Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/250528
Photos by Gail Kamenish bit A DEEPER The Candy Clan By Anne Marshall For 93 years, one family (and a few very, very close friends) has sweetened up Louisville. I n the gray, early-morning light, the 600 block of East Market Street — with its church, restaurant and candy store — looks like a toy village that needs plugging in. It's 7:30, time for families to separate for school and work. Parents zip little ones into furry coats, packaging them for the January day. But on this downtown block, a family convenes in a boxy building that stretches a half city block long, a chocolate-scented time capsule called Muth's. Te storefront remains dark. Elegant turnof-the-century wood and glass display cases, along with historical black-and-white photos, won't wake until the store opens in an hour. But in the back rooms, it's lights on at 6 a.m. In the area devoted to packaging candy, it appears as if Ofce Depot, Hobby Lobby and Candyland ditched the 'burbs and moved into a Manhattan studio. Shelves of jellybeans, ribbons and gift boxes line walls, along with folders full of orders. Cramped or cozy, or maybe both, the space feels far from corporate. Family recipes cook in 93-yearold kettles two rooms back, all followed by memory, not a recipe card in sight. Everyone who works here shares DNA or a story that starts something like, "See, my little sister met her way back . . . ." It's not a particularly busy day at Muth's (sometimes pronounced with a chewy vowel: "Me-ewths" instead of "Mooths"), about a month before Valentine's Day, three months before their busiest season — Easter. Still, for an outsider walking in, even a lazy day presents itself like a family prepping for a holiday. Twenty-one-year-old Sarah Vories, whose 26 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.14 great-great-uncle and great-great-aunt, Rudy and Isabelle Muth, started the shop in 1921 (originally located one block west until I-65 construction moved them to the current location) sits on a stool packaging vanillacream chocolates. Te pretty brunette, a University of Louisville senior, walks with a quick, bouncy step. Today's brown cowboy boots give it extra punch. On her green sweater she's attached a Valentine sticker that reads, "True Love." Te wooden table she sits at, longer than a home's front door, is the one Muth's frst used to congeal popcorn balls and cut caramel. Across from Vories sits her pregnant cousin, Abbie. Next to Abbie, their Aunt "Rosie." As plastic bags crinkle, they debate what color eyes Abbie's baby might have. "What color are Chad's eyes? Blue?" Vories asks, her golden-brown eyes squinting. "Oh! Your baby's going to have blue eyes. I'm so jealous." A few feet away, two older women in hairnets, Patty Winchell and Frances Cox, gently slip chocolate heart suckers into plastic sheaths. Winchell wears glasses and Cox has a shock of gray curly hair sticking out the front of her hairnet. But from the back, when they walk, they look identical: blue smocks, shoulders slightly bent forward, thin legs shufing. Winchell arrived here 21 years ago. Her brother was friends with a relative of Rudy Muth. Cox is an old family friend. Vories and her 23-year-old brother Matt, a U of L graduate who studied communications, will likely take over Muth's once their mother Martha retires. Sarah's studying business. She's organized, a natural leader. Matt's quieter, funny. Te two bicker, mostly in jest over lost FedEx packing slips or Matt's frumpy-looking bags of chocolates for display. Rather than neatly stacked squares, they sit like beanbags. "It all eats the same," he says, smiling. Martha Vories appears from her ofce. She's 51 years old, just taller than fve feet and wears a baby-blue sweater that matches her eyes. About 20 years ago, Martha's ofce was where her three children and their nine cousins learned to crawl, walk and, eventually, run a candy shop. Martha's father, Stanley Bennett Sr., built a little day care in Muth's, complete with freproof carpet, changing table, rocker and bed. (As family legend tells it, Martha delivered Sarah on a Wednesday night and was back in the ofce on Friday, baby in tow.) Martha read an article decades ago that said if kids don't develop a fondness and pride for a family business early on, they may stray. "You have to get them in while they're young," she says. She makes her way back to the kitchen, a warm, dark, saccharine sprawl of brawny industrial mixers and kettles as wide as