A Little Bit Like Home

The Mission to Sweetness

We loaded our three oldest grandchildren into the car and set out on a mission with stops in Jefferson City and Columbia.

There were errands to run and grown-up reasons for making the trip. But the true highlight, at least for the three short soldiers strapped into their seats behind us, was a familiar destination filled with bright colors, friendly faces and choices that can make a 7-year-old reconsider everything he thought he knew about himself.

We were going to the Central Dairy Ice Cream Parlor.

As grandparents, our role was simple: transport the operatives, maintain morale and approve dessert.

There are places built less for efficiency than memory, and an old-fashioned ice cream parlor is one of them. The colors are brighter than they need to be. The menu feels less like options and more like a test of character.

For adults, the decision may be simple. We have lived long enough to know what we like. Children, however, understand the weight of the moment.

Children staring at a wall of flavors are not being indecisive. They are conducting research, weighing curiosity against experience and deciding whether today is a chocolate day, a rainbow day, a cookie dough day or the kind of day when a person chooses something simply because it is blue.

The 7-year-old studies the options like an old man looking at a table full of tools at an auction. The 5-year-old may begin with confidence, then reverse course when big brother orders. The 2-year-old is less concerned with strategy and more interested in whether anyone has noticed she is ready now. For her, the choice is clear: chocolate.

That is part of the charm. The waiting belongs to the experience. So do the looking, the changing of minds, the pointing through the glass and the decision to go with rainbow topped with lime.

And grandparents, it should be noted, are not neutral parties.

Parents may think in terms of supper, sugar, nap schedules and clean shirts. Grandparents are more inclined to believe childhood should occasionally be served in a dish with a spoon.

That does not mean we are reckless. It means we understand some memories are worth a sticky hand, a dribble down the chin or a stain that may need pretreated later.

I am not sure my grandchildren understand nostalgia while they are living it. I know I didn’t.

Walking into Central Dairy turned the knobs on my personal time machine. Suddenly, I was not only watching them choose. I was remembering the Red, White and Blue ice cream shop in Hopkins, where a trip felt like an event all by itself.

There were other ice cream stops in my childhood. The Frosty Trete in Bedford, Iowa, could follow an evening of swimming or a ballgame. But the Red, White and Blue was different. You did not have to earn it with chlorine in your hair or dirt on your pants. You went there for the purpose of going there.

The Red, White and Blue was where I met the Purple Cow and the Green River, two names that sounded less like drinks and more like destinations. The Purple Cow was vanilla ice cream and grape soda, basically a root beer float wearing a bright purple shirt. The Green River was a lime-flavored slush with just enough green sherbet to make it feel like something more important than a drink. I do not remember every detail of those visits, but I remember the feeling. Bright. Cool. Sweet. Important.

Maybe that is why places like Central Dairy do so well. They give children something wonderful in the moment and adults something wonderful to revisit later. The same stop can be both a treat and a time machine, depending on which side of childhood you are standing on.

My grandchildren will not remember every errand we ran that day, or even why we went to Jefferson City. But maybe they will remember walking into that bright, friendly place where the biggest decision of the day waited behind the glass. Maybe they will remember being small, being loved and being allowed to take their time choosing.

And if they do, the mission will have been a success.

Tom Brand is a St. Joseph, Missouri, writer whose latest book, “You Have To Leave If You Want To Come Back,” is available at RichardsonPress.com. On his most recent trip to Central Dairy, he chose lime sherbet and has been second-guessing the strawberry cheesecake ever since.