(Not the Franklin but close)

I love the way a dear friend captured the nostalgia of eating ice cream and asked her to guest blog. The inspiration came from her love of ice cream and July being national ice cream month. Please leave a comment for Glenda as she doubts others will find it enjoyable. 

              The Franklin Ice Cream Store by Glenda Cunard                                                                                                                                                                             

“You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream.” Isn’t this the mantra for most little children in the good ole USA?

I remember my twin brother and sister sitting beside me in the back seat of our car and all of us chanting this little rhythm every time we got close to an ice cream store.

It all started in the 1930’s when I was about 4 yrs old and lived on Bellview Street in Indianapolis. (Now a rundown dilapidated street with shabby rental homes.) But, it in the golden days of my childhood there stood the most exciting building in the neighborhood, The Franklin Ice Cream Store.

In the afternoon, after our bath and clean clothes we would sit on the front porch waiting for Dad to come home. One could look to the left across the street and see the 8th Christian church, which was catty-corned from Public School 51. When you looked to the right there stood the Franklin ice cream store.  It was on the corner of Bellview and 16th street. A busy intersection that we could never go down alone. I thought it the most beautiful ice cream store I had ever seen. It looked like something from a fairytale. It was a rather small white stucco building with a most unusual roof. The roof was sculptured all around the top like small snow-capped mountains with icicles hanging down on all sides of the building.

Just looking at the building made you feel cool. At least two times a week and always on Friday evening after dinner, the family walked to the Franklin ice cream store. We looked like we were following the Pied Piper, Mom, the two older girls, me, and my twin brother and sister all following Dad down the street.

This store did not have 31 flavors, sugar-free, all natural ingredients, Neapolitan, glutton free or any other strange-sounding names for ice cream. It just had three flavors – vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. But that was enough for us.

People ordered  at a small window, much too high for a small child to reach, trimmed in icy cool blue. Our father was a very tall man and we stood around his legs while he ordered for the family; and on a hot summer day it felt like the line would never end.

Some children would run, like all children do, around the beautiful white wrought iron tables and chairs, until someone would hand them their cones. Then they would sit in the princess style chairs. But, we never got to sit in them because we always walked to get our ice cream and then go back home. Dad often got three scoops – one vanilla, one chocolate, and one strawberry. That was the ultimate in cones.

Our cones were just one flavor, mostly vanilla. Mom and the older girls got 2 scoops, me and the twins got one scoop. I can hear Dad still saying as we walked back home “hurry up and lick those cones before they melt and Mom saying “don’t let that ice cream get on your clean clothes,” of course that was impossible.

I still close my eyes, lick my lips and have sweet memories.

 . . . . just saying,  Thank you Glenda!