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| I was a couple of years shy of 15 in this picture. That's me with the handbag, the pigtails and the patriotic shoes. |
Always trying to impress my mother, I attempted to follow in
her footsteps. I applied for my first
job as a dipper of ice cream at the same Dairy for which she worked during her
teen years in the mid-1950s.
They hired my 15-year old freckled face- and with a hefty
dose of Pennsylvania Dutch work ethic, I proudly donned my white uniform and
punched the time-clock.
I took my job very seriously, learning to dip perfect spheres
of ice cream, mounting them on fragile cones with such great vertical precision;
no unexpected wind could take them down. Dipping hard ice cream is no child’s
play. My right bicep grew by leaps and embarrassing
bounds, making my teenage frame decidedly unbalanced. And it was more than just
cones. I could spin a milkshake from scratch to make the staunchest critic
salivate.
Overachiever that I was, I even offered to work the Saturday morning
shift with a senior citizen named Eva. She
was one of my favorite persons.
Round. Diligent. White-haired. No-nonsense. She and I (in our ill-conceived white
uniforms) would tag-team the weekly cleaning of the ice cream freezer cabinet. Why
we didn't wear more appropriate attire, I will never know. At the crack of dawn
on Saturday mornings, dear Eva and I would painstakingly carry the 30 or so
three-gallon cylindrical containers of ice cream to the back freezer. We would rip out all the huge holed freezer
counters inside (the ones which held the ice cream containers in place to tempt
our confection-loving customers.) Eva
would fill buckets with soapy warm water and like some kind of idiot, I would
CLIMB INTO THE FREEZER and crouch down for the weekly scrubbing the cabinet
abuse. It took forever to get all the
patches of dripped and gummy frozen ice cream off that cabinet. It was cramped and REALLY cold. And Eva was nothing if not a task master of
perfection. Her elderly eyes didn't miss
a speck. Unfortunate shoppers in pursuit of an early morning bottle of milk
might arrive and while peering through the glass door to see if the dairy was
yet open (it was not) they would spy
my sorry shape through the ice cream cabinet window, scrunched into an
unrecognizable heap and plastered against the glass. Some yet unnamed yoga pose, certainly not
Warrior 2, more like BLOCK OF SENSELESS ICE.
Eva would wave them away, shouting her unsympathetic rebuke, suggesting
with unmistakable gesture and voice that they actually pay attention to the
OBVIOUS HOURS POSTED ON THE DOOR. Did I mention I really liked Eva?
Most people who cheerfully enter a dairy store and pace
before the freezer cabinet containing a vast selection of hand-dipped ice cream
enjoy spending their time attempting to make a flavor decision. Not me.
36 years later, I am still picturing myself INSIDE the cabinet.
But my freezer cleaning and mule-like devotion to my paycheck
payed off. Not just because learning to
work hard has served me well in my school nursing career, but because two years
after my hiring, a red-headed milk-man from the same dairy started regularly stopping
by to observe my dipping prowess. He and
I are celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary this year.
