I CAN STILL TASTE IT.

Here is the most important lesson I learned on my recent excursion to the Dutch-settled farmlands of western Michigan: If someone offers you an innocent-seeming little button of Dutch licorice, even if that someone is your own father, do not accept. And if you do take it, just to be polite, FOR GOD'S SAKE DO NOT PUT IT IN YOUR MOUTH.

The Dutch, you see, do very strange things to licorice. They have one brand in particular, Double Zout (DZ). Which, of course, means "double salt".

Now, I knew that the Dutch made salty licorice. I have dim memories of elderly acquaintances with thick accents tricking me into eating some of the stuff. (They lied to me - they called it candy.) But that was well over twenty years ago. How bad could it really be, I thought? Besides, we were in Holland, at a frickin' wooden shoe factory. I was swept up in the moment. I was weak.

So I slipped this little black button into my mouth. Which, as far as I can tell from the taste, contained ALL THE SALT IN THE WORLD. I could feel my entire face puckering as it had never puckered before, into a tiny point where my mouth used to be. I tried to say "Wow, that's strong," but I think a muted wuh! was all that came out.

And it was a hard little bugger, too, like a really stiff eraser. Chewing it was out of the question. All I could do was move it around in my mouth, wincing every time it touched my tongue. (I didn't want to just leave it between cheek and gum, because I was afraid that if the DZ sat in any one place for very long it would start eating a hole in my flesh.) Eventually I found an opportune place to spit it out.

Bad-candy.com has written about Double Zout, but they seem to have gotten one fact wrong. The salt in DZ is not, in fact, table salt (sodium chloride). It is, if I am not mistaken, instead the rather nastier tasting aluminum chloride.

I can still taste it. I think I always will.