LOL! I didn’t know that.
My first experience with those candied cherries was in a bar, in NE DC - my Dad took me with him to his favorite bar, and they put a cherry in my little soda. I was probably five years old, and after that, I just expected the cherry; and it was always there :-)
Weren’t very many bars in NE, wouldn’t happen to have been in the Catholic University neighborhood by any chance?