Nothing on Helena, Montana’s downtown Walking Mall has warmed my heart more than to weave in and out of throngs of lickers-of-ice-cream—all ages mind you. From my silver-haired, hand-holding generation for whom conversation is unnecessary when there’s a sugar cone beneath this frozen delicacy, to gravity-defying toddlers tipping cones any which way but up, to their more experienced counterparts able to twirl and lick at the same time, to their parents seated about this impromptu circle of entertainment, licking, of course, to the casual teen and college youth interspersed amongst the savvy suit and tie crowd, all standing in a line twenty deep…outside the door…to those I met blocks from the shop who were down to their last two bites of crispy cone, licking their fingers with cat-like satisfaction…well, there you have it…in one paragraph…proof
Outdoorsy-Eaters-of-Ice-Cream Cement Community Oneness
When I heard from my good friend, Beverly, that her daughter had just introduced her to Big Dipper Ice Cream on the Gulch, my breath caught. Baiting me feverishly with, “Mmm, Mexican Chocolate is sooo good…has cinnamon in it, you know,” I grimaced because it was late Sunday and the store was closed. (Never once in my life have I received an “A” for patience.)
To be absolutely certain you ascertain the relevance of my relationship with ice-cream, I’m a kid who used to stand with grade-school buddies on the steps of South Elementary School in Laurel, Montana, hollering at the top of our lungs in the mornings before the bell rang to admit us to a day of discipline and decorum, I scream…you scream…we all scream for ice-cream. We repeated screams ad nauseum until hoarse or, having raised the roof on the building’s interior peace and quiet, garnered the attention of one teacher or another who aggressively pushed open the doors to shush and shoo us back onto the gravelly playground. “You go on now or every last one of you will spend the morning recess at your desks!”
Yuk. Dashing to the swings and hanging upside down on the monkey bars, we’d howl at both our bravery and escape. And before the week was over, we’d be at it again. Dixie cups were popular then…the half-cup paper cup with a lid and pull tab. It was kosher to lick the lid before digging the thumb-sized wooden spoon into the interior seeing who could make theirs last the longest. And though we were never rewarded with ice-cream for all our screaming efforts, the idea settled in my bones that this creamy frozen scoop of stuff might be worth the loss of fifteen minutes of playground freedom.
Have I ever turned down an offer for a brief encounter of shockingly-cold-taste-bud-revelations? Umm, don’t think so.
Have I ever been too full? Ha!
Too poor? Impossible to fathom.
And if we were still panning for gold on Last Chance Gulch and this was my last day on Earth, would you find me clutching sand and gravel to my chest with flecks of gold dangling from my eyelashes or would you find me with my nose buried in a double-scoop Mocha Chip and El Salvador Coffee cone from the Big Dipper?
What…you have to ask?
