I have absolutely no idea where this idea came from but I have been thinking about ice cream today. So let’s use that for the memory prompt.

As a child my favorite ice cream flavor was chocolate mint. Actually it still is. As I child I also hated going to the dentist but right near the dentist office was an ice cream parlor. Knowing there was a good chance to get an ice cream after a visit to the dentist (which was always filled with equal parts pain and humiliation) was about the only way I could make myself get into the car. The entire time I was sitting in that odd-smelling office looking out the wavy glass windows at Concord Elementary school across the street, all I could do was think about the possibility of ice cream. After I survived all that pain and suffering my order was always the same. Mint chocolate chip. On a sugar cone.

At home we usually only had vanilla ice cream but we had all sorts of goodies to put on top. Bosco chocolate syrup was a staple. As was a selection of fresh walnuts or almonds from our trees. We had a little metal hand grinder for the nuts and I loved to grind them into a really fine powder to pour over the chocolate sauce. Sometime we had the marshmallow creme or butterscotch topping and whipped cream. But my favorite was always just the vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup that I would stir until it was soup and then drink it like a milkshake.

After skating lessons we would go to Berkeley Farms restaurant in Walnut Creek and I would often get a hot fudge sundae. Sometimes a chocolate milk shake where they actually brought you the big silver container they made it in to the table so you got every last drop of the shake to yourself.

Your turn. Do you have any childhood memories about ice cream?