility for the bar, however. But it fit perfectly with his regrettable philosophy toward the end, that a candy bar should "challenge" the eater by redefining what candy actually could be.

HL-"How do you think it all ended for your father?"

CEVN-"I don't know. Well, I hope, but I'm not optimistic. He was driven by his own demons. He danced with the devil and paid the price."

HL-"What would he say about candy bars today?"

CEVN-" He would say that they all exist as he predicted. He would claim They are all derivative of his own work, and he would be right."

HL-"Is there a bar today that you think he would respect?"

CEVN-" Once, in a moment of drunken candor, he told me he had a true admiration for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. He knew that their creation was inevitable, but he couldn't believe what a nice job Reese had done with them; he was truly humbled by their existence. Not just the taste and consistency, but the whole cup idea. That really blew him away."

HL-"Finally, what is your father’s legacy?"

CEVN-"He leaves two legacies, I believe. Obviously, he defined the world in a way it had not been defined before. He showed us the very building blocks of existence. We owe a large debt to him for that, and it is for that reason that I have spoken out. But he also leaves another legacy, a far more troubling one. When we believe we have mastered the very laws of creation, we are mistaken. To attempt to reorder a natural order is a fool’s game indeed. The world doesn’t need a chive and white chocolate candy bar; candy is already perfect. It cannot be improved upon, no matter how brilliant the manipulator might be."