June 2012
In the evening Alice sat on her grandfather’s knee and listened to stories of faraway places.
When he had finished, Alice would say, “When I grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I grow old, I too will live beside the sea.”
“That is all very well little Alice,” her grandfather would say, “but there is a third thing you must do…
…you must do something to make the world more beautiful.”
from Miss Rumphius
by Barbara Cooney
gathering days...thirty three
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At 9:00 pm it’s 99 degrees.
N-I-N-E-T-Y N-I-N-E.
So we did the only thing you can do. A bunch of us piled in cars and drove to Freddy’s Frozen Custard where, for $2.99 you can add 5 lbs to your backside in the form of a waffle cone…but man, it’s good!
When I was a kid we could buy a double-dip ice cream at Thrifty’s Drug Store for .10 cents, now that’s a deal you won’t find anymore. If we were really riding high we might go to 31 Flavors, where the options were limitless and we’d stand with our faces pressed against the display cases, unable to make up our minds against all the choices.
On the east coast everyone spent the sultry nights milling around Rita’s Water Ice. I still can’t wrap my mind around water ice, it seems like a glorified snow cone but say that to someone born in Jersey or Philly and you’re a traitor. The first day of Spring finds everyone and their brother in line, waiting for their free water-ice.
Here it’s frozen custard. On a cone, as ‘concrete mixer’ or a sundae.
Of course my husband, well he had to be different and order onion rings.
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~ lindasinklings
