Remembering “Mr. Softee,” frozen treats, fresh Hart’s Ring Bologna
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross
With just a few days past the Summer Solstice I remember well those hot summer days laying in the lush, green grass in the backyard and watching the parade of clouds cross a bright blue sky.
It was a long, long hot summer, an endless summer until off in the distance we would hear, lightly on a breeze, tinkling notes. No, not a wind chime, but a tune that would echo through our brains, year, after year, summer after summer and to this day. Mister Softee was coming and bringing with him all sorts of ice cream goodies that would drizzle down our chins and over our hands, cooling those hot summer days with sticky goodness.
When I was still in Washington Elementary School, now the home of the Dyke Street Engine Company, and very young, I remember a day when I was jealous that my high school aged sister was already out of school for the year and I was still attending classes. When I came home that afternoon, she was busy washing the family’s blue and white Chevy in the driveway. I was helping her when a man on a bike with big white box on the front pedaled into the driveway. For a nickel or a dime, we could get an ice cream sandwich or a frozen popsicle.
When I was a little older, it was the tinkling chimes from the Mister Softee truck that would spring us from cloud watching and send us into hyper speed. We’d run into the house begging for 50 cents or frantically search the chairs and couch for coins.
If the blue and white truck plastered with pictures of cones and sundaes had passed by before we finally got our money, we’d climb onto our Schwinns and chase the truck down the street until it stopped.
I remember once, I was straddling my 26-inch bike and waiting while Gail got her giant rippling, soft cone. She maneuvered her bike behind me when I moved up to the window to get my cone. When I turned around there was Gail straddling her 26-inch Schwinn, (in their infinite wisdom our parents had purchased identical bikes for us) Gail was standing there with ice cream in one hand and an empty cone in the other. I don’t remember what we did, probably shared. I just remember the woebegone expression on my friend’s face.
We also had a little Elmhurst at the corner of Hanover and South Main to cool off with on hot days, or to pick up a quart of milk if the quantity the milkman had delivered into the silver, metal box on the porch had run out.
Gail was lucky, her Mom, Elsie, worked at the little Elmhurst. I was lucky too, riding our bikes home from the swimming pool we would often stop at my grandfather’s blacksmith shop on Dyke Street. After watching grandpa shoe a horse or after playing Buck Rogers in the back of the shop while wearing heavy flip down welding helmets, Grampa would hand us a couple of quarters or a shiny silver dollar for the Elmhurst and send us on our way.
The best summer days were when Hart’s Meat Market was smoking ring bologna and my neighbor Myra Feller was baking bread, The smells on the breeze were enough to make your mouth drool and your bellies growl. Dave Hart would give us a chunk of the warm baloney from behind a large white meat case.
Sherry, Myra’s granddaughter from the city, would visit during the summer. We’d sit under the young Maple tree in her backyard and play my plastic Mickey Mouse guitar or we’d have tea parties on the back porch using the metal tops from tins of cocoa for our plates.
Sherry had an English bike. We were all jealous, It was sleek, lightweight and unlike our clumsy Schwinn’s, it had hand brakes. We had to backpedal to stop.
Sometimes we would pick strawberries from Harold’s (Sherry’s grandfather) strawberry patch, but only if I hadn’t seen any snakes. My sister told me Harold had pet snakes.
On warm summer nights Pat and I would sneak out of the house and we would stealthily cross the lawn to pick cherries or pears from Harold’s trees. To this day I prefer a green pear to a ripe one.
Rain or shine, a hot summer day was a special time even when Mister Softee was nowhere to be heard.
Kathryn Ross is a lifelong Wellsville resident, writer, and community activist. You can reach her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com
