Crisp White Dress, Big Black Bow: Ah, Childhood.

What's not to love about a store where you're cheerfully greeted with free chocolate?

You can't beat that nice lady in a nurse white dress and huge black bow, who says, "Hi, welcome to See's. I'll be right with you, would you like to try our new butter cream?" Then she let's you sub in a chew.

So when my husband told me yesterday that I'd been in the dark about the new tenant at Chico's, I could hear him laughing as I dropped the phone to screech over for my California and Cashew Brittles.

When I got there Tuesday, I was a bit ludicrously overjoyed, and I was not alone. "No more driving to--

"Bellflower in Los Altos," a fellow customer finished my sentence. I suspected she, too, knew the closing hours, and what season they moved an hour later. She might even know Barbara there, who helpfully mentioned that we would now have to stop by before karate. But had this customer ever gone to a second location the same day--only to avoid the kindly pity issued from someone in a ginormous bow and nurse shoes?

As I munched on my free sample, it suddenly dawned on me that there were no gleaming long counters with cases of dainty glass dishes bearing quartets of this or that treat.

"Have a nice day," Erin Ryan said at the register to customer Liz Merip of Sunset Beach. Her retort: "Well, you just ruined it."

Said tongue-in-cheek, she'd just learned that See's Candy will be on the block only until Christmas Eve, temporarily occupying the former women's clothing store for the holiday season only.

Inside the corner store are displays of merrily wrapped one-pound boxes, red and green foil chocolates and --thank you, oh God of Toffee--both Cashew and California Brittle. I will show discipline in rationing it from a bag I had to buy versus the dietarily safer single-serving. (But for those with special diets, See's can provide you with calorie or carbohydrate counts.)

Ryan normally works at the Los Cerritos mall See's store. Her coworker, Alex Ochoa, switches out of her quaintly old-fashioned white matron dress when she clocks out and then into her second job as a hotter hostess at Legend's sports bar down the street.

The See's Candy outpost opened in the vacated store Nov. 2nd. Ryan said she likes her other store location in the mall but observed about Belmont Shore: "People are just really, really nice here, and easy to talk to."

What's your favorite See's candy? Butterscotch lollipop? Toffee-ette? Truffle?