There is nothing more decadent or heavenly than chocolate, and South Bend has its own chocolate factory complete with a University collection of Notre Dame candies:

There’s the Domer—a chocolate truffle whipped until it is silky smooth, covered in pure milk chocolate, named in honor of Notre Dame's students and alumni. The Rockne—a mound of premium American chocolate blended with coconut, almonds and a cherry flavoring named for legendary football coach Knute Rockne. Irish Almonds—fresh roasted and covered in chocolate with a hint of mint. Nuts for ND—a selection of premium Brazil nuts, cashews, almonds, pecans and filberts coated in milk chocolate. The Notre Dame Bar—3 ounces of milk chocolate stamped with the school’s logo and wrapped in gold foil then nestled into a Madonna blue sleeve.

The factory sits on the outskirts of town. Except for the bright blue and gold sign outside, it looks like so many of the abandoned warehouses in South Bend. As soon as we’re inside, I spot the first of many photo-ops. There’s a large plywood cut-out of Lucy and Ethel working the conveyor belt filled with chocolate candies. Between them is the candy factory supervisor, sans her face, which is where mine goes as Marsha snaps the photo.

We walk into the store, and I take a deep breath. The rich, rustic smell of chocolate is intoxicating. I stand still for a moment to steady myself from the sugar rush while Marsha asks one of the store clerks when the next tour will start.

“Do you want the free tour or the Inside Scoop?” the clerk replies.

“What’s the difference?” I ask, and she explains that for $4 each we get the free tour plus the opportunity to make our own chocolate spoon, taste a sample right off the conveyor belt, watch the short video of the history of chocolate, and receive a goody bag with a special selection of chocolates. We decide it’s worth the $4 a piece just to get the chocolate spoon, so we sign up for the next tour, which doesn’t start for another forty-five minutes.

To kill time, we wonder through the little candy museum with its handmade signs and dusty old boxes of candies for every occasion dating back to the early 1900s. It only takes fifteen minutes, so we walk back to the store and order two café mochas. They come with chocolate spoons, and they are awesome. I can't sip; I have to gulp, but it’s hot and I burn my lip. I eat the whipped cream with my chocolate spoon while the mocha cools. Marsha skims the day's news in the South Bend Tribune while I read ingredients of the Notre Dame Bar.

Soon it’s time for the tour, and we assemble back in the entryway with the tour guide, an older woman and her daughter and three grandchildren. Of course, everyone has to wear hairnets because we’re actually going into the factory where they are making chocolate candy right now. The older woman puts the hairnet on like a yarmulka, leaving most of her puffy, yellow-dyed hair uncovered. I do not like it when people do not follow the rules. The tour guide doesn’t correct her and starts into her speech about how the cocoa beans are harvested.

From the entryway we walk into the first of several connected rooms where chocolate candy is conceived and birthed. The first room is where they make fudge, but they are not making any fudge today. What? While the tour guide explains why they are not making fudge today, I look ahead into the next room where I can see conveyor belts. The chocolate’s in there.

Since I’m older than the children, chronologically speaking, I let them go first as we move into the next room. We are in the main chocolate candy-making room. The holy of holies where not every visitor to the chocolate factory gets to go, unless they are on a tour. I see white chocolate-covered pretzels tumbling into large cardboard boxes. At the other end of the line is an Asian woman loading plain pretzels onto the belt where they pass through a shower of white chocolate and then head for the long cooling tunnel. It takes fifteen minutes for them to travel the length of the tunnel and tumble into the cardboard box.

White chocolate covered pretzels are all they are making today in the factory, but the tour guide has a secret stash of irregular chocolate candies to offer us. What makes them irregular is some lack of full immersion in chocolate or a happy melding of two candies together, like Siamese twins, or an unfortunate breakage or misshapen piece—all accidents and mishaps must be eaten like secret evidence. From these sacrificial offerings, I choose a malformed Domer. Marsha takes a turtle filled with caramel and pecans.

Next, we move to the packing and shipping department then look at oddly shaped candy molds for giant dinosaur teeth and Studebaker cars. Finally, it’s time to make our own chocolate spoons. After letting the children make their spoons, it’s my turn. I take my time carefully lowering the golden spoon into the vat of swirling milk chocolate. When it has been fully immersed to the proper depth, as instructed by the tour guide, I slowly raise it and apply a quick flick of the wrist to create the perfect curl on the tip of the spoon. Now it must set for a few minutes to harden.

Our last stop on the tour is the History of Chocolate movie narrated by Koko Beans. He's an overgrown mechanical puppet standing next to the projector screen who speaks with a Spanish accent. The movie is simply a time-filler while our chocolate spoons dry. But just when I'm losing interest, Koko proclaims to the strains of the Hallelujah Chorus:

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was chocolate!”

I'm not sure anyone else except Marsha could understand the sacrilegious irony and my full-bodied laughter. We say goodbye to Koko, return to the store to buy a few small bags of chocolate covered peanuts, pretzels, and malted milk balls and pick up our chocolate spoons. As we walk to the car, I notice that my clothes, my hair, even my skin smells like chocolate. I think to myself, "I have become chocolate."