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I remember the hillside in pic#3. When I was there the school had a set-up for teaching compass adjusting. Remember that?. About 2 hours of lecture if I remember. Fascinating, but such a short course was useless for actual practice. You left it thinking you’d be useless as a navigator because you couldn’t adjust a Flinders bar correctly. Hah!
Up there too, if I remember, they had a pistol range, defunct before I was a student, and a shop for students to work on their own cars. The whole area, the hillside, the campus, northern California, smelled like licorice, from the anise plants growing everywhere. Smells different now, but it will all grow back.
The pylons you see are for carrying power cables over the Sacramento River. Rite of passage: jump the fence and climb the tower. When I was there an engineer midshipmen did so on a foggy night and was electrocuted. Knocked the power out all over town. Quite sad.
Funny what you can remember from a picture.
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When I buy licorice I go to great lengths to find that which has not been adulterated with anise. I suspect @Dutchie would approve.
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In the Netherlands, licorice confectionery (drop) is one of the most popular forms of sweets. It is sold in many forms. Mixing it with mint, menthol, aniseed, or laurel is quite popular. Mixing it with ammonium chloride (salmiak) is also popular. A popular example of salmiak licorice in the Netherlands is known as zoute drop (salty licorice), but contains very little salt, i.e., sodium chloride. Strong, salty sweets are also popular in Nordic countries. Our country is the largest ‘drop’ producer in Europe.
I have no knowledge about any bad effects of the addition of (oil of) anise, so I am curious what you mean. One thing I know is that licorice increases the blood pressure and that one should not eat more than 100 gr of licorice confectionery per day. As far as I know anise seeds and oil of anise are generally regarded as safe for human consumption as a spice/natural flavoring and plant/oil extract.
As a kid I preferred to chew the licorice root instead of eating the confectionery. BTW that was good for the teeth! They are not around anymore.
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I had a Dutch cargo surveyor years ago try and give me some of that black licorice. They were like little black coins. I’ve never liked licorice and could not stand the stuff he gave me that day either. I’ll try anything once and that was enough for me.
It is a well known fact that you either hate it or love it. It is something in our genes that we all seem to love it. Everytime I went to sea I got lots of ‘drop’ from friends and family and then bought at least a kilogram extra to tide me over a couple of months. You could not buy it anywhere in the world except in places with a Dutch store. But then those prices…
It just tastes bad (obviously I’m in a minority here). Like putting strawberries with rhubarb – doesn’t improve either one. I like Zout and the little black cats, but I haven’t had any in years. Didn’t care for double zout as much.
I suppose that it is all a matter of taste. I looked through my at the moment five kinds of licorice confectionery which I keep in a well guarded drawer but none have anise as an ingredient, so they listened to you…
This is what we called licorice when I was a kid and the only kind I know.
I feel like a complete rube. 
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No problem buying the liquorice here but I prefer those Dutch biscuits (cookies) with the cinnamon taste.
Some thirty years ago, the age of ‘nouvelle cuisine’, the big French Maîtres worked with anise.
I am a big fan of Pastis and Ricard as aperitif and then, I tried to use it in cooking.
I detested it and my wife spoke about divorce…
Long ago, the big maîtres stopped this horror.
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I was chewing on licorice sticks as a small child. We got small brown paper bags to stick the licorice into and hold it in our hands to avoid the sticky. Later we found licorice caramels like Goetze’s licorice bullseye caramels.
A few years back I found a licorice rope where the inside had a peanut butter filling. I was surprised that it was rather tasty.
Favorite childhood memory was fishing with pieces of licorice as bait. Even the fish like the stuff.: