Logan Waldron, left, and CJ Horn inspect mayonnaise jar with Twinkies inside, held by their bus driver Lisa Morse. The boys wanted to test how long the snack cake stays fresh. Coutesy photo/Lynell Waldron

A package of golden, sponge cake Twinkies stood the test of time recently when two curious Wallowa County boys “buried” it for nine months then ate the cakes.

The boys, coached by a local school bus driver, engineered the idea in September at the beginning of the school year.

Does the famous, preservative-filled creamy dessert ever rot, they wanted to know.

“One time, I came home and there was no snack because my parents didn’t buy any, so I was going to eat this old chocolate Twinkie…I thought it was rotten, and my parents said, ‘Twinkies never go rotten,'” said CJ Horn, 8, of Minam, who lives with his grandparents Melva and Jim Horn.

He and his buddy Logan Waldron, 7 of Wallowa, contemplated the lifespan of a Twinkie and talked it over seriously with Lisa Morse, a school bus driver with Moffit Brothers Transportation.

“I said, “Let’s do an experiment,'” Morse recalled. She supplied the package containing two Hostess Twinkies. The boys placed the unopened Twinkies in a plastic mayonnaise jar, sealed it and hid it away in a rock jack that acts as a corner anchor for a fence on Bramlet Lane.

“We were going to wait until I was 18 years old to get it out, but I couldn’t wait,” said CJ.

The snack cake time capsule sat untouched month by month during the school year with the eager boys fixating on the rock crib each time they passed.

“Every week, they said they wanted to dig it up,” Morse said, “but I said, ‘We’ll dig it up at the end of the year.'”

On June 3, while the heavens let loose thunder and rain, the two boys unearthed their science project, freeing it from the rock crib.

Releasing the Twinkies from the mayonnaise jar, however, proved not so easy.

“It was raining then, and it was raining a few days before and it got rusted shut,” theorized Logan, who is the son of Lynell and Red Waldron.

CJ said he tried “for hours” to get the lid off, but finally, “We drove to Logan’s house, and we had to use tools to get it out.”

Red Waldron saved the day. He used a big knife to cut the jar open.

The boys inspected the package of Twinkies and saw no mold. They bit in.

“I think it was okay. I think I got kind of a bellyache, but it was okay,” said CJ, a few hours afterward.

“It tasted normal,” added Logan, who suffered no ill effects.

CJ had one request in the interest of science.

“Can you put this in the article? Tell all the teachers to have Twinkies in their classrooms and hide them and open it at the end of the year,” CJ said.

The parents give credit to the bus driver for fostering their sons’ curiosity.

“I think Lisa is the best bus driver in the world. She spoils her kids rotten,” Lynell Waldron said.

The boys’ time capsule is not the first time Twinkies have gone underground. In 1999, then-President Bill Clinton selected Twinkies to be “preserved” in the nation’s millennium time capsule as an “American icon.”

An Illinois baker “invented” Twinkies in the 1930s. Now, more than 500 million Twinkies sell each year.

In published reports, the makers of Twinkies claim the actual shelf life is more like 25 days; there are expiration dates on the package. “You can eat older Twinkies, but they’re just not as good as when they’re fresh. Then they’re awesome,” a company spokeswoman said in a 2005 Washington Post interview.