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Jun 5, 2006
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Jun 5, 2006
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TOPSHAM, Maine It's my hope, in this age of multi-cultural diversity, that my honesty on the subject will provide an emancipating inspiration to others like me who have felt the weight of public ridicule simply because we're different and a little old-fashioned.
I adore vanilla ice cream.
There. I've said it. Go ahead and laugh. Please make mine a triple scoop.
The need to come out of the freezer powerfully came to me the other day while trying to purchase ice cream at the stand on Main Street where we always go with friends to watch our town's annual Memorial Day Parade.
The Memorial Day parade is the biggest public event in our town by a country mile, drawing thousands of patriotic, flag-waving folks to the streets of two neighboring towns.
As in years past, coffees in hand, we parked ourselves early on the sidewalk near the old mill complex by the river, not far from an ice cream stand that serves up the best vanilla ice cream in America.
This year, there was extra poignancy in the event: My son Jack was marching in his final Memorial Day parade with the high school band. Though only a rising junior, he's decided to go his own way, musically speaking, and follow a different drummer, even though he plays electric bass in the marching band. The bass he plays is a freaky '70s purple number that looks like it might have been picked up at a yard sale for Sly and the Family Stone.
Every time I see him playing it, I have to laugh out loud. This year, though, since this was his final time playing it, I thought I might actually cry out loud. Other parental types around us in the crowd were already misting up because they had teenagers who'd marched in the big Memorial Parade forever and were suddenly about to graduate and vanish over the horizon to brighter lights and bigger places.
For years, studies have indicated that Maine is actually losing population -- or was, that is, until Cape Cod filled up to maximum capacity a couple of years ago and the overflow crowd from Boston began venturing up this way, first to purchase second homes and lately to take up full-time residency and actually commute to their jobs two hours south of here.
Record numbers of Americans, in truth, as Newsweek recently pointed out, are bailing out of the overcrowded, overpriced, overcongested major cities and making a beeline for small hometowns just like Southern Pines, North Carolina, and Topsham, Maine.
They're looking for a slower pace of life, yards to tend, sidewalks to stroll, front doors to keep unlocked, neighbors to get to know, an America that may well be vanishing before our eyes or never even have existed except in our fondest imaginings.
You can't blame folks for wanting these things. I just wish they'd come here to the slow lanes of America and leave their fancy big-city ice cream tastes back in the city. Vanilla ice cream, for one, seems to be in danger of becoming a forgotten flavor.
'Kind of Dull'
I learned this worrying fact when I moseyed over to the ice cream stand to purchase my traditional pre-parade cone of true old-fashioned Gifford's handmade scoop vanilla and discovered they were slap out of the stuff.
"I guess somebody forgot to stock the freezer," said the gum-snapping, pink-haired girl behind the counter. She looked like someone's daughter who went over the horizon and eventually came back with a lot of hardware in her pretty oval face.
"We've got, let's see, great Mocha Java, plenty of Rocky Road, and Decadent Chocolate. That's my favorite."
"Why no old-fashioned vanilla?" I asked, thinking America might have gone a little overboard on this diversity thing.
She snapped her gum. "I dunno. Maybe we just don't sell it like we used to."
"How can you make a proper hot-fudge sundae or real root beer float?" It seemed the obvious question, given the importance of the day.
"Lots of people want fudge ripple in sundaes," she said, coming back at me with a teensie note of condescension. "And different kinds of ice cream in their floats. I mean, vanilla is kind of dull, if you think about it."
Missing Southern Tea
On my way back to the curb, pondering the sudden ice cream deficit but unwilling to accept the thought that vanilla is dull, I bumped into Old Ted Biddle.
"What's this I hear about you moving off to North Carolina?" he shouted at me. Old Ted is nearly stone deaf but still plays golf three afternoons a week. He was carrying his dinky accordion, warming up the crowds with patriotic melodies before the marching bands came along. I met Ted 24 years ago when I moved to town. He doesn't look or act a day over 92.
"I missed real Southern sweet tea and pimento cheese spread," I shouted back at him, putting it into the simplest terms, then explained that I was simply dividing my time between my two favorite small towns in America.
"Thought it might be because we're under 24-hour attack," he declared, adjusting his peaked veteran's cap and one of his many American flags sprouting patriotically from his pockets. Old Ted is a veteran of the Second World War, a proud survivor of the Bulge. I asked him who, in particular, was attacking us.
"Shopping centers. Developers. Condo kings, you name it. They're everywhere these days, knocking things down, putting junk up! Seen that new bypass intersection up there at 5 o'clock yet? Doris drives six miles out of the way just to avoid that thing!"
I nodded sympathetically but explained that the same sort of thing was going on down in my other small town in North Carolina, but I don't think Ted heard me. He was suddenly going on about undocumented workers and illegal immigrants, demanding to know what I thought about Mexico since I was spending most of my time much closer to it these days.
"Vanilla comes from Mexico," I said, climbing briefly up on my own soap box. "The Aztecs used the precious bean to make perfume and a royal drink favored by Montezuma. Cortez brought it back to Europe, where it became the world's most expensive spice. Did you know it's actually an orchid that grows on jungle trees?
Ted stared at me like a constipated eagle. "What? Why, they should be stopped and sent back, too!" he shouted. Suddenly the vintage cars were gliding past and the parade's first marching band followed them, the kids from St. Joseph's, belting out "Stars and Stripes" with a squeaking clarinet section.
I headed back to my curb and found my wife waving to her special-needs kids riding in a float promoting Special Olympics. They were tossing handfuls of candy, and something struck me in the forehead. It turned out to be a double chocolate Tootsie Roll mini, the ultimate indignity to a hard-suffering vanilla fan.
An Unexpected Sadness
Even without my favorite ice cream in hand, the parade this year was a real crowd-pleaser. There were dozens of kids pedaling decorated bikes, veterans' groups from three wars receiving grateful applause, Harley Bikers for Peace, 15 goose-fleshed Miss Maine contestants in their glammy ball gowns, not to mention several strolling clowns and politicians.
"Too damn few of one, too damn many of the other," I heard Old Ted thunder some yards away.
I personally used the opportunity to exercise my patriotic duty and alert our passing local state rep to the possibility of a looming vanilla ice cream crisis but was cut short by a mighty tuba blast and the sudden appearance of our own high school band coming down the hill toward the river, strutting proudly in their bright white uniforms, brassily tooting out a classic Sousa melody that made you awful glad to live in a country where every flavor is welcome, even the duller ones.
My son was easy enough to pick out, marching near the back with his big ugly purple electric bass, trailed by his amp in a little wagon, making his valedictory strut through town with a stone military face. It made me very proud to see him. And, oddly, unexpectedly sad to think this was the final time.
I whistled and waved and he finally glanced over just as the camera clicked, a little embarrassed, nodding solemnly.
Back at our place, the usual Memorial Day crowd showed up for our annual somewhat rowdy covered-dish cookout sharply at 3. The requisite Whiffle Ball game immediately began. This year, it was girls against boys, and the girls won in a romp.
After dutifully flipping burgers and grilling the chicken, I joined the girls' team in the fourth inning, shortly before the break to eat, thinking how there were actually few "girls" on it. They were suddenly all young women who would soon be marching over the horizon to brighter places.
The highlight came when my son's new girlfriend nailed a pitch six feet over her boyfriend's head and drove in three runs. His stone face was long gone. In some ways he had never looked so relaxed and happy, and never more grown-up.
This year's covered dishes said everything you need to know about the state of American diversity. There was a fantastic nacho casserole from Mexico, cheese and breads from Belgium and France, stuffed Italian shells, Thai spring rolls, Yankee blueberry pie and Southern-style peach cobbler. There were even two gallons of old-fashioned vanilla for ala mode patriots like me.
Somewhere toward the end of the star-spangled affair, as dusk began to settle and the mosquitos came out at invasion strength, and another game started up, I scooped up the last of the ice cream and went out on the porch to watch the game.
Call me Mr. Vanilla, but Memorial Day suddenly struck me as the one holiday it's OK to be shamelessly nostalgic, the lesson being to notice everything that parades before the camera in your head so you'll have something wonderful to remember when it's gone.
My golden retriever Riley was lying on the porch, exhausted from mooching food and being yelled at by players for stealing the Whiffle ball.
"You're not getting a bit of this," I warned the bum, sounding dangerously like Old Ted, placing my half-eaten bowl safely on the porch rail. When I came back, Riley was nowhere in sight and the bowl was licked dishwasher clean.
Never trust a golden retriever anywhere near a bowl of vanilla ice cream. That's another valuable lesson I learned this Memorial Day.
Best-selling author Jim Dodson, writer-in-residence at The Pilot, can be reached by e-mail at jasdodson@earthlink.net. |
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