Musings on Ice Cream

It's extremely hot outside right now.  Hot enough that after taking a shower the minute I got home from work, that I'm now cold in contrast.  I am very thankful for the modern convenience of central air.  I have even been brave enough to try the air in my cruiser, on occasion. Not today though...today, despite the heat, what I call hill billy air conditioning worked quite well.  Hill billy air conditioning=roll down the windows & drive fast. 

I remember summers as a child. I had never even conceived of even an air conditioner until I saw one at my Uncle Paul's house.  We simply used fans at home, wore shorts & tank tops, and drank sweet tea (or kool-aide).  When it got too hot, we would run through the sprinkler.  Our sprinkler was cool...it was different than our neighbors.  Instead of waffling back & forth, ours was in a horse-shoe shape, and the spray would jet up like a reverse Niagara Falls.  My sister & little brother & I would run back & forth through the spray.  Invariably, one of us (usually me) would pick up the horseshoe, and try to chase the others with it.  Always got in trouble for that one...and you can't run far when the sprinkler is attached to a hose! 

The best part of summer was always ice cream.  My parents often took us to this ice cream place in Berkley (MI, not Calif).  There I would have my choice between vanilla, chocolate, or a twist.  I always chose the twist.  Then I would sit on a picnic table to simultaneously enjoy my cone and drive my sister nuts.  I would slowly lick my ice cream, bit by bit.....  My sister, having finished nearly half of hers, would ask me why I was eating so slow.  I'd answer 'I'm savoring it.'  Don't know where I learned that word at such a young age, but I knew it, and knew the answer would drive her nuts.  Then of course it'd be time to leave, and my parents would tell me to finish my cone, and I would...the last one to do so.  (so mean!)

Then there was the magic of the ice cream truck.... Ding ding ding.  The sound would call us outside, to run after the slow moving truck.  Sometimes I would get a treat from the truck, sometimes I wouldn't.  Though I learned quick that if one parent said no, to NOT ask the other one. I got in so much trouble once when I did that...

Even now, I count ice cream as one of my favorite foods (pizza, jelly beans are some others).  The best hard pack ice cream is choc chip mint.  MMmm.... and it has to be the green kind.  White choc chip mint is somehow, wrong...it just is.  Though since my daughter Melody (formerly known as Cat) started working at a business near a DQ, I've been tempted by them.  Their peanut butter buster sundae is scrumdidlyunpteous!  Mmm...now I want ice cream....