GREAT WEEKENDS

great weekends Antique Shops and a Friendly Chocolate Factory Add to Cozy Glendale's Allure

I'm convinced that reruns of Andy Griffith's 1950s TV series remain popular because we'd all like to have a cozy town like Mayberry around today.

In the Phoenix area we do. We just call it Glendale.

In the last 15 years, this community nestled against the northwest boundary of Phoenix remade itself into the kind of place where you fully expect to see "Aunt Bea" doing her marketing and "Opie" riding his bike. But Glendale offers more for visitors to do than sleepy Mayberry.

Glendale is a place you won't want to visit just once. You'll want to come back again and again because you can't possibly do justice to what Glendale has to offer in just a few weekend hours.

Glendale boasts so many antique shops, USA Today named it one of the nation's 10 best antique shopping areas. The city likes to call itself the "Arizona Antique Capital."

With a population of 200,000 and stretching for miles, Glendale still managed to achieve such a pedestrian-oriented "old town" look, it won a "Best of Phoenix" award from a local newspaper for the "Valley's Best Downtown."

All the awards are nice, but the proof is in the pudding or in this case, the chocolate bonbon. Because any town that has a candy factory is a town I want to know well.

And Glendale has a great chocolate factory. The family behind the Cerreta Candy Company is training its fourth generation in the fine art of making candy. Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm, and Magic Mountain are some of its better-known customers.

Of course, I'm also partial to a city that has a doll workshop Where you can not only buy gorgeous antique dolls but also make them yourself. Then again, I collect angels, so imagine my glee at finding a shop that sells nothing but. I love beads and still can't get over seeing literally millions of them in the new Bead Museum . well, you're starting to get the idea. Glendale offers so much that if you've got only a few hours over a weekend, you're going to have to make some tough choices. If you stay overnight, you've got plenty of accommodations to choose from as resorts, hotels, motels and bed-and-breakfasts abound. Once you've settled in someplace, you need to plan your itinerary.

I suggest you consider your options over lunch at Aunt Pittypat's Kitchen. The restaurant was named after the fussy character from Gone With the Wind because the house was copied from a design originally built in Atlanta, Georgia.

Beginning at Aunt Pittypat's seems appropriate because much of the glory that is now Glendale started here, with the feisty mother and daughter who originally owned this delightful eatery that seems transported right out of the 1800s.

Horrified when the former schoolhouse next door to her restaurant was replaced by a parking lot in the late 1980s, Sue Branch quickly gathered 5,000 signatures from like-minded residents. When they went to City Hall with their concerns, they found a receptive ear.

City leaders had already begun efforts to salvage a downtown that showed more “for lease” than “open” signs. First, they spent nearly $20 million building a new municipal complex downtown and then renovating historic Murphy Park next door, thus setting in motion the turn-of-the-century ambiance now found along downtown streets.

Working with Branch and other business leaders, officials created a special zoning plan to allow specialty retail shops in a residential area adjacent to downtown where houses date to the turn of the century, complete with white picket fenc-es, red brick walkways, and gazebos. In 1990 the city approved the historic Catlin Court, a shopping district that has since been entered into the National Register of Historic Places.

City Hall didn't stop there. It widened the brick sidewalks of downtown, put in extensive landscaping and new lighting, provided pedestrian benches — in short, it did all the kinds of things Andy and Barney's Mayberry would do to make its citizens and visitors happy.

By 1996 the city had invested $52 million — and the private sector an additional $19 million — in downtown revitalization.

And it paid off.

But the city wasn't through. It hired a full-time tourism co-ordinator and started producing special events throughout the year. The most spectacular one is just around the corner. From late November through January, historic downtown Glendale literally glitters.

“A twinkling extravaganza,” a “Glendale Glitters” news release glows. A “sparkling canopy of lights,” it continues. And that isn't hyperbole.

Because glittering Glendale means this: more than 500,000 multicolored lights draped over a hundred or so trees, some of them towering five or six stories into the air. The effect is so pretty, so sparkling, so twinkling, so un-everyday, you might believe you're in a fairytale.

Then every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night through December, there is live entertainment in downtown's Murphy Park, and for $1, you can take it all in with a trolley ride that runs throughout the day and into the evening. December also means “Gaslight Thursdays,” when the antique shops stay open late. (Already in progress as the holiday season adds all its sparkle is “The Market at Murphy Park,” an arts and crafts show held Saturdays, October through May, from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M.) Then comes January and — smart people that they are — folks in Glendale know nobody really wants to let go of the festivities. So that's when they stage the magical “Glitter and Glow,” with more than 25 hot-air balloons tethered over 10 downtown city blocks. Live entertainment adds to the festivities, scheduled for January 15 next year.

Whether you come for a festival or just to visit, you can't claim you've been to Glendale if you don't drop by the Cerreta Candy Company.

I can't tell you what I loved

Best about my self-guided tour. Maybe it was meeting Jean, who's in charge of their molded offerings. I met her by chance as I gaped at a giant Santa mold I guessed had to hold 100 pounds of chocolate. She saw my wonderment and told me that Santa is her specialty. The Santa mold, which actually holds 75 pounds of chocolate, is used mostly for display. A video covers the history of both chocolate and the family that has been making candy here since Grandpa Cerreta started it all in the 1930s. The Cerreta Candy Company factory has operated in the Phoenix area since 1968. Family members moved the factory to Glendale in 1990 because by then they all lived there and wanted to work close to home. The company produces between 3,000 and 6,000 pounds of candy every day. You'd be safe in betting that this delicious chocolate, itself, is my favorite thing, but you'd be only half right. The other half is the Cerreta family's great sense of humor: They've decorated the factory with a large poster of "Lucy" and "Ethel" in the classic scene from "I Love Lucy" in which the comics try to keep up with the candy conveyor belt. To work off the free samples, I went antique shopping. I came away convinced that if you can't find what you're looking for in a Glendale antique store, then it either doesn't exist or you never needed it in the first place. Antique shopping is a social experience. People who own antique stores are - I think it's a rule - friendly and anxious to help and patient in hearing how "Grandma had these and we threw them out and, wow, look what they're worth." Other shoppers are happy to share stories of their hunts and their finds. I was most delighted to encounter a woman who had never been antique shopping before. I met her as she literally squealed over finding an old toaster like her departed mother had decades ago. Later she found a medicine bottle that reminded her of her father, and by the time I left the store, she was absorbed in her new hobby. If I'm not shopping for antiques, I like to be surrounded by them, which is another reason I can't wait to go back to Aunt Pittypat's Kitchen. As you enter off the front porch, there hangs a portrait of actress Laura Hope Crews, who played the Pittypat character in Gone With the Wind. Lace curtains adorn every (CLOCKWISE FROM FAR LEFT) Caramel confectioners at Cerreta Candy Company. Preparing chocolates and other sweets for shipment. Lunch at Aunt Pittypat's Kitchen.

window. The various dining rooms are decorated with mismatched wooden chairs and tables with lovely linens. The cupboards and mantels and wall shelves are filled with everything from oil lamps to antique valentines to porcelain dolls to painted china plates. And to top it off, the food tastes great. Delicious soups are served daily, and I especially enjoyed the house specialty, a tasty and very generous chicken salad sandwich. Don't eat a huge lunch too late, though, because you may choose to have dinner at Jacka's Alley Martini Grille & Supper Club. Nice atmosphere, good food, and a complete liquor license. After dinner, how about a horse-drawn carriage ride through the decorated streets? If you close your eyes, you might just get a warm, cozy feeling. And don't be surprised if you imagine Aunt Bea yelling, "Opie, time to come home."

WHEN YOU GO

Ave., 939-9431; Gaslight Park B&B Inn, 5739 W. Glendale Ave., 934-1998. avenues, 930-2960. Yesteryear Carriage Service, 813-8626. And more than 90 antique and speciality shops and downtown restaurants, including the Catlin Court Historic District.

RESTAURANTS: Aunt Pittypat's Kitchen, 7123 N. 58th Ave., 931-0838. Jacka's Alley Martini Grille & Supper Club, 5739 W. Glendale Ave., 274-1998.

EVENTS: "Glendale Glitters," November 26, 1999 to January 14, 2000. "Glitter and Glow," January 15, 5-10 P.M. "The Market at Murphy Park," every Saturday, October through May, 9 A.M. to 4 P.M.

ATTRACTIONS: Cerreta Candy Company, 5345 W. Glendale Ave., 930-1000. The Bead Museum, 5754 W. Glenn Drive, 930-7395. Sandy's Dream Dolls, 7154 N. 58th Drive, 931-1579. Angels, Angels, Angels, 7149 N. 58th Drive, 937-5717. Historic Sahuaro Ranch Park, 59th Avenue and Mountain View Road, 939-5782. Murphy Park, 58th and Glendale ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: City of Glendale Tourism Coordinator, 5850 W. Glendale Ave., 85301, 930-2957 or www.arizona guide.com/glendale online.

LOCATION: Glendale, Arizona's fourth-largest city, borders northwest Phoenix and the community of Peoria. Its historic downtown sprawls along Glendale Avenue between 55th and 59th avenues.

WEATHER: Average temperature in November: high, 74° F.; low, 47°.

PHONE NUMBERS: All telephone numbers are in area code 623 unless otherwise noted.

LODGING: In downtown Glendale, there's the Best Western at 5940 N.W. Grand