Ice Cream on Nantucket Island

The enchantment of summer begins upon boarding the steamship for Nantucket. Seagulls loftily circle the vessel, casting a spell over any unwary passengers who unwittingly heed their sharp cries. The engine builds from a gentle purr to a steady rumble that reverberates to a forgotten point deep inside your very bones. This is the signal that, no matter how far you may have traveled to arrive at this point, it is only now that your voyage has truly begun. Were you able to capture the cool, salty, scent of the ocean breezes and blend it with the fragrance of a diesel engine and the steady aroma of roasted hotdogs coming from inside the cabin you would find that you had managed to bottle the essence of summer itself.

When you disembark there is a long section of road colloquially known as “The Strip.” This street carries some magic of its own, for every time you walk down it, the shops will have changed their positions so that they are never quite as you remember. You’ll pass a confusion of small eateries and a rental shop where college kids and bicycles spill out onto the sidewalk. It is a curious thing about the bike shop employees that despite their youth, you’ll swear they wear the same faces now that they did many decades ago, back when you were even younger than they. It may well be this point that you’ll find with some surprise and distress that you can’t remember how many summers ago you had last ridden a bicycle yourself. Without even realizing it, at some indeterminate point of life you yourself had, in fact, grown up. The smell of crisp waffle fries wafts through the air and offers little consolation.

At the end of the street the scent the breeze changes, and with it comes the faintest whiff of stale ice cream on a cloud of the warm, sweet aroma of waffle cones. Here, at last, you have finally arrived at summer. The years, which had snuck up you so quickly before, unceremoniously drop off, cast aside like a travel-worn suitcase at the end of a long journey. You are once again young and on vacation from life and responsibilities. Fading sprinkles and candies and sticky drops of melted ice cream strew the sidewalk like old confetti. Here again the street works its magic – they are elevated from sticky residue to gleeful reminders of the joys that await within.

There is no choice. Were you to simply pass by, then you would be forced to pick up your luggage and shuffle back into old age. Much better, then to indulge in the present. The sign has changed little over the decades. There are a few new flavors which have been unceremoniously scrawled at the bottom, but none of those are your destination. No, there are too many other stops you must attend to first. If the people ordering ahead of you are slow, please be patient. It isn’t indecisiveness or the scope of the menu. Rather, it is the magnitude of knowing that whichever flavor they choose will determine what identity they have seized, even if it’s just for that moment.

There are, of course, the classics – Chocolate, Vanilla, and Coffee. These are the primary colors of ice cream – the very basics from which a rainbow of other flavors can be created. If you order one of these you are either boring, a connoisseur, a glutton, or an artist. The former two are very difficult to tell apart. As to the latter two, you have to watch very carefully and note the skill with which a person overloads their scoops with a smorgasbord of toppings – is it greed, or have they honed their skill to such that they have succeeded in creating their own, unique flavor? For those who are shy about wielding such power of creation there are variants of each flavor that already conveniently have candies or chocolate chips blended in. Chocolate Chip, Heath Bar, Coffee Heath Bar, Kahlua Crunch – the combinations are endless. The fruit flavors of course all start at Vanilla. Banana and Strawberry are the most obvious, but in the fall the dazzlingly purple and bewilderingly seedy Native Blackberry will make its way onto the menu. There is also Crantucket – a vanilla complimented by chewy, chocolate coated cranberries. This is the flavor that most appeals to tourists, eager as they are to consume as much of the island as they possibly can. Mint is one of the most popular flavor, especially on hot, humid days when the cool of the ice cream itself just isn’t enough. Often the decision between Peppermint Twist and Mint Chocolate Chip is made entirely on a preference for pink or green. Grape Nut and Rum Raisin are the flavors of old people, who have, over the course of their lifetimes, developed the wisdom to know better than to judge a book based on its title.

If there is a line, and there often is, rest assured that it is worth the wait. The moment you walk inside that door you will find yourself the exact same age you were that one special summer, long ago, that you have weighed every other summer against. Ice cream holds such magic that you can’t help but wonder whether, when you walk back outside, your friends and family from long ago mightn’t be waiting for you after all. Scoop in hand, you may well step back out into the street, squint against the glare of the sun, and think, perhaps, you might rent a bicycle today after all.