Guilty Pleasure

Achilles had his heel.  Superman had Kryptonite.  Samson had his hair.  My fatal weakness, the element that will be my eventual undoing, is ice cream.  I would happily give up red meat, or potato chips, or red velvet cake for all eternity if I could be assured a regular supply of the frozen dairy treat.  It would be my last supper on Death Row.  It would be all three wishes to the genie in the lamp.  It will be my Rosebud, blowing from my lips I gasp my last breath:  ice cream!

The circumstances or form of my first taste of ice cream are long gone from my memory banks.  I do, however, have precious memories of the ice cream truck that occasionally found its way onto the deserted streets of our quiet neighborhood.  I remember hearing the sweet chime of distant bells, and then the melody as it worked its way closer and closer.  “What’s that?” I asked my mother the first time.  “Why it’s the ice cream man,” she said, jumping from the sofa and grabbing her purse.  How she had this knowledge was beyond me; as far as I knew there had never been such an occurrence before.  Outside, my mother flagged down the circus-colored truck.  I gazed in awe at the tantalizing picture menu painted across the exterior.  I wondered what it would take to convince my father to paint such a beautiful sight across our family Chevy. 

My mother chose for me:   a simple sandwich of vanilla ice cream embraced by two chocolate wafers.  The ice cream man [oh, what a great job!] opened a horizontal door and smoke rose up out of the frozen depths.  He pulled out a paper-wrapped brick and handed it to me.  It was hard as a rock, its freezing cold burning the skin of my fingertips.  It continued to smoke against the steamy Miami heat as I walked the path back into the house.  In the kitchen, I unwrapped my treasure as carefully as an archaeologist peels back linen from a mummy.  Once completely revealed, I sat for a moment in silence, trying to enjoy the anticipation of what was to come.  Picking up the sandwich, my first bite shifted the integrity of the wafers as the rapidly melting ice cream oozed from the edges.  Holding the sticky chocolate between my thumb and index finger, I ran an eager tongue along the edges to lap up the escaping creaminess.  The more it melted, the sweeter the ice cream filling became.

This early memory was only the beginning of a life that revolves around ice cream.   Sometime before my tenth birthday, a Baskin Robbins opened in Miami Shores—a neighborhood some fifty blocks from where we lived.  In the summertime, it was not unusual for our family to jump in the car after dinner and make a beeline to this storefront.  Inside, I loved to look into the freezer cases at all the round vats of flavors, laid out before me in all their beauty like colors on an artist’s palette. I loved to count them, taunting the wretched teenaged scoopmeister that there were, in fact, thirty-three flavors in their cases.  I dreamed of tasting them all—except for the yucky licorice flavor—forcing the boy to present me with one flavor after another in succession, each on its own pink tasting spoon.  Of course, there was no competition for my favorite flavor, the cloyingly sweet bubble-gum, which I loved as much for its Pepto-pink color as for the collection of bubble-gum pieces inside.

As a teen, ice cream became associated with triumph.  With each major concert that I performed was the promise of an ice cream finale.  My favorite was the “marble cake hot fudge delight” at Corky’s, a neighborhood Jewish-style restaurant famous for its fatty corned beef and potato latkes.   I loved this sundae for its amazing mix of textures—the spongey marble cake, the cold and creamy ice cream, the hot fudge flowing like lava, the airy whipped cream.  It was a sensory blowout that reinvigorated my soul after leaving everything I had on the concert stage. 

When it was time to go to college, I found my freshman dorm room directly across the street from an ice cream parlor.  In fact, it was a fudge store called Belgian Fudge.  They made all sorts of hand-made fudge, then cut up the remnant pieces and spun them into vanilla and chocolate ice-cream of exquisite quality.  In those days, a towering cone cost only a dollar.  It was the perfect late-night escape with friends, the perfect post-midterm celebration, and the perfect elixir for a broken heart.  Do we have to wonder from where my “freshman fifteen” originated?

After I married my darling Tom, we hung out on Fort Lauderdale beach for a few days before leaving on our honeymoon.  One night, we skipped dinner and headed to a favorite spot, the ice cream paradise known as Jaxson’s—a tribute to the ice cream gods if ever there was one.  At Jaxson’s, ice cream is not a cap on a meal, it is the meal.  A small sundae at Jaxson’s includes approximately half a gallon of incredible store-made ice cream.  Their hot fudge, I am convinced, flows freely from fountains in heaven.

Even as I travel, ice cream is as important to me in connecting with the local culture as the museums, or the taxi drivers, or the local artisans.  I love the Cadbury 99 Flake in the UK, the café liegeois in Paris, the stracciatella gelato in Athens, and the funny scooper at Otantík in Istanbul.  Every culture has some version of ice cream, and every last one speaks to me.

Today, I am more enlightened about health and diet, having relinquished many of my gustatory vices.   I am reformed from my two-liter-a-day Diet Coke addiction.  I can pass up cookies and cakes without a whimper.  I can eat just one Ruffles potato chip or none at all.  But I must have my ice cream, even in moderation, or I will die.  You see, a life without ice cream is a life not worth living.

Tomorrow's blog:  Every Day is Memorial Day