At Canelake’s Candies in Virginia, Minn., fourth-generation candymaker Sam Canelake picked up a chocolate bar the size of a lunch tray and whacked it with a hammer. He tossed a couple hunks into the enrobing machine to coat another batch of hot air — a hard-to-find, old-fashioned treat that’s the number-one seller at the state’s oldest continuously operating candy store.

Making the crunchy, featherlight sweet (also known as angel food or sponge candy) is a finicky, multi-step process that’s “90 percent technique,” Sam said. But the six months it took him to get the hang of it was a relative sugar granule of time in his family’s long history in the candy business.

A couple of years ago, Sam, 30, left his job as a math teacher in Arizona to learn his great-grandfather’s candy trade (settling into an apartment next door to the small-town storefront, as if scripted by a Hallmark movie). More than a century ago, that great-grandfather, a Greek immigrant named Gust Canelake (the Anglicized pronunciation is Cane-lake), came to the booming Iron Range and launched a confectionary with his three brothers. Since 1905, the shop has changed hands, changed locations, and changed names from the original Virginia Candy Kitchen. But they still use the old recipes and copper cooking kettles.

With the holidays approaching, the shop’s windows featured Santa Claus in a reindeer-drawn sleigh from the old Dayton’s eighth-floor displays. Staffers were hustling to meet quadrupled demand for treats from Canelake’s and the family’s sister business, Great! Lakes Candy Kitchen in Knife River on the North Shore.

Both shops are known for their abundant display of homemade sweets, from chocolate-covered cremes and caramels, to brittles, barks and candy bars. Sam’s aunt Pamela Canelake Matson, who oversees the Virginia store with her husband, Dennis Matson, (the couple’s son Andy runs the Knife River store), says that regulars love to relive their childhood memories at the shop. And first-timers are “kind of flabbergasted” by the candy array.

“It’s an explosion of colors and sights,” she explained. “They’re like the kid in the candy store.”

One of Pamela’s favorite early memories is of making candy canes with her dad at grandpa Gust’s shop. As a teenager, she worked at the store’s soda fountain, which still serves limey green river phosphates of the Prohibition era.

Behind the counter stools hangs a photograph of an older couple re-creating their first date at Canelake’s some 50 years later. It’s one of many images and artifacts in the shop that reflect the family and community history, including black-and-white images of Gust removing the metal from the shop’s ice-cream machine to donate to the war effort, and dipping chocolate with his wife when they were likely in their 80s. (“He came to work here right to the last second,” Dennis noted.)

The eastbound lanes of I-494 in South St. Paul are closed Monday morning due to a serious crash, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said.

Motorists are being diverted off the freeway at 7th Avenue and are being allowed to re-enter the freeway at 5th Avenue, the agency said.

No information about the crash was immediately available, but traffic management cameras showed several emergency vehicles on the scene.

The agency did not say how long the lanes would be closed.

“It really depends on what’s important to you,” he said.

For Alex Benson, who works as a consultant downtown, Ramp A’s easy access to Interstate 394 won him over. He tries to beat rush hour traffic the two days a week he’s in the office, but he’s never had problems finding a spot.

It took Aba Jones, a legal assistant for a downtown law firm, a bit longer to find the right fit. She used to park in the Gaviidae Commons Garage, but prices jumped and the elevators weren’t always clean. Then she started parking near Target Field, but the walk was farther and another driver dented her car.

She finally settled on City Center after seeing another commuter taking an elevator down to the building’s ramp. For the two days a week she comes into the office, Jones arrives before 8:30 a.m. to snag the $10 early bird rate.

“It’s perfect for me right now,” she said.