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Steve Kihm loved Hershey's bars when he was growing up. Not the kind with almonds — just plain milk chocolate candy bars. Kihm didn't get them very often because times were tight when he a young boy in La Crosse. But he'll never forget the Hershey's bar he got for going fishing with his Grandpa Leo near Goose Island when he was 9. Kihm didn't like fishing, but his mother convinced him to go by slipping a Hershey's bar in his lunchbox. The chocolate bar spent the night at the bottom of the Mississippi River after his grandpa's boat tipped over and sank. Kihm ate it the next day anyway when they retrieved the boat. "That was his first and last time fishing, I think," said his mother, Jean Kihm of La Crosse. "He really, truly didn't want to go." Steve Kihm now lives in Madison, and he's told his candy bar story many times over the years. A friend convinced him to publish it after he e-mailed it to the friend's son in an attempt to get the boy to read. Kihm's book, "The Lost Candy Bar," was recently recognized by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association, which named it a 2004 merit award winner in the humor category earlier this month. "It took one hour to write that book because I never intended it to be a book," Kihm said. "I carried it in my head for years." Kihm, a 1974 graduate of Central High School and a 1978 graduate of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, also earned two master's degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He works as a financial analyst for the Wisconsin Public Service Commission. His parents, George "Dewey" and Jean, still live in the childhood home where he grew up. Jean Kihm said she can't remember if she knew that her son ate that sickly, river-soaked chocolate bar on that fateful day, but she does remember everything else about the story. And no, he didn't get sick afterwards. "It was quite a day," she said. "I think he explained it pretty well." ______ Read about it - "The Lost Candy Bar," a book by La Crosse native Steve Kihm, can be ordered off Web sites at www.goblinfernpress.com or Amazon.com, or by calling (608) 442-0212. Anastasia Mercer can be reached at (608) 791-8256 or smercer@lacrossetribune.com. |