Ice Cream

Summer is approaching, so Ice cream is on my mind.

The first ice cream I recall is the standard Neapolitan variety, which came in a square-ish, cardboard container with strawberry at one end, vanilla in the middle, and chocolate at the other end. Strawberry was the favoured flavour, so we always tried to get what we could because it never lasted long.

Neapolitan Ice Cream – the standard ice cream of my youth.

I don’t know how or where we got it. It may have been the Canada Dry soda man that brought it (I mentioned this in Summer) but, however we got it, we did look forward to it as a summer treat, along with watermelon and the ubiquitous freezer pops (also mentioned in Summer) that appeared when the weather turned hot.

When school started, however, the landscape of ice cream changed.

I don’t recall ice cream in the lower grades, but when I entered junior high (7th grade, 1967, 12 years old) there was a chest freezer with assorted ice creams in the lunchroom.

The one I am most familiar with is the fudgesicle, because it was only a nickel. It was basically chocolate ice cream on a stick. Not my favourite, but it was what I could afford.

Fudgesicle, the poor man’s ice cream.

Another 5-cent summer treat was the popsicle, an orange-flavoured frozen block of ice with a dented middle and two sticks. The idea was you could snap it in half along the dent, making two popsicles. I occasionally broke them, but that was for easier eating. It was not until much later that I learned the idea of breaking them in half was so you could share them. Even if I had known that I would never have shared one. It was my nickel, after all, and money didn’t grow on trees.

The Popsicle. You want one, buy it yourself.

Those who did have money could afford the better ice creams from the chest freezer. The most basic of these I do not recall a name for. We simply referred to it as Ice Cream, and it was just vanilla ice cream, covered in chocolate, on a stick. It cost a dime, so I rarely had one.

What the POSH kids ate.

Also out of my reach was the ice cream sandwich, which was exactly what it sounds like—a block of vanilla ice cream sandwiched between two thin chocolate cake-type layers. I’m sure you’ve had one; they must be still around.

An Ice Cream Sandwich, for the neat eaters.

Similar to this was the Eskimo Pie, which was a block of vanilla ice cream covered in a thin layer of chocolate. It was basically an ice cream without a stick, or an ice cream sandwich without the sandwich part, and it was terribly messy to eat.

An Eskimo Pie, for the messy among us.

(By the way, I am using the names we called them, not their real, product names. What I’m calling an Eskimo Pie is actually a Klondike Bar, and an Eskimo Pie is the proper name for what I’m calling an Ice Cream. And the brand name Eskimo Pie no longer exists. Confusing enough for you?)

The top of the ice cream pyramid was something we had a specific name for (though not the proper one), but which I have forgotten. It was basically vanilla ice cream on a stick, with chocolate cake flakes embedded in the chocolate covering, and with a dark chocolate center. Very posh.

This isn’t it, but it gives you the idea.

The other treat, which I could only occasionally afford (and which happened to be my favourite), was a Hokey Pokey. As above, this is not its proper name. If you look up “Hokey Pokey Ice cream,” you’ll find several varieties of ice cream, but not an ice cream cone topped with chocolate and nuts. (And if you look up “Hokey Pokey,” you’ll find the once-popular song and dance, which the British inexplicably call the Hokey Cokey.) But that’s what we called it, and everyone knew what it meant. And it cost a dime.

As I grew older, other ice creams entered my orbit, and the cost for the good ones rose to fifteen cents, twenty cents, a quarter, and beyond. But there were so many that no particular type—or cost—stands out. And as much as I enjoy having the choice—and the money—for whatever sort of ice cream I desire, it’s still nice to remember a simpler time when there were only a handful of ice cream varieties, and a dime was a lot of money.

Now to go out and get me one of these.