You Scream, I Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream

Yesterday, while innocently reaching for ice cubes, I realized I needed to clean out my freezer. Today I tackled the large food storage compartment and noticed I have a bad habit of freezing leftovers and never eating them. When the crust of ice under the Tupperware lid is so thick as to make the food underneath unrecognizable I throw it away. I guess this is some strange food ritual I learned somewhere. (From my grandmother, Big Red, perhaps?) I also uncovered some frozen farm produce from last summer – black-eyed peas, green chilies, jalapenos and pimientos. But the most exciting discovery of all was the one pint container of green tea flavor “It’s Soy Delicious” non-dairy frozen dessert. (It is amazing what passes for dessert around my house.) It was exciting, that was, until I remembered I gave up sweets for Lent. (Sweets and alcohol – what was I thinking?) After trying to convince myself that non-dairy frozen dessert didn’t really count as a sweet, I put it back in the freezer with visions of ice cream dancing in my head.

When I was a child ice cream was a treat. When we were lucky enough to have ice cream in our house it was usually the cheaper store brand and it was usually vanilla. Sometimes we had chocolate and sometimes we had strawberry (usually on someone’s birthday) and as an extra-special-super-duper treat we might have Neapolitan. This came in a rectangular carton which Mother would carefully open so she could slice a piece that held all three flavors. We sometimes had a vile concoction called ice milk. It tasted like ice cream made with water instead of milk; why bother?

Once or twice a year our family traveled across the great state of Texas to my father’s hometown in east Texas to visit my grandparents, his parents, and my aunts, uncles, and cousins. We would usually arrive at my grandparents’ house late in the evening to a meal of fried salmon patties (croquettes as my Maw Maw called them), fried potatoes, cream style corn, cabbage slaw, and stewed tomatoes. The crowning touch was dessert. My Maw-Maw was a diabetic with an infamous sweet tooth. She always wanted “a little something sweet” after dinner and that “little something sweet” was usually a coke float. I use the word coke generically, as do most folks in Texas; a coke was any carbonated beverage regardless of flavor or manufacturer. Coke floats at my grandparents’ house could be made with Seven-Up, Dr. Pepper, Coca Cola, Nehi Orange Crush, or Grape-ette, but the ice cream was always Cabell’s vanilla with black vanilla bean specks in it. I thought there was no better ice cream in the entire world.

We kids would trek out to our Paw-Paw’s detached garage where he kept the wooden cases of 6-ounce bottles of “coke” and select our flavor. We would return to my Maw-Maw’s white tiled kitchen where she would have tall glasses full of Cabell’s vanilla ice cream waiting for us. The other adults were in the living room having a high-ball, Maw-Maw didn’t drink alcohol; her vice was sweets. Even now, years later, I can see her sitting at her kitchen table in her homemade housedress, rolled stockings, and sensible pumps. Her hair was gray, tinted either purple or blue, depending on the whim of Vergie, her neighbor/hairdresser, and held in place by a spider-web thin hairnet. Her big eyes, once brown, but now cloudy with cataracts were magnified behind her thick, rimless glasses. The skin on her face was remarkably soft, wrinkled and covered with powder. We would open the “coke” bottles with an old-fashioned church-key bottle opener and pour the liquid over the ice cream. I can still smell the bubbles from the 7-Up, hear the fizz of the Coca Cola, and see the bright, artificial colors of the orange Nehi and purple Grape-ette. We used silver-plate iced tea spoons to reach the ice cream from the bottom of the glass. Years later when my grandparents passed away I requested and received the very same silver-plate spoons. I use one every morning to stir my coffee and remember my Maw-Maw asking us if we wouldn’t like a “little something sweet” after our dinner. If she were still with us, I am sure she would tell me to go ahead and eat the “It’s Soy Delicious” non-dairy frozen dessert, as there is no way in hell she would call that a sweet!