A Taste of Sweet Heaven

You know what I could use right about now and especially on a beautiful day such as this?

One of my grandmothers' legendary ice cream sundaes. Ooooh, weeeee.

I remember when my aunt and myself couldn't wait for her to whip us up one of those incredibly-tasting sundaes that she used to make for us decades ago.

She would get REAL ice cream from this company called Schwan's and have it delivered to the house.

Those ice cream jugs were heavier then Pam Anderson's.

One of those things had to weigh around 333 lbs.

You would need Hulk Hogan from 1987 to help you carry those things in the house and even then, ole' Hulk would tell you,

"You know something, brother?! This ice cream feels heavier then when I tore my lat and my biceps slamming Andre the Giant, brother."

Hulk's not lying either because toting those jugs around as a kid felt like I was lifting ole' Andre up for a bodyslam at the old Pontiac Silverdome.

She would store the ice cream in one those old-time deep freezers from the late 60's I believe.

This was the kind of deep freezer that didn't have all the fancy bells and whistles like today's freezers.

Today, freezers, not only automatically defrost at certain time intervals but they come with state-of-the-art technology.

I would imagine that you can send e-mail through these things nowadays. I bet they even come equipped with their very own fax machines and you can surf the web with them while enjoying a glass of freshly squeezed Tropicana.

No, the freezer we had was just a plain ole' mama that did her job very well.

There was no fax machine or world wide web because we barely had phones. I know some of you old fogies like myself remember the rotary phone era.

C'mon people, let me see a show of hands out there. Don't be ashamed, you old farts!

It didn't even have an automatic defroster.

You want to know who did the defrosting?

Well, you're currently reading the article from the guy that helped his grandmother defrost that bad mama all by ourselves.

We would take all the food out, unplug it, open the garage up and slide it out there to be cleaned.

From there, we would take the water hose and give it a good rinsing out. Then we would dry it all out and put everything back in it like it was before.

That's how I learned what freezer burn was. That jug of ice cream would be frozen so solid that it had icicles on top of it.

It didn't look very appetizing at all until she let it sit out for a bit before serving it up.

When it was finally thawed out, she would take two large scoops and place them into a blender along with some 7 Up.

That's right, kids! Forget about a Sprite; 7 Up was running things back then.

She would fill up the rest of the blender with 7 Up, press blend and that's when the magic would happen.

She'd take that lid off as my aunt and I would grab a few glasses and we would be in a state of Paradise from each sip of those amazing sundaes.

Tasty treats like that made you forget all about the scorching heat back then.

Matter of fact, I might go downstairs right now, plug up that Jack LaLanne juicer and see if I can re-create the magic from my childhood.

I will let you all know how it goes. Godspeed!!

*Quick note: I was saddened to learn that Schwan's which was later rebranded as Yelloh, announced that it was going out of business. I guess that goes to show you that nothing does ever stay the same. I know about you all but I'm missing my childhood more & more every day.