Ice Cream Diaries – 12 August 26, 2004
Hello again from Ice Cream Coney Island. Hope you’re having a wicked good summa. Can you believe it’s almost September. And I thought summers went by fast when I wasn’t working seven days a week! I had a conversation with Dad the other day and mentioned that the end of the summer was a good and bad thing; business will definitely slow down, but I’ll get my Mondays back and be able to have a life besides scooping. Dad agreed Fall always came as a bit of a relief.
I know it’s been a while since my last entry into the journal. With the summer peak season, I’ve been occupied by things like making ice cream, ordering jimmies and sprinkles (I trust you know the difference), and mixing milkshakes rather than dabbling in the diary. That and one crashed hard-drive put my writing hobby on hold while I tended to the biz and reconstructed my computer. Having dispensed with the excuses, here I am, sitting with the laptop in my little ice cream kitchen to collect my ice cream thoughts from the past month. A cool breeze is blowing across the pond and through the screen door, ‘Everybody is Kung Fu fighting’ on the XM radio 70’s station echoes off the tin ceiling, a couple sits with their sundaes and siblings at the counter, and here in the kitchen it’s just me, the freezers, and my reincarnated laptop. At least until 7 pm when the nightly rush starts. Things are generally slow and steady throughout the weekday afternoons, until everyone gets the idea for ice cream after supper. The shop fills right up, and barring a downpour or a belligerent drunk guy from the Brass Cat across the street, it stays full until closing. If I could only just find a way to get a more ‘normal distribution’, it would make staffing much less of a challenge. There will probably always be a dinner lull (as I like to call it), which means I don’t really need 2 people working the counter all night, but I can’t really have the scoop crew come in for just 2 hours. So on most days, the girls clean stuff, restock, and do little projects until the nightly rush starts. Speaking of scoopers, my loyal team is shrinking fast. Just when they were starting to gel. Audrey, my first real hire, had her last day this past weekend. She starts college next week. She was only with me a few months, but I was actually a little sad to see her go. Sending my first girl away to school. She was always entertaining. She quickly learned that being friendly and chatty with customers meant bigger tips. She reinvented herself from shy and unassuming to hairdresser caliber chatterbox (Sorry to any hair care professionals out there. I mean it in an endearing way.). My favorite memory with Audrey was when she came back to the kitchen to tell me the guy sitting by the window was her history teacher and to not believe anything he says because he’s a pathological liar. Having never seen a pathological liar in person, I just had to walk to the front to check it out. He was a nice guy, said hello, and then proceeded to tell me what a ‘great worker’ Audrey was. I told her what he said and laughed about it for a week. I don’t think she got it though. Compliments from pathological liars don’t count.
I’ve been having some fun digging deeper into Dad’s magic recipe book this summer. The peach has been a huge hit, with everyone except Betty that is, who has proven herself to be the best peach peeler on the team, and as a result, usually gets the nod, and the knife. Other big sellers have been Almond Joy (coconut with chocolate fudge and almonds), Deer Tracks (I reverse engineered Moose Tracks, with the help of one of Betty’s young groupies), and watermelon sherbet. By the way, turns out that Moose Tracks is a protected name and to use it you have to buy your ingredients from a company in Maine and pay a ‘franchise fee’ to call it that. Maggie Moo’s calls it Moo Tracks. I opted to go with switching animals. I’m still trying to locate some secret ingredients to make Strawberry Cheesecake and Rum Raisin, so I’m pinch hitting the Cotton Candy and Bubble Gum in the meantime. The Deer Tracks was a big step for me, since it was the first creation of my own. I plan to eventually venture further from Dad’s chocolate variegate stained green notebook, especially after I study up on that ice cream chemistry stuff. I really should know what that citric acid does when I add it to a batch of black raspberry. I hope I didn’t just scare you away from my black raspberry.
Speaking of scary, one of the big summer candy events was my quitting candy cigarettes. They were big sellers, but never without controversy. The occasional concerned mother would pull me aside and casually or confrontationally lecture me that candy cigarettes encourage smoking. I’m still not completely convinced that’s true, but I decided to lean to the side of caution, so now Mt. Tom’s is smokable candy-free. No one’s complained about the bubble gum cigars or the liquor truffles yet, but we’ll see. And since Bailey’s Irish Cream ice cream was such a huge hit, as was the Kahlua, the booze ice cream flavors may have to be put into the starting rotation. Amaretto Almond and Midori Melon are still to go. Out with the old vice and in with the new.
All this booze talk is making me thirsty. I hope the neighbors are sitting out back in
the party parking lot tonight. Those
late night cocktails with my wacky neighbors have continued to be a great
little wind-down and my slice of social life during this, my busy season. Most of the time in the back 40 with my
well-under 40 year old friends is spent drinking the bargain beer of the week
from Jim’s Package Store (usually Miller High Life for those keeping score at
home) and making fun of each other.
That was at least until one of the boys, Joey, came
back from a vacation in
Speaking of traumatic events, I actually took a day off this month to help the folks move out of their house. The house I grew up in. I can’t say I shouldn’t have been prepared for it, since the they’ve been bringing up history show-and-tells from my life all summer…the old trumpet, hockey trophies, my grade school pencil box, more old cards, letters, and scrapbooks. And lest I forget, that time capsule I made and hid under the stairs when I was a dorky ten year old watching ‘Zoom’. Ok, so I’m still a bit dorky. As long as you’re not a pathological liar, I accept the criticism. It was strange to see the house leave the ‘family’, as I’m sure most of you have experienced, but I’ve been trying to give it a positive spin in my mind. The folks have some retirement funds to enjoy and a new home in a place that never gets snow or frost on the windshield. As my folks drove away for the last time, neighbors tell me the squirrels lined the street, little fists in the air as they took back their neighborhood and its birdfeeders. Their arch-nemesis, and legendary squirrel bounty-hunter, Dad was finally gone.
A woman came into the shop the other day with a t-shirt that said, ‘If you can’t talk to the cat about catnip, who can you talk to?’ What does that mean anyway? I’ve asked my cat, and she just looks at me with that ‘when are you going to feed me next’ look.
I was wondering the other day, as I was waiting for a batch of chocolate peanut butter cup to cook (or freeze as the case may be), do people really enjoy reading my ice cream ramblings or do they just skim through the monster truck stories and hype about cleaning your bathroom just to see what their pal Root Beer Rudy has been up to this month. Come on, be honest. It’s ok, he’s my favorite part of the diaries too. Well then enough stalling, let’s see what good old Rudy’s been doing with his summer of love. As is usually the case, I had no Rudy stories until just a few days ago. I’d seen his parents in here a few times with Rudy junior, his younger brother with braces and crew cut, but Rudy was never in tow. As it turns out, Rudy’s been under house arrest for the past month or so. He’s grounded until school starts. What could he have done to deserve such a harsh sentence, you wonder. Before I let your mind wander too far down that troubled kid path, here it is. His parents caught him smoking. Twice. Not sure what he got for a punishment on the first offense, but the second time got him grounded for the entire summer. Ouch. He was actually in here yesterday with the family. Rudy was unusually subdued, understandably so I suppose. I couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible. Was it my candy cigarettes that led him down that path? Or was it my getting rid of the candy cigs that led him to try the real thing? I can only wonder. Well, at least I can wonder which way to tell the story in the IC Diaries screenplay. The good news is Rudy got his Root Beer Float yesterday and will be released to the custody of Easthampton High School next week. His time will be served when school starts, and he’ll be on probation until, well probably until he is old enough to move out. If only I’d known a few weeks ago, I could have made up those ‘Free Rudy’ t-shirts to sell. Opportunity missed, darn.
Well, that ought to do it for this installment. I’m going to have to introduce a new character soon, I think Rudy needs some company here at the end of my journal so stay tuned…
Until next time, I’ll leave with a quote from this month’s selection…
“If I had my life to live over, I’d live over an ice cream shop.”
Take it easy,
Jim