#390: Thoughts of Ice Cream Running Through My Mind
Saturday, August 07, 2010
I'm sitting here tonight craving ice cream but I have none in the house and will have enough willpower to stay at home and not go get some. But it does bring back memories. It seems as if ice cream has played a part in my life from an early age.
When I was a young boy and we lived in Rhode Island, one of my fondest memories of family time was when Mom and Dad took us kids to the local Dairy Queen. They always got malts, extra thick, while my sisters and I had ice cream cones, single scoop. As we got older we progressed to double scoops then to ice cream sundaes and banana splits. The tradition continued when we moved to Georgia and then Illinois.
When we stayed with my grandmother in Indiana during the summers, one of her favorite treats was to cut a cantaloupe in half, clean out the seeds and then put a few spoonfuls of ice cream in the hollowed out part of the melon. Most of the time it was homemade ice cream made with fresh strawberries that grew wild along the banks of the nearby railroad tracks.
Later, when I got my first job in a Dog 'N Suds fast food restaurant, I made what must have been several hundred cones and sundaes and banana splits for customers. That's when I, too, moved on to milkshakes and malts.
Birthdays always included cake and ice cream. Sometimes even ice cream cake.
After Dad died, Mom would often ask me to drive her to get a sundae. Once in a while we'd share a banana split and we continued the melon/ice cream combination.
For some people, their weakness is chocolate or pies or cakes or Twinkies. For me it's chocolate chip mint or strawberry ice cream or orange sherbet or hot fudge.
So, with no ice cream on hand I guess I'll have some fruit instead and tonight as I sleep instead of visions of sugar plums, maybe I'll have ones of sugar cones and scoops of vanilla. Ah, well.