“I scream, you scream…”
It seems only right that if I am writing a blog with the name The Forever Kid…
that I dedicate a tribute posting to…
Ice Cream is a big part of being a kid and as The Forever Kid,
a bunch of personal ice cream memories melt into my mind.
The Ice Cream Truck It’s a classic scene of 1950’s Americana.
A shiny white truck drives down a Spielberg-perfect suburban street,
Bells-a-ringing, manned by an always-smiling driver/server,
dressed in sparkling whites of his own(complete with hat)
A gaggle of gleeful kids who all look like Opie Taylor
come running and yelling from their homes…
to be greeted, by name, by this ice cream savior.
In Da Bronx…not so much.
But we did have three competing ice cream truckers:
The classic Good Humor Man…
whom I never remember as being in particularly good humor.
Mr. Softee…
The very lame name combined with that even lamer annoying music
made “the Mister” a non-contender.
And my personal favorite…the underdog…
Bungalow Bar!
I kinda got a kick out of the “bungalow-as- truck” driving down the street…
complete with slanted, shingled roof.
Plus even at this early age…
I appreciated the audacity of the little guy going up against
the giant omnipresent Good Humor corporation.
Of course, there were detracters to this upstart cottage-truck.
In what I always suspected was some Good Humor-less propaganda…
neighborhood kids would sing:
“Bungalow Bar
Tastes like tar
The more you eat
The sicker you are”
Ignoring that mainstream opinion…
I let the others indulge in their fancy-schmancy Toasted Almond Bars or Chocolate Eclairs…
Me?
I’d defiantly check into “the Bungalow”.
Bon Bons
As much as I loved movies, perhaps the best thing about going to
the Loew’s Paradise or RKO Fordham…
was that they were the only places where I could find the divine
frozen one-bite ice cream delicacies known as Bon Bons!
Tiny “scoops” of vanilla ice cream, encased in a thin chocolate shell.
Flat on the bottom, rounded on top.
They came 5 in a long horizontal box.
I’d pop ‘em in their entirety for some mouth-numbing heaven.
5 Bon Bons. 5 bites. 5 Minutes.
Alas, the theater Bon Bons that I remember are long gone…
sadly replaced by some “pretender” called Ice Cream NIBS!?!
And more disturbing yet…
in Trader Joes, of all places, I saw a standard ice cream carton that read…
Frozen Yogurt Bon Bons?!?
Nah.
HoJo ButterCrunch
Not only was this, without question, the best ice cream flavor ever created…
it may just be best foodstuff that ever existed.
Made by the eponymous Howard Johnson,
ButterCrunch had true, deep, sweet “buttery” deliciousness…
mixed with tiny bits of toffee…
to totally blow away my second favorite flavor, Butter Pecan.
And the ice cream cones from HoJo’s were different.
Rather than having the cone topped by a rounded scoop…
the ice cream that sat atop the HoJo cone was itself conical in shape,
almost mirroring the shape of the cone…
like some kind of ice cream Rorschach test.
While yes, I did truly love my ButterCrunch from Howard Johnson’s…
the venue itself does bring back a painfully awkward memory…
As a 17 year-old college freshman,
I had a girlfriend,
(one of the hottest girls at Oakland University),
visit me from Michigan to New York during spring break.
To take her out to dinner…
I chose the one place that I knew would serve underage drinkers…
Howard Johnson’s.
But somehow a dinner of Bloody Marys, HoJo Fried Clams…
(which were pretty awesome by the way)…
and ButterCrunch Ice Cream…
(besides being rather nauseating)…
turned out not to be…
the impressive New York dinner that my date had in mind.
That was our last date.
Ice Cream Sandwiches
Before there were $6 Chipwiches…
there were good ol’ Ice Cream Sandwiches.
A creamy slab of (usually) vanilla ice cream,
nestled between two thin, spongy, rectangular chocolate wafers.
While, like any red-blooded American, I enjoyed a good ice cream cone…
the ice cream sandwich offered a more intriguing, interactive experience.
One could choose to simply bite into them right from the freezer,
frozen solid, requiring substantial mouth effort…
BUT… I preferred to let them get all melty…
then slowly and deliberately,
I’d rotate the brown & white rectangle in a circle,
over and over again…
positioning my tongue to allow continuous licking of the ice cream inside…
whilst keeping the wafers perfectly untouched.
The result:
Ice cream consumed.
Wafers ready to eat.
Fingers smudged with chocolate.
A delightful ice cream encounter in two acts.
Frozen Custard
A hard-to-find, ultra-creamy, ice cream-like treat that I absolutely loved…
until I found out it contained egg yolks!?!
UGH!!!!
Never again.
The Mello-Roll
I believe this ice cream wonder only existed in the The Bronx or Brooklyn…
but I couldn’t swear to it.
It was the Cadillac of ice cream treats.
The ice cream itself had an incredible, heavenly richness…
a sheer velveteen texture so silky…
the tongue actually slid across the ice cream with each lick.
But what made the Mello-Roll so memorable…
was its unique “delivery system”.
A 3-inch-long, 1-inch in diameter, “cylinder “ of this fantastic ice cream…
came wrapped in peel-away paper,
(with blue print on it, that sometimes blotted onto the ice cream itself).
The hopefully skilled shop operator…
would gingerly peel off the paper as the roll rotated…
and deftly drop the glistening roll,
falling perfectly into the “wafer dish” below…
a short-stemmed, flat-bottomed waffle cone.
(Somewhat reminiscent of a toilet paper dispenser!?)
If there was an art to the preparation…
there was also one to the eating.
As you licked the sumptuous ice cream…
the roll shape caused it to spin round in its “wafer bed”…
so as the ice cream melted…
it did not run down the outside of the wafer…
No sir!
But rather it melted within the wafer itself,
dripping down into the hollow in the “handle”…
allowing for an amazing concluding epilogue right to the very last bite.
While the Mello-Roll may have been an exclusive Bronx-Brooklyn treat…
it did gain national prominence on the TV show Welcome Back Kotter,
with the immortal poetic utterance….
“Up your hole with a Mello-Roll!”.
Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlor
Most any ‘60’s kid growing up in “the boroughs”,
(and even some in Jersey,)
knew Jahn’s .
Jahn’s was “an old-fashioned ice cream parlor and restaurant”.
Forget the restaurant part…
it was ALL about the ice cream sundaes!
And if you know Jahn’s, you know the legendary….
“Kitchen Sink”!!!!
“The Mother of All Sundaes”!
A spectacle!
A behemoth!
A monstrosity of ice cream and sweet treats…
piled into a GARGANTUAN metal bowl designed to feed (defeat?) SIX!...
(or 3 or 4 intrepid ice cream fanatics willing to take on the challenge).
Over a dozen multi-flavored scoops, fruits, nuts, syrups, cookies.
It was all at once…
totally gross…
and a thing of beauty.
Like many Bronx kids…
I had a couple of birthday parties in the backroom of Jahn’s.
Wisely, to protect actual diners…
the backroom was separated from normal people.
Mobs of pre-teen celebrants would explode…
as one or two Kitchen Sinks were presented with much fanfare.
And more times than not…
the wild, voracious indulgence,
(and accompanying sugar-high)…
would work the already-hyper kids into a frenzy.
The screaming, yelling, and food fights,
would cause many a celebration to end prematurely,
as exasperated owners would evict the out-of-control kids.
(Or perhaps that was only me and my friends??)
Carvel
Before creepy Carvel owner, Tom Carvel took to the airways
with his amateurish gravely voice, to hawk creations like…
Fudgie the Whale and Cookie Puss …
or to offer my favorite ad slogan:
“Thinny-Thin for your Fatty-Fat friends!”…
Carvel was my family’s go-to ice cream stop.
Many a night after having Chinese at Hom & Hom on Fordham Road…
or pizza at Dominicks on Arthur Avenue…
we would eschew ordering dessert…
with my dad’s promise of stopping at Carvel.
There was nothing like Carvel.
Its creamy soft-serve ice cream flowed magically out of a miraculous metal contraption…
the server skillfully navigating a cup or cone beneath the flow to create…
the perfect wavy swirl, climbing to a pointed peak.
One could choose to enhance this delight.
Perhaps, having it dipped in melted chocolate…
to create the chocolate-shelled Brown Bonnet…
or having it rolled in rainbow sprinkles…
to form the Lollapalooza.
For me, I went big…
(or at least that was my goal).
I opted for my dream sundae called the “Pecan Treat*.
*NOTE: I always called it “The Pecan TREE”…and I insist to this day that I am correct!
“The Pecan TREE” was a cupful of vanilla soft-serve…
drenched in caramel…
and showered with whole salted pecans.
To hell with dieting…I would kill for that today!
The only issue with my choice…
was that it cost an extravagant 65 cents vs. a regular cup at 25 cents.
Each time as we approached Carvel…
my mom would declare the cautionary warning…
(in Mom-speak)…
“Now don’t start with the Pecan Tree!”
But, more often than not…I was indulged.
My other great memory of Carvel is that on our family visits there…
we never ate inside. We’d score our treats and then sit together
in our Ford Station Wagon and enjoy.
And what made it even more special, was our family routine.
In a very Annie Hall-like scene…
as we devoured our Carvel, my Mom, Dad and sister Ellen and I
would “observe” those entering the store…
and each of us had to create background stories for the customers …
AND predict what they would be ordering.
I had some pretty fun parents, huh?
I fondly remember this “game” as an early inspiration for my creative future.
And I remember my Pecan Tree.
Would love to hear your Ice Cream memories.
