I wish I were better read and better traveled and could regale you with tales of Bloomsday, but you’ll need to go elsewhere for that. I struggled with Joyce and the trip to Ireland ain’t happening til the kid is out of college.

So instead, I will tell you about my great-grandfather Glenn, who despite being very much a man of his time, also made excellent fudge.

Grandpa Glenn was a tough old Midwestern guy. He spent his younger days repairing taxi cabs in Chicago; he moved back to southern Illinois and ran a car dealership, farmed, played the stock market. He was one of those guys who was apparently just good at whatever he did—he was also a crack shot and a champion checkers and rummy player.

The man was also a chocolate fiend. Candy bars were stashed everywhere in his house, including the bathrooms. My first experience with making myself sick came at his hands when I was four or five: In the course of just a few hours he fed me a pile of fudge, two Hershey bars, and a chocolate milkshake.

So I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that when he decided he wanted fudge, he went for it. I’m not sure how he chased my grandmother out of the kitchen for this; maybe she didn’t like sweet stuff as much as he did. My mom says he wasn’t perfect at this; she does remember times he dished up stuff that was quite gooey. This makes me laugh because my memory is of stuff that was pretty dry and crumbly. But the smell—oh, my god. When he was boiling up Hershey’s, his entire house smelled like heaven.

And he’s pretty much the only one in the family who came close to success on a regular basis. My grandma and I tried a few times and the results were only fit to pour over ice cream. My mom refused to even try. When I grew up and had the internet to guide me, I still couldn’t pull it off—I always wound up with soup or concrete. Plus, my family wasn’t big on the candy, which made it a terrible waste of sugar and cocoa; that; in turn meant that my opportunities to experiment were pretty limited.

My sister-in-law makes some pretty amazing peanut butter fudge. Someone else in the family told me she “cheats” by using marshmallow fluff, but I reckon if it comes out right, it ain’t cheating. I don’t know if she’s ever made chocolate fudge; if she has, I’ve never gotten any.

All this talk is making me wonder if I should try it again. But first I’ll need to figure out how to get rid of the results, whatever they may be!