HOW TO MURDER AN ICE CREAM CONE by Judy Fowler

 

The dog days of August are upon us. My urge to plot out crime stories has temporarily abated. In the lull, there’s always time to kill an ice cream cone.

My friend Nikki kills hers by biting the bottom out first. I use my mother's technique. Bite off the peak of the ice cream first. Catch the drippy parts near the top of the cone. Another bite off the top and you're ready to relax and lick away the ice cream that remains.

After that? Dispose of the evidence in whatever’s left of your napkin supply after deciding what to do with what's left in the bottom of the cone.

For celebratory memory-making, Proust’s famous cookie has nothing on recalling moments shared doing in a couple of ice cream cones.

Yesterday after a swim in the Chesapeake Bay, my thoughts (followed by my feet) wandered over to Dairy Queen. As I attacked the top of my cone, I had a memory of running along the hot sand at Jones Beach as a kid. In my sticky bathing suit, I hopped from foot to foot hoping I wouldn't drop the change I'd been given to buy a paper cylinder of Neapolitan ice cream—so I could return to our blanket with a sticky grin.

After my chiropractic appointment recently, I pulled into a shopping center to see if my Weight Watchers location was still there. It wasn't, but the Carvel store was. For $4.50, that first taste of a soft-serve vanilla cone transported me back to Glen Cove, Long Island in the 1960’s. In those years Mom celebrated our mutual survival of my dental appointments by nosing her car into the parking lot of a Carvel stand to share a cup or cone with me. She’d brand the little wooden spoon or the swirl at the top before we finished it off with a smile. 

On summer visits to upstate New York, Mom introduced us to homemade ice cream from deep containers at a store near where she grew up. I discovered vanilla fudge. Mom bit into maple walnut. Sisters, Dad, and brother chose butter pecan, real strawberry, and pistachio. That half hour spent ordering and devouring ice cream cones while standing around the over-stuffed car was a time-out from packing, driving, and arguing—and it switched each of us into "We're on vacation!” mode.

My grandfather loved ice cream in summer—especially someone else’s. I was six and had barely dipped my spoon into the junior-sized hot fudge sundae he’d bought me when he pointed to something I just had to see. By the time I got turned around in my chair again, most of my sundae was gone.

Such a crime is shocking. “Pop!” I cried. “You ate my ice cream!” The adults and children near us made faces at him but he never apologized. 

Dogs are usually prime suspects when ice cream is missing. To ensure a good time is had by all in Montreal, its summer ice cream stands offer each pet an ice cream-covered dog bone—on the house.

Memory-making moments with family grow fewer as I get older. But I had one last great one in August, 2019. Mom and I took one of her “let’s just drive and see where it leads” road trips between New Hampshire and Vermont. 

We spotted the ice cream stand near Quechee Gorge.

At age ninety-nine, Mom looked terribly small sitting in my passenger seat. I figured she'd want a small cup. I assumed she’d worry about dripping on her skirt and blazer. 

Never assume. She’d grown bolder with age. And she didn't give a hoot about her weight. She asked for a double scoop chocolate cone. That was Dad and my brother’s territory. 

A few minutes later, I warily passed her one of the two I’d ordered. We began to lick them to death. 

It was hot outside so we stayed in the air-conditioned car but left the doors open in case the dripping cones overwhelmed us. Mom's left a chocolate stain that's still on my passenger-side floormat. 

Her technique didn’t fail her. We ate, laughed, got serious about our task, and then she beat me to the bottom. Little evidence remained to be disposed of. We were giddy all the way back to her senior residence.

Better ways may exist to do in an ice cream cone. No one was more fun to share that experience with than my Mom, who once had the novel idea of capping off a cavity-laden dental visit with a trip to the soft serve stand.