Do children eat vanilla ice cream these days? With all the other flavours available, and all the tasty syrups parents could augment it with, plain old vanilla seems so boring.My dorm mates and I didn't think so back in 1965. All we ever ate, whenever Mrs. Anderson at the residential school grudgingly permitted it, was vanilla ice cream. As I related in my Deliverance From Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School) memoir, Our supervisor actually took us to an ice cream supplier located about ten blocks from the institution. Here's what happened on that sunlit March Saturday.
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In March, we visited Pete's Ice Cream Parlour. This meant much more to me than a new flag or an old leader. As I had never been to a business which actually made ice cream, the outing seemed an exciting event. Occasionally, our dietician treated us to small dixie cups filled with ice cream from that establishment. Now we were actually at the place which manufactured those desserts. Mrs. Sandyford purchased the treats and handed them out to us. As we walked back to the dorm, we ate our ice creams while enjoying the fine weather. Though it was only vanilla, that confection was much tastier than apples.
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Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. Click here to read more about this book and to order it. You may also e-mail me directly if the comment form doesn't work.
Kids are lucky these days with so many flavors of ice cream. My Mom remembers back when she was a little girl in school (which was during the great depression), they had a field trip and had ice cream with pineapple topping. To this day that is still her favorite sundae and she remembers how it tasted so good that day.
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