When I heard that July is National Ice Cream Month, I assumed the celebration was brought to us by ice cream manufacturers and distributors. A mere publicity stunt?
Not so, I learned. The special month was designated in 1984 by the same U.S. president who catapulted Jelly Bellies to national prominence: Ronald Reagan.
This month, I am doing my best to honor the former president’s wishes to give ice cream its due, and I’m reminiscing about a few memorable servings I’ve had in my life:
Hill’s Drug Store, Mukwonago, Wisconsin
As kids, we’d sometimes go to town, where two stores sat prominently on Mukwonago’s main drag, one on either side of the street: Hill’s Department Store and Hill’s Drug Store. Owned by brothers, the stores were pretty much the only commerce in the small town. (Mukwonago now has a Wal-Mart Supercenter, but no sign of the Hills brothers.)
My hands-down fave of the two was the drug store. In addition to a long counter of candy behind glass – and we could buy in quantities as little as 25 cents – the store served three favors of ice cream: vanilla, chocolate, and butter pecan.
I’d had vanilla (which I consider merely a carrier for things such as chocolate sauce or pie), and I’d had chocolate, but I’d never had butter pecan. Why would someone put butter on ice cream?! I ordered a cone. Oh, my. Butter pecan became my fave.
Building site, Crown Point, Indiana
In Wisconsin, winters beg for sledding. Our neighbors lived atop a very steep hill and next to a house that was under construction in all the years I lived in the neighborhood. Workers had to wait until summer to work on the house, so its shell sat vacant for several months of the year.
Just after Christmas one year, we all bundled up and traipsed down the road and up the hill to the non-house. The two families were having a sledding party. For what seemed like hours, we trudged up the hill through crunchy snow for the payoff of soaring down the snow-packed driveway — flying in the frigid air.
Finally at dusk, we were called into the non-house and given a task: Crush candy canes and put them into the ice cream makings. Once the mission accomplished, we took turns cranking and cranking the wooden ice cream maker.
After what seemed to be hours later, the ice cream was done. There were probably 10+ people there, so we all had only a small scoop of the treat. Oh, how I wished that we’d made more, so much more … I’ve never had peppermint ice cream quite like that again.
Union Train Station, Chicago, Illinois
I was 13 years old and had convinced my parents to let me take Amtrak to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to visit a friend. Having arrived at the train station early (it was gorgeous, lots of columns, and 1925 architecture), I had about two hours to kill. I meandered around and finally stopped just outside an eatery with a counter and bored waitress.
A blackboard listed the menu — including “chocolate ice cream sodas.” I’d never heard of them before, but I liked chocolate and I liked soda, so I bellied up to the lunch counter. One sip into it, I knew I’d never be the same: fizzy, creamy, chocolaty loveliness.
I returned to the train station a few years later, but the eatery had vanished. I spent the next two decades searching for a chocolate ice cream soda to match my first, but never found one. I finally bought soda glasses and experimented with making my own. After years of not quite getting it right, while standing near an ice cream shop in Bellevue, Washington, I overheard the secret to making a Union-Station-worthy ice cream soda: Add a dallop of milk after adding chocolate syrup, soda water, and ice cream.
Now, go and do likewise.
PawPrints Productions 