On this beautiful Memorial Day Weekend, one from the archives.
Surely, among all the major accomplishments of our species, there, residing in companionable honor among the top 10, those giants that we can point to with pride when all else has crumbled into dust, will be ice cream.
While some men turned their talents to the dark side — inventing dynamite, improving the crossbow, or mixing gunpowder — another kindly and heroic soul determined to ameliorate the human summer condition. Oh, bore me not with your Persian ices, your frozen Indian rose waters; keep your gelatos and frozen yogurts to yourself, thank you. We are Americans, goddamnit, and Southerners to boot. Give us a full-fat frozen scoop of precious deliciousness, and be quick about it, man!
Locked in the scrapbook of my mind is the recollection of laboring with my brother Keith over the old manual ice cream maker in our garage on Sale Street. I would have been 4 years old. My father, insisting that we learn the manly arts, even at a tender age, had each of us take turns cranking the grinder as he added ice to the wooden tub. And then to partake in the reward: After the watermelon was eaten in the back yard, we indulged in a huge bowl of his uniquely vanilla ice cream. It’s a taste I can still conjure this half-century later.
My dad used to bring a tub of his magic concoction to the men’s ice cream socials at church. While others experimented with chocolate, peach, strawberry, and the many other flavor fads of the day, Dad stayed true to his simple, heavenly specialty. Those were glorious evenings, often staged in a large grove of live oaks, where displayed on long tables would be as many as 50 different ice creams to sample. For us kids (and I’m betting the same was true for the adults), the sermon by the pastor was ignored.
Eventually, he would be drowned out by the rumble of a few hundred stomachs and would be forced to cut short his Godly remarks. Finally, after the last prayer, we would stampede to the tables to sample the wares. What seemed to be an acre of ice cream is a pretty impressive sight, certainly to a boy.
So it really isn’t odd that ice cream is still associated with those memories of church. As kids, we used to leave our vacation bible school at Trinity Baptist and walk down Ryan Street to the Borden’s ice cream parlor and plant, each getting a fresh scoop before our return trip. Late in adolescence, we would skip the services completely and go straight for the reward. After all, a scoop of ice cream on a hot and muggy afternoon or evening is a pretty spiritual indulgence in itself.
Years later, until its ultimate demise, Cindy and I would seek out the old-fashioned Kay’s Ice Cream. There was the one up on Broadway in Knoxville, another down Chapman Highway, and one way out in the badlands of Maryville. With its 30-foot multicolored ice cream cone out front, it was easy to spot. Particularly when coming back from the mountains after a hike, our sugar and potassium levels dangerously depleted, a banana-chocolate malt was just the restorative required. (And yes, please, always use vanilla ice cream when constructing a chocolate malt.)
After we bought the farm and Kay’s had closed most of its locations, I toyed with buying one of those giant ice cream cone signs to mount on the barn roof. I still regret my failure to do so as some sort of moral weakness that will mark me in ways yet unknown.
Even now, on hot summer evenings we seek out the good stuff. Last night, after a day’s work filling the barn with freshly baled hay, weeding the garden, and completing the dozens of other chores that mark what we call “busy,” I got in my truck with Cindy and we drove the 15 miles to Loudon. It was 8 o’clock when we drove down the quiet main street, passed the still-packed community pool, and pulled up to the Tic Toc Ice Cream Parlor. There was a line to the door. A crowd filled the small park across the street by the fountain — men, women, and children, all eating their ice cream in view of the tall oaks and Confederate and other war memorials at the courthouse.
Cindy went inside and returned 20 minutes later with single scoops of homemade ice cream in cake cones. (For we are not heathens to be eating our ice cream in waffle cones like foreigners from Michigan or Florida.) Then we headed out with the truck windows down, licking off the drips as the sun set, and followed the country roads back to the farm.
