Hand Me Downs
First stop, somewhere on the Mass Pike.
Growing up in the fifties in Cincinnati, we had two ice cream brand choices. Sealtest and Graeters. Sealtest was, and still is, your typical off the grocery shelf, air-filled, ice cream. Graeters was Steve’s, Ben and Jerry’s, and Hagen Daez, long before those dense, mostly heavy cream desserts were marketed. As a young lad, I liked both, but I knew the expensive, family-owned ice cream was superior. Our favorite flavor – chocolate.
Fifty years pass and one day I pick up The Globe and there is an article about Keith Lockhart, the conductor of the Boston Pops and a longtime Cincinnati resident. He still eats Graeters ice cream. He has it shipped to his house, packed in dry ice.
On my drive here, somewhere near Cleveland, I get the bright idea that I’ll buy Graeters to surprise my mother. I call Diane, she hones in on the most convenient and open (Sunday evening) Graeters, text messages me directions and Viola! here I am in Worthington, Ohio, parked at a local Graeters, which happens to be on the corner of High St. and W New England Ave. I bought five pints packed in a white Styrofoam cooler with enough dry ice to keep those memories rock hard for two days.
Has anyone seen the movie Affliction?
Paul Schrader’s film? With Nick Nolte, James Coburn, Willem Dafoe, Sissy Spacek and Mary Beth Hurt? No — you should’ve brought it up camping while I was marveling at your and Q’s limited movie “vocabulary” and schooled me back. But I remember taking a pass despite its great cast and mostly positive reviews — while it may have resonance for some, I generally (cowardly) avoid movies about human cruelty.
But how ’bout Graeter’s? But for the Lockhart story, I was braced for a story of boarded-up memory. Looks from the photo like you’re not the only one who finds the locale photo-worthy!
Comment by adam — October 11, 2005 @ 2:53 pm
Michael,
Speaking of human cruelty…self-inflicted, anyway.
I am putting two books on the US burro train heading north tomorrow. “Ice” and “Mountain Men”–all about the cruel elements of Antactica and the Karakoram in multiple chapters–the crossing of the Mawson glacier (by Mawson, who else), Cherry Gerrard’s tale of an agonizing winter jaunt to get eggs from the Emperor penguins, struggles for survival on K2, and other stories calculated to chill your mind and frost your toes.
Comment by rakkity — October 11, 2005 @ 3:40 pm
Rakkity, see March of the Penguins. I loved this movie.
Michael, you and Diane are coming for dinner in a couple of weeks. Graeters’s would be wonderful! One of each chocolate and vanilla. The question is will it last that long in your house as well as from Ohio. (Speaking of Ohio, if you show up with Venison we’re not eating it!) I haven’t seen Affliction but it was the movie James Coburn won his Oscar for.
Comment by laRad — October 11, 2005 @ 3:53 pm
I’m betting rakkity was first in line for that movie, or he and the Mrs are waiting for it to come to the local free library.
How about venison flavored ice cream? Okay, even I can’t stand the thought of that one.
The Graeters in Cincinnati, if it is still there, was the original and only. My memory is it looked a bit like the old Bailey’s in Wellesley, but then I tend to color the past in inviting hues.
Comment by michael — October 11, 2005 @ 5:29 pm
Michael is right. The Mrs. & I were nearly first in line when March of the Ps came to Bowie town.
It’s a great movie, ranking right up there in the documentaries with Winged Migration.
An interesting relevant nugget I gleaned from Cherry Gerard’s journey (in “Ice”) to see the Emperors in the winter of 1914 is that when an egg or young penguin is somehow lost from the parent, other penguins who have lost their young vie with one another to ensconce it in their pouch. (The movie doesn’t show this.) It’s an amazing instance of extra-bloodline altruism.
Comment by rakkitty — October 12, 2005 @ 5:09 pm