An Excerpt from an Ice Cream Scrub

Unfortunately for the leather wallet I received as a birthday gift a few years ago, I have only ever had four paying jobs. The most recent one was a stint as an AV guy for Kalamazoo College’s music department last spring, and before that I worked as “Game Advisor” at Gamestop back in my junior year of high school. But before both of those big-figure payrolls I worked as a humble ice-cream guy in two different shops back in my hometown of Bartlett, Il.

The first job I sequestered was at a wee-little antiques shop called “Banbury Fair.” There, a bunch of women in their late 50’s covered in plastic jewelry, plastic leopard print fingernails, and wearing way too much purple make-up that was supposedly going to “make their eyes pop,” had gathered various things from their attics and tried to sell them to the general public. This was the general staff.

Then there was me. Pimple-faced, gangly in arms and legs (as I was a wrestler at the time), and sparse, close-cropped hair, I was your average fifteen-year old, who—for the first time, was told he needed an apron. 

Doe-eyed and unawares. Freshman year.

Being my first job, I was understandably nervous, but I had always been told that food-service was my most likely route of early professional advancement. And we only had soft-serve ice-cream in this little addition to the shop, so I learned how to spin the cone ever-so-slightly to achieve that iconic swirl and curve at the top of the tasty treat. I worked in late fall, so no ice cream would melt and I didn’t have to worry about too many customers—or over-eager consumers (it was a kind of ‘you have to know it is was there’ sort of place) clogging up lines and making life hellish. Life was pretty simple. I ‘needed’ the money to buy my girlfriend the various Tiffany’s bracelets and necklaces she wanted, and this was a low pressure way of doing so. I had reason, means, and the hours weren’t bad enough that I ever had to ignore my school work.

By winter of my freshman year our cliental had become almost non-existent (no one wants ice cream in winter) and I was let go. A year later, there was Oberweis.

Now, I am not sure if you are all familiar with Oberweis Dairy, but it is a sort of a big deal in Northern Illinois. The whole thing is owned by this rich, Republican guy that repeatedly tries to run for some state office and uses his dairy dollars to fund his campaigns.

Everything is overpriced, a scoop of ice-cream costing anywhere between 4 and 7 dollars, and each and every Oberweis goes for a late-1950’s vibe with chrome everything, black and white tiles, and silly hats/ aprons for the staff. Think of Johnny Rockets or Steak n’ Shake except with more cows.

By this time I had broken up with my long-time girlfriend, stopped wrestling, and had no real reason to have a job other than my parents prodding me get gas money.

Oh, and it was the beginning of summer. While all other food industries have their rise and falls, trends in the year, etc., nothing is more hellish than an ice-cream shop during the summer. Hordes of families, children grappling their mothers and fathers by the legs, drooling on their khaki pants demanding a  double scoop of triple peanut butter swirl with caramel and chocolate chips or the four Indian guys that come in fifteen minutes before closing  and ask for twenty---yes TWENTY—shakes, each and every one of them different and then the back of the kitchen is flooding because some let the sink overall while washing the hundreds of little sundae dishes while trying to meet the required service quota of no longer than 2 minutes between order and delivery of product. Whew. Needless to say I did not move at the speed of Oberweis. Thank you Tony, for telling the story of the kitchen scrub.

-Exasperated yet elated

E. Clark