CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The New England Confectionary Co., better known as Necco, makes 8 billion conversation hearts a year. Year after year the same hearts, white, green, yellow, orange, purple and pink, with the same sayings. Be True. My Man. Honey Bun. I'll Wait.
So ubiquitous are the hearts around St. Valentine's Day that the marketing director, Walter Marshall, can hardly muster any enthusiasm for them. "I'd like to be out on the golf course, not talking about conversation hearts," he said as he led avisitor through the plant here. "They're aggravating."
The hearts have been around since 1902, and many people take them for granted. But not Tony Santos. He works four floors below Mr. Marshall, as a machine operator. Mr. Santos, 27, from the Cape Verde Islands, makes hearts for $9.60 an hour.
"Sometimes I read them when I'm making them!" he shouted above the din as his machine spilled out hundreds of purple hearts with different sayings. Cool. Wild. U R A 10. All Mine. Bad Boy.
"I think about my sweetheart. I like all the sayings. When I come home, I tell her the things I read. Sometimes I buy them and bring them home for her. I read them aloud. Honey Bun. Luv Ya. Hug Me."
Mr. Santos' sweetheart is Sharon Quashie, 25. "She has a nice smile," he said. "She's short, 5 feet 5 inches. I like short girls."
Plant manager Manny DaCosta was on the floor taste-testing hearts from Mr. Santos' machine. Mr. DaCosta is 50, but the hearts, he said, take him back to the eighth grade at St. Mary's School in Cambridge.
"I used to give them to the girl in front of me," he said. "Her name was Maureen O'Meara. I gave her ones that said, 'Hug me' and 'Be mine.' "
The slogans were bold where the boy was not. "I was very shy," said Mr. DaCosta, whose wife, Benilde, works in the sample room. "I liked her, but I was afraid to tell her."
Mr. DaCosta, who started at Necco as a receiving clerk 28 years ago, is from Portugal. Most of the workers are from Portugal or the Cape Verde Islands. The hearts that they made a year ago are now strewn across America, in drugstores, supermarkets, school classrooms and offices.
"I see them in the store," Mr. Santos said. "I tell people, 'This is my job, I make it.' People say, 'Really?' "
Across the way from a bicycle shop and next to a gasoline station the seven-story, yellow-brick plant fills the surrounding streets with a tantalizing aroma that can only be described as the scent of Necco. For a lot of people who grew up on Necco wafers, it is the scent of childhood.
In the plant, as St. Valentine's Day approached, Mr. Santos was making hearts for next year's holiday. "Sometimes I work 16 hours a day making hearts," he said. "I had a dream once I went to work late. I found somebody else on the machine. He messed up the hearts. The boss blamed me for it. I was so upset. Then I woke up.
"You have to know what you're doing. You have to know how to adjust the machine."
The regular shift is 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Making hearts is his day job. At night he works in a high-rise office building in downtown Boston, across the Charles River, changing light bulbs.
"Dig Me," said a heart tumbling out of the machine. It was about to become a collector's item. "Dig Me" is one of a few slogans that have been deemed obsolete and are being phased out.
Mr. Santos reads purple hearts: Be True. Neat. Dream Girl. Smile. "My sweetheart says they teach me how to be romantic," said the heart man.