Dear George,
Ever since the doctor observed that my blood sugar was too high, I’ve been trying to cut down on sweets. All of this went by the wayside, though, when I went on a recent trip to New Orleans. About the third day I started feeling a craving for ice cream. After supper, on a pretext that I was going for an after dinner walk, I headed straight for the Walgreen’s few blocks away and bought a pint of double chocolate chip ice cream. I’d brought along a spoon from J and K’s house, and I gobbled up the pint on my way back home. I could have easily eaten another pint. From then on I made a regular habit of my nightly walk to Walgreens with a spoon in my pocket.
My ice cream passions go back to early childhood. Menominee, my home town, is located in a rural Upper Peninsula agricultural county where the chief industry is dairy farming. Moreover, we lived right across the river from Wisconsin which, of course, is the nation’s Dairy State. As a consequence dairy products were a big part of our lives. Bobby, the delivery man from the Ideal Dairy, dropped off eight quarts of milk to our house twice a week. The milk came in glass bottles, and there was an inch of thick cream at the top so that you had to shake the bottle well to mix the cream and milk. When we were thirsty, we never drank water. We went to the refrigerator and drank straight from the milk bottle. Moreover, while Bobby only did milk deliveries for most households, he would bring pints of ice cream to our house as a special favor, and the four children in our family would split a pint for dessert after supper. Because I was the oldest, it was my job to slice the pint into four pieces. My three siblings would get to choose their slices before me. As a consequence, you never saw a pint of ice cream divided up so evenly.
The Ideal Dairy was located on Highway 577 at the edge of town, about a mile east of our house on the river. It was ice cream heaven. They had at least a dozen flavors on hand at any given time, and ice cream cones cost two dips for a nickel. We’d pack into the car for a trip to the dairy every week or two. By the time I was in ninth grade, I would buy six-dip cones and eat them while riding no-handsies on my bicycle on Riverside Boulevard. The cone lasted all the way to the Popkey’s house. My father always told us that there was nothing healthier to eat than dairy products, and ice cream was the healthiest of all.
We ate lots of butter too, of course. Cafes in Menominee and Marinette specialize in hamburgers that are a mixture of ground beef and butter patties, making for a delicious treat that’s guaranteed to provide you with more saturated fats and cholesterol than you could wish for. Margarine became popular throughout most of the country during World War II when there was a butter shortage. Its sale was banned in Wisconsin, and consequently some entrepreneur set up a margarine outlet at the foot of the Interstate Bridge in Menominee, capitalizing on Wisconsin buyers who came across the river to buy the less expensive butter substitute. Wisconsin legislators had succeeded in getting a nationwide ban on coloring margarine yellow. Because the white product looked a lot like lard, manufacturers added a small container of yellow dye to each package to be mixed in at home.
My grandfather owned the Rexall drugstore on Electric Square in Menominee. The most memorable pleasure of my childhood occurred at nighttime at the drugstore. Every month or two my parents would take the four of us into town after hours and let us loose behind the soda fountain. We were allowed to make any size sundae that we wanted. The only rule was that, whatever we made, we had to eat the whole thing. By the time I was twelve, I was making sundaes with four or five different flavors of ice cream and topped off with whipped cream, a cherry, and chocolate, strawberry, butterscotch, and whatever other kinds of toppings were available. Sometimes we’d bring in a banana and make the most extravagant banana splits you could imagine.
About a decade after I left Menominee for college, Katja and I moved to Cincinnati. That first year I went in for an annual checkup with my new doctor. I was about 25 pounds overweight. The doctor asked me if I ate a lot of sweets. I said, “No, I never eat any sweets at all.” Then I thought about it, and I added, “But I usually eat a pint of ice cream for dessert.” The doctor gave me a quizzical look. “Don’t you think ice cream is a sweet?” he asked. “No,” I replied in all sincerity, “ice cream’s not a sweet – it’s a dairy product.” The doctor frowned and went to give me a nutritional lecture. Life has never been quite the same. Now I probably have a dish of ice cream no more than once a month. That’s a healthier approach, but I get afraid that I’m depriving myself of one of the major joys of life.
Love,
Dave
