Ice Cream is Subjective
It's The Memories That Matter
My roommate recently brought home a box of brown cow ice cream.
It’s been quite a while since the last time I enjoyed one of these. When I was young, my family and I would go to the North Georgia State Fair every year where there were games, rides, lights, and slides as far as the eye could see. My father worked for the Cobb County D.O.T at that time and every year they would give us tickets and a meal. Between all the hustle and bustle of the fair grounds, after a long day of sunburn and screams, we would always go and pick up a pulled pork BBQ sandwich and a brown cow. That was my fair day treat.
Some of you know this by now, but I will soon be beginning a new series on this newsletter called “I Know A Place” and it will be a series focused on the stories of the people and places that I find amazing. Places that when people ask if I know where they can get something, I can tell them, “oh, I know a place!”
One thing I’ve learned over the years, is that you can read all the yelp reviews, you can look at all the ratings online, you can even have your always critical mother-in-law tell you a spot is great, but then when you go there, well… it’s just not. We all have different taste buds, palettes, opinions, preferences, or however you care to say it. These things are all subjective, however, the stories of memories you connect things with are not, just like when I have a brown cow, it reminds me of my excitement for a day at the fair.
Other flavors of ice cream are the same for me. I remember having these incredible mint chocolate chip Scooby Doo push-up pops. Whenever I had these guys, I was always sitting in the chair across from my dad’s, while watching King of the Hill.
Anytime I see a Dairy queen chocolate dipped cone, I find myself remembering the hot summers, where my family and I would go up to my cousin’s pool near Ellijay, GA, where my brother and I would sit in the back seat of our grandparent’s van, play our gameboys, stop off at Wendy’s to grab some chicken nuggets and fries, where we would ask for extra salt and cover the fries in it. We would spend the day there, scrape our knees and burn our feet on the hot concrete as we ran from the pool to the trampoline where we certainly suffered an injury or two. But after a long day of swimming, it was only made perfect when we could convince our mom to take us by dairy queen on the way home for a chocolate dipped ice cream cone. If we were convincing enough, it was a perfect day, but if we didn’t, it was a day worth forgetting.
If you show me Moose Tracks by Mayfield, I’m immediately reminded of the days in which my cousins from Fort Worth, TX and Birmingham, AL would both visit at my grandparents house next door to ours, and we would have a family dinner out at red lobster for some cheddar rolls and chicken tenders and then come back home to empty the whole tub of Moose Tracks amongst the cousins. It was only bought for special occasions such as these.
But in the back of so many of our minds, is the fabled ice cream day of elementary school. On this special and wonderful day of the month, kids were allowed to enjoy an ice cream along with their square pizza slice on their blue plastic lunch tray. It was the highly coveted ice cream cup with wooden spoon. This special treat holds a dear place in many hearts of unsuspecting adults and none of us can taste it anymore, though the taste of the wooden spoon remains in our memories as if it were an old lover.
The purpose of this new series “I Know A Place” isn’t to give you another rated review or to tell you about my personal experience there. The purpose is to give you the story. It’s to connect you to the people there and the meaning behind it all. Dishes change, taste matures, service is better some days than others, but the memories and the stories of these places never go away. To each of us, we connect easier when we’ve shared in the same experiences of life together, and my hope with this new series, is that you will find a piece of yourself in the story of someone else.
