Blogging from A to Z — the letter i

 “I” is for …

… ice cream!

Ice cream was a huge part of my childhood.

I went to day camp every summer when I was a little girl.  We did all sorts of activities — swimming, volleyball, arts and crafts, music, dance, horseback riding … And every afternoon at snack time we had ice cream.  Sometimes it would be in a cup, eaten with a wooden spoon.  Other times we’d have cones, or sandwiches, or bars or pops on a wooden stick.  Always sweet, creamy and delicious.

Another childhood memory.  My father would sometimes take me and my sister to Carvel for soft serve ice cream.  Carvel was a small, local chain back then, known for its soft serve ice cream, a cake dubbed Fudgy the Whale, and the raspy-voiced owner Tom Carvel, who did his own commercials.   I remember thinking that the cones were huge.  Sometimes we’d get a cone dipped in syrup and refrozen — I think those were called brown bonnets. The sandwiches were called “Flying saucers”.

Sometimes we’d get a Carvel cake for a birthday, with chocolate crunchies separating the layers.

And there was the end-of-school tradition.  Every June our good report cards were rewarded with visit to an old fashioned ice cream parlor for an ice cream soda or a sundae.

Many people my age wax poetic over the ice cream man, who’d drive his truck through the neighborhood. I don’t remember an ice cream man in my neighborhood.  But when my grandma lived in a garden apartment complex there’d be truck after truck after truck … Good Humor, Mr. Softee, so many different kinds of ice cream truck.  

Of course we could also get ice cream at the supermarket, but that wasn’t as much fun.

All these years later, I still love ice cream.