CatCF: A Sweet Retelling - Chapter 1

    As you would have probably guessed by now, this is a story about an ordinary little boy named Charlie Bucket. Now, Charlie, at first glance, seemed like a typical, average young boy, and, for the most part you would be correct with that assumption. Charlie was not faster than any other child in the world, nor was he any stronger or wealthier than other children. However, what he lacked in those areas, he made up for with being a rather imaginative and clever young lad (well, as clever as a ten-year old boy could probably get, but still clever, nonetheless), and would often come up with ideas for stories and even inventions from time to time. Though, Charlie’s little habit of dreaming would occasionally slip into daydreaming, which got him into some scraps of trouble at school during his classes or when doing his homework (in fairness, his classes were usually very, very boring). Still, in spite of this, Charlie was still a good-hearted and charming boy, who would always give his finest “How d’you do?” to the people he’d meet.

    The rest of his family consisted of his father, his mother, and his four grandparents. These four grandparents consisted of the father and mother of Mr. Bucket, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, and the father and mother of Mrs. Bucket, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. Now, Grandpa Joe, though extremely old, was still a fun-loving man who just loved to tell fascinating stories from his youth, including his time doing service in the war (though, it was hard to tell when was telling the truth, or just telling tall tales, though it didn’t really matter to Charlie, since he loved Joe’s stories either way). Joe’s wife, in contrast, was a bit more down-to-earth than her husband, and usually liked to keep to her knitting and sewing (often knitting and sewing things for the rest of her family, especially for little Charlie, who needed the extra warmth for the winter most of all, due to him being prone to becoming sick during that time of the year), but she was probably the sweetest old grandmother you could possibly find. Grandpa George, on the other hand, was a somewhat curmudgeonly, old Irishman, who almost alway seemed to be grumbling about what was wrong with life and the world nowadays, and seemed to be waiting for the day when he would, as he put it, “finally get to meet the good Lord.” Grandma Georgina, a brash woman of advancing years from Scotland, had less of a “glass half-empty” outlook on life than her husband did, though she did have a habit of being, well, “inappropriate”, such as claiming that she could show attractive young men that she’s “still got it” after downing more than quite a bit of gin (Charlie’s parents promised to tell Charlie just what sort of “it” Georgina had when he was older). Even in spite of their foibles, Charlie still loved his grandparents, and the same could most definitely be said about his own parents as well, even if they didn’t exactly live in the lap of luxury (an understatement, to be sure).
    
    You see, the whole of this family lived in a small cottage on small hill near the edge of a small city in England (though, I couldn’t tell you which one, just that it was far away from the hustle and bustle of cities like London or Oxford), right next to a not-so-small Garbage Dump. The house wasn’t nearly large enough to accommodate all seven people, and, as you could probably, life was extremely uncomfortable for them all. There were only six rooms in the place altogether (though, technically it was four rooms and a cellar, so it was even less than that); there was one “main room”, where all four of the grandparents slept in the same large bed on both sides (or, rather basically lived in the same large bed, since they hadn’t gotten out of it as far back as Charlie could remember, since all four were so old and had lost even the will to get out of the bed), one bedroom where Mr. and Mrs. Bucket slept, a kitchen (which just barely counted as a room, seeing as how it was practically right out in the open and almost right next to where the Grandparents slept), a room in the cellar where Mr. Bucket would occasionally tinker on home-made inventions of his, a bathroom, and one makeshift bedroom in the attic for little Charlie. Now, in the Summertime and in Spring, living conditions weren’t completely terrible, but in the Winter, freezing cold drafts would blow throughout the house and make the floor feel like ice if one walked on it without socks or slippers, which was just unbearable. There wasn’t any question of them just moving out and buying a better house, or even building a proper bedroom for Charlie. They were far too poor for any of that.

   Because they were so poor, both parents and even Charlie had to put in their fair share of work in order to make ends meet, with Charlie recently having taken up an evening newspaper route after school. As for Charlie’s parents, Mr. Bucket was the main breadwinner of the family, and worked at the local Smilex toothpaste factory, where he would sit all day screwing the caps onto toothpaste tubes after they had been filled. The hours were long and tedious, and the amount of money he was paid wasn’t nearly enough to help provide for his family, no matter how hard he worked or however fast he screwed the caps on. Mrs. Bucket would usually spend one half of the day taking care of the house and cooking for family, while spending the other half of the day working at an old laundromat, where she would wash and dry other people’s laundry in a very old-fashioned and tedious way (the town in which Charlie lived in was very old-fashioned as well, so having a washing machine and dryer, or even having a laundromat with those things, was quite the luxury). While she only had to work there every other day, the pay was no greater than the pay which Mr. Bucket earned, and she would sometimes even have to work there till late in the evening, even after Charlie got home from school.

   At home, though, Mr. Bucket still did his best to keep a glass-half-full attitude, tried his best to help the family by fashioning together some homemade contraptions together in order to make their lives a little easier (such as repairing an old vacuum cleaner he found thrown out in the dump, building a “work-in-progress” automatic woodcutting device in order to save time on chopping wood for the stove, repairing an old wireless radio set, and a “work-in-progress” shave and haircutting device, just to name a few, and to answer your question, the reason why he didn’t sell his inventions in the city is because they weren’t “new” and “up-to-date”), and loved to play with his similarly imaginative son when he had the chance, even helping him build a small clubhouse in a tree that was just between Charlie’s house and the Dump, using mostly the debris that was left out near the house. Mrs. Bucket was more down-to-Earth and practical than her husband, rejecting some of her husband’s more ludicrous inventions in favor of using a bit of elbow grease around the house, and was the de facto enforcer of house rules, but she still loved her husband and her son dearly, even if there weren’t enough hours in the day for her to spend time with both of them.

   Now, even though the Buckets were definitely poor, they could still afford some of the basic essentials: running water, electricity, and heating… though they would sometimes have trouble with the last one, and had to resort to wood and coal-powered stoves whenever Mr. Bucket had to fix the heater. The main problem they had was food. Even with the combined pay of Mr. and Mrs. Bucket’s jobs, and Charlie’s paper route, all that they could afford were small loaves of bread with margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbages for lunch, and watery cabbage soup for supper. There were days when things were a bit better, and they were able to buy some things like lard, eggs, and some meat (particularly corned beef), but those days seemed to only come once or twice a month if they were lucky.  
   The Buckets didn’t starve, of course, but every one of them usually went from day to day with a devastatingly half-empty feeling in their stomachs, and just didn’t feel completely well-nourished after they ate. They all had dreams of one day being able to eat more scrumptious and satisfying meals, but Charlie was probably the one who suffered the most of all. Although his mother, father, and even his grandparents would usually do their best to give them some of their own share of lunch or supper to help him keep up his strength, it still usually wasn’t enough for a growing boy his age. Oh, how he desperately craved something more filling and satisfying than cabbage soup or boiled potatoes. But the thing he longed for and dreamed of eating more than anything else in the world was… CHOCOLATE.

   Walking his way to school in the mornings, Charlie would walk by the local sweet shop and see great slabs of chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he pause briefly to stop and stare and press his nose against the glass his mouth watering like mad. Several times a week, he would see other children taking creamy chocolate bars out from their pockets, lunch boxes, or backpacks and see them munching greedily into them without the slightest thought, and that, of course, was just pure, absolute torture for the boy.

   Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie Bucket ever get to taste even the tiniest bit of chocolate. The whole family saved up their money for that special occasion, and when the great day arrived, Charlie was always presented with one small chocolate bar to eat all by himself. And each time he received his birthday bar, he would place it carefully in a particular place in the refrigerator, and treasure it as though it were a bar of the finest solid gold; and for the next few days, he would allow himself to only look at it, but never touch it. Then at last, when he couldn’t take it any longer, he would peel back at a tiny bit of the wrapper at one corner to expose a tiny bit of chocolate, and then he would take just a tiny bite of the sweet delicious bar, which he would savor just long enough to allow the taste to spread out slowly over his tongue. He would then take another tiny nibble the next day, and the day after that, and so forth and so on. In this way, Charlie would make his fifty-pence (sixty-five cents in American money, just to be clear for readers on both sides of the pond) bar of birthday chocolate last him for as long as he could mange.

   Ah, but dear readers, I have yet to tell you about the one awful thing that tortured Charlie, our dear, sweet lover of chocolate, more than anything else. For him, this was far, far worse than seeing slabs of chocolate in shop windows or watching other children mindlessly munching away at creamy candy bars right in front of him. It was the terribly torturing thing you could imagine. You see, dear readers, in the town itself which Charlie lived in, within sight of Charlie’s very own house, there was an ENORMOUS CHOCOLATE FACTORY!

  Just imagine that!

   Oh, but this wasn’t simply any old ordinary chocolate factory, and it was owned by no ordinary, everyday man. It was the largest and most famous factory to ever produce chocolate, candies, and all manners of sweets and confectioneries in the entire world! It was the Wonka Chocolate Factory, owned by none other than by a man known as Mr. Willy Wonka, the greatest, wealthiest, and most famed chocolatier and inventor of chocolates and other sweets the world has ever known! Very little was known about Mr. Wonka himself, but the stuff that was known about him was the stuff of legends, and his factory matched the enormity of the stories surrounding him. There were huge iron gates to the North, South, East, and West leading into it, and a high wall surrounding all four gates, and towering chimneys which belch out smoke, and one could even occasionally hear strange whizzing coming from deep inside the factory. In fact, it was so tremendous and breathtaking, that at times it felt a little intimidating, even scary, if you stood near it, what with the way it towered over the town and cast it’s massive shadow. However, you would immediately forget your worries as you stood outside the factory gates when you soon learned for yourself that outside the walls, for half a mile around in every direction, the air was scented by the heavenly rich smell of melting chocolate!

   Twice a day, on his way to school in the morning and his way home during his paper route, little Charlie Bucket had to walk right past the gates of Wonka’s factory. Every time he by, he would walk as slow as he possibly could, and he would take long and deep sniffs and savored every bit of that chocolatey smell. Oh, how he loved that smell!

   Although he loved Willy Wonka for his chocolates (or, at least whatever little bit of chocolate of Wonka’s his family was able to afford for his birthday), Charlie also admired Mr. Wonka for the exciting, charismatic tales stories surrounding Mr. Wonka and his life (which Charlie just so happens to knows about, thanks to his Grandparents, particularly Grandpa Joe), as well as for his ingenuity and skills at being an inventor and innovator of all things related to chocolate. Such accomplishments of Wonka’s (mixed in with him taking after his father and grandfather when it came to imagination and a drive to create) soon led to young Charlie being inspired to hopefully become an inventor himself one day so that he could help his family, with dreams of even opening up his very own sweet shop.

   Until that day, though, he was just Charlie Bucket; a poor boy with not much to his name other than a paper route, a clubhouse he and his father built, a tendency to daydream, and small bit of optimism to help him get through life. Still, Charlie continued to hope, dream, and wish for things to get better for his family, even if things seemed almost hopeless at this point. But even though he loved his family very much, and would do anything in order to help them rise above their troubles, the one other thing he dreamed and wished for more than anything was to one day be able to go inside Wonka’s grand factory itself, just to satisfy his curiosity to see what it was like in there, and to finally meet Willy Wonka himself.

   However, dear readers, even though he didn’t exactly consider himself to be the lucky type, Charlie Bucket was the luckiest boy in the entire world, even if he didn’t know it yet, and little did he know that his wishes were soon to be granted in probably the most unlikely of ways.