Ice Cream and...What Was That Again?

Something about a hot July day that makes a perfect setting to have a bowl of ice cream set in the middle of it, like a cool gemstone set in the middle of warm, sunny gold. That's apparently what my grandmother had in mind when she sent my father, aged 8 years old, to fetch an icy quart for the family's lunch dessert. At the store, he hitched the ice cream container's handle over the handle bar of his bike and took off for home. He hit a hard bump right in front of a cowbarn, which broke the handle on the ice cream box,sending it sailing into a small pile of manure. (As an adult, he says, "I don't know what I was thinking, but I CAREfully scooped up the ice cream, making SURE I didn't get any straw or manure in it, and put it back in the carton.") When he got home, he just put it in the freezer and forgot about it til lunch. As his mother was dishing up the ice cream for the family, she was puzzled and kept asking, "Bruce, are you sure you don't want any vanilla ice cream??" His Dad, fiddling with the spoon in his own bowl and peering closely at it's contents, raised one eyebrow, looked at my father and said, "Yessss, he wants ice cream...you want ice cream don't you, hmmmm?"