Ice Cream
I have often imagined being in a Doctor’s office and having him say, “Sorry, you can never eat candy or cake or pie or pudding or cookies again in your life!!”
The reply would be, “OK! I’ll miss them but what are you going to do?”
If on the other hand he says, “Sorry, you can never eat ice cream again!” the reply would be far less civilized.
My first encounter with ice cream, or the first I remember, was sitting in a cigar store on Main street in Johnson City sharing an ice cream cone with a Beagle. Why we were lingering in that store I have no idea. Since the dog and I were sharing licks, I’m pretty sure my mother was not around.
After that, I can remember going to a tiny store on the upper end of Grand Avenue, only one house from the end. Paul and Marjorie something ran it. Dad knew them from down home or he worked with them in the factory or something. Anyway, we would stop on Sunday nights and get hand packed quarts to take home. I must have still been cute or something because they would always slip me a little free taste.
Then, I remember a summer that must have been especially hot. Dad was working the 3 to 11 shift and when he got home we would all pile in the car and drive to a Carvelle’s on Riverside Drive. That is still there, but I don’t think it is a Carvelle’s anymore.
One glorious year an ice cream store opened on the corner of Hudson and Grand. Goodrich’s Ice Cream. We stopped there nearly every night after baseball in Floral Park. Not long after they went out of business, and another shop opened farther down Grand Avenue, right across from Philadelphia Sales. Today it is a hair dresser, but once upon a time it was a haven for summer joy.
It seems ice cream was supplanted in my hierarchy of recreational nourishment for several years between 1964 and 1971, but then it reclaimed the top spot. By then we were living in our brand new house and ice cream was purchased at the very end of Chenango Street in an old Dairy run by a man I had worked with in the Grand Union. That store lasted for many years, right through Jeremy and Nick growing up. The construction of route 88 put an end to it.
We were in a dessert for awhile with no decent ice cream places anywhere around us. One tried to make a go of it in a little plaza just down the street from us, right across from the Police Station, but it didn’t last. But good things come to those that wait.
About 6 years ago, a retired CV teacher and his wife opened Susy Q’s in the shopping plaza where Chenango and Nolan Road meet. Without a doubt it is the best ice cream I have ever eaten. We frequent it often, deluding ourselves into thinking the mile walk to and from Susy’s will make up for the extra calories. Then, just before it shuts down for the winter, I make a final run and fill our freezer with 14 quarts. These stay pretty much untouched until Fat Tuesday, the Tuesday just before Ash Wednesday each year. Then we host an ice cream party and our friends show up and get the season of Lent started with the spirit the early church envisioned. With good timing, Lent ends just about the time the “Open for Business” sign goes up on Susy Q’s door. All is good again.