The Joy Of Horizontal Ice Cream Cones

When I was a kid, there were vertical ice cream cones and there were horizontal ice cream cones.

The vertical cones were sold by ice cream shops.  The horizontal cones were made by Borden’s which called them Mello Rolls.  They were sold at the seaside by the state government of New York, and I liked the horizontal cones better than vertical cones.

The first reason to like a horizontal Mello Roll is that it signified an occasion.

It meant that my parents had decided that it would be a special day, and our family would go to Jones Beach State Park.  

This meant that I got to swim in the ocean and fine tune my body surfing skills.  Once I got tired of swimming in the ocean, I would ask my father for some money and head to the big swimming pool pavilion, where they sold Mello Rolls.

The second reason to like a Mello Roll is that I got to participate in making my cone. 

The ice cream guy would sit an empty Mello Roll cone on the counter.  No need to worry --- the cone had such a large conical base that it could stand on its own.  Then he plopped a cylinder of ice cream sideways in the rectangular opening at the top of the cone.  The cylinder fit snugly and was wrapped in paper around its circumference.  I had to carefully unroll the ice cream in my cone.

I also liked Mello Rolls because the cones were engineered so that melting ice cream did not drip on me.

Mello Rolls were not hand scooped; they were all exactly the same size --- so, I never had to check to see if my brother got more ice cream than I did.

Thinking back on those times, I realized that the state government of New York must have also liked Mello Rolls because the ice cream was not scooped – the uniform portion size meant better inventory control.  Because Mello Rolls were wrapped in paper, the state government didn’t have to worry about employees touching ice cream.

But the best part of a Mello Roll was the slight tinge of sea salt mingling with ice cream.  The salt came from my lips because I had just been swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.  That tinge reminded me that my parents had decided that the day would be a special day.

I live far from the ocean now, and Borden’s has stopped making Mello Rolls.  It looks like all ice cream cones are vertical these days.

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Maria Campanella, with her wonderful Long Island accent, interviews a Korean War Veteran on Jones Beach.  Maria asks him to describe a Mello Roll.  1 minute YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWbx48dMbSU

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.

How To Tell If A Truck Stop Is Haunted

There is a deserted truck stop on Route 66 in Missouri, and it is rumored to be haunted.  Since I lead Route 66 bus tours for St. Louis Community College, I needed to investigate the rumors.

I turned to the Internet, googling “paranormal activity” and “Tri-County Truck Stop”.  I quickly found out that there are two main groups of people posting about paranormal activity on the Internet: believers and debunkers.

The believers would post that the Tri-County Truck Stop is haunted.

The debunkers would then post that there is no such thing as ghosts, and believers are jerks.

The believers would then post that all debunkers are idiots.

Jerk.  Idiot.  Jerk.  Idiot.  This seems to be the same path that many discussions follow on the Internet, especially political discussions.  It is not productive.

I needed to find something convincing.  I needed to find a group of people without an agenda.  So, I searched for former employees of the truck stop.  These people simply report what happened when they worked at the Tri-County.

What they reported convinced me that there was paranormal activity.

On my Route 66 tours, when we get to the deserted Tri-County Truck Stop, I have the bus driver park so that people can see the clean sweeping art deco lines of the building.  The plywood in the windows makes the building expressionless.

Then I read about former employees who:

-        Had things hurled at them when they were the only person in the place.

-        Saw a man stabbing a lady at the top of the stairs to the roof one night, and found an unknown red substance on the stairwell in the morning.

-        Saw the lights flicker when a fellow employee said she did not believe in ghosts.

-        Watched empty chairs dance in a circle

-        Were tapped on the shoulder when they were the only one in the bathroom

-        Took some photos, and a faint image of boy reaching out with his hands appeared in a photo --- which freaked out the photo-development lady at Walgreens

I hope that this list of events will convince the people on my bus tour that the place is haunted.

So, how do you know if a truck stop is haunted?  Ask the staff.  

Or you could come back to the Tri-County on October 31 –-- the one night of the year when they will let you spend the night ghost hunting in the truck stop.

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In this 5-minute video, Billy Connelly, a Scottish comedian, drives Route 66 in Missouri and visits a secret collection...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqYk7LFtHUw

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail

The Stars Above; Buddy Holly Below

This summer, we went to St. Louis’ open-air musical theater.  It is called the MUNY and seats 11,000 people under the sky, making it America’s largest outdoor theater. 

The theater is in a park, stars are visible at night, and oak trees tower behind the stage.

The musical we went to see was The Buddy Holly Story. 

When I go to a musical, I expect great singing, great music, good acting. (I am a bit forgiving about the acting if it is a musical).  I also expect that the script will have some buffoonish moments in it.  Perhaps a little slapstick, to break the ice and get the audience laughing.

For this show, the buffoon was the receptionist at a record company office.  She would prance around waving her hands in the air, exclaiming “Te-te-te-te.  Can I help you?”

But the singing at the MUNY that night was fine.  I enjoyed listening to the Buddy Holly songs as Act One showed how Buddy built a career and became famous.

I was nice and relaxed in my seat as Act Two started…then I heard the words I was dreading: “Surf Ballroom.”

I have been to the Surf Ballroom.  It is a cheery place and only costs five bucks to tour.

You can view the painted ocean-front murals on the ballroom's walls and tall artificial palm trees on the stage.  The Surf Ballroom uses this tropical décor to be exotic, to make the audience forget that they are in land-locked Clear Lake, Iowa, surrounded by rows and rows of hybrid corn that stretch all the way to the horizon.

Clear Lake, Iowa, is where the music died.

Now I was in my seat at the MUNY feeling somber.  There would be no more buffoonery.  The actors on the stage were re-creating the concert in Iowa on the night when Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Havens all died in a plane crash.

Every song that Buddy Holly sang in Act Two would be the final time in his life that he would sing that song.  The same went for the Big Bopper singing Chantilly Lace.  And for Ritchie Valens singing La Bamba.

The actors on stage joined together for a rousing version of Buddy Holly’s Rave On.  

I instinctively knew what would come next: the stage would go dark, and the audience would hear a radio announcement that a plane, four minutes after taking off from the Clear Lake Airport, had made a steep right bank and crashed into the ground, killing all the people on board.

The stage went dark.  A radio voice announced the tragic crash.  A hush fell over the audience.  

I looked up at the sky.  

Right above the stage I could see the Big Dipper.  It made me think that Buddy Holly might be up there looking down on us, looking down on 11,000 people who had come that night to listen to his music, fifty-seven years after the plane crash.  Maybe the music hadn’t really died.

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Here is a 4-and-a-half minute video of Rave On as sung in the London production of The Buddy Holly Story.  Unfortunately, the London folks forgot to put tall artificial palm trees on the stage.  The video concludes with the radio announcement of the plane crash. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frwf6nVQdTY

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.

Margaret French Is My Hook

I got interested in pavement because St. Louis Community College asked me to lead a Route 66 bus tour.

Doing my Route 66 research, I got to drive on a 1926 brick pavement in the boonies in Illinois and on a 1926 dirt pavement in a small town in central Missouri.  Both pavements are still in use.

But my special find – my secret find – is a stretch of Route 66 macadam pavement abandoned in a forest in Valley Park, Missouri, the town where we live.

I became intrigued by pavement, and the history of paving in America.

I am so intrigued that I have volunteered to give a talk about the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and its effect on paved roads.

In 1904, Americans knew that they had the worst roads in the civilized world.  Americans realized that their roads needed to be paved, but, in 1904, the Americans mindset said that government should not pay for paving public roads; the American mindset said that property owners should pay for paving the public road in front of their property.

The World’s Fair played a small part in changing our mindset about paving. 

I needed a way to make my talk about pavement interesting for my audience.  I needed a hook.  The Internet gave me my hook: Margaret French. 

She lived at 747 Forest Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri.  In the year 1900, the Barber Asphalt Company paved Forest Avenue, and Margaret was asked to pay her share of the paving costs.

Margaret refused to pay --- possibly because she was not an American.  She was Scottish, and back in Scotland, the government paid for paving public roads.  Margaret may have asked herself: why should I, as an individual, pay for something that benefits the whole community?

But Margaret was not living in Scotland, she was living in America.  Therefore, she got sued.  The case went to the United States Supreme Court.  Margaret French vs. the Barber Asphalt Company.  Margaret lost in 1901 when the Supreme Court said she had to pay.

My hook: my talk on paving would be based on conjecture:  what if Margaret French went to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904.  There were nearly 1,500 buildings on the Fairgrounds.  What would have caught her eye? 

Margaret might have visited the Belgian Pavilion, where she could see a big map of the roads in Belgium that were paved by the national government.  She might have gone to the Portland Cement building, where exhibits extolled the virtues of cement pavement.  

Definitely, she would have enjoyed the New Jersey Road Exhibit.  New Jersey was ahead of the rest of the country: it was the first state where the state government started paying for paving roads.  Margaret would have found that encouraging.

But there was one of 1,500 buildings that I am sure Margaret avoided: the Barber Asphalt Company’s exhibit.

However, my talk will find that the World’s Fair did not have an immediate effect on the American mindset.  Missouri didn’t create a highway department until 9 years after the Fair.  The Federal Government didn’t create a federal highway system until 1926, 22 years after the Fair.

Margaret French would have been 76 years old in 1926.  I wonder if she felt she had a hand in changing how Americans viewed pavement.

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Mary Chapin Carpenter has her "foot on the pedal and her heart on the brake" - a 3-minute song called A Road Is Just A Road: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeRU10GRvA0

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.

The City That Never Sleeps Was Not Awake

When I was in high school on Long Island, I had a friend named Bonnie.   She was a year older than me.   She was vivacious and jovial, and I nicknamed her "Boom Bah Bonnie".   

My friend did not have a date for the High School Graduation Dance, and she asked me to be her escort.

I was gallant and I agreed, hoping that no one would mistake us for a couple.  I was a junior, and this would be a preview of what to expect when I graduated.  And I looked forward to staying up all night.

Our town had grieved decades before when some seniors were killed in car crashes while partying on graduation night.  The town decided, for safety reasons, to start a tradition that all seniors would attend a grand dance on graduation night   The legal drinking age was 18; so, the Dance lasted all night, to keep the seniors from drinking and driving.  The Dance went until 4:00 AM.

The dance featured a 1:00 AM dinner served by fathers all dressed in white shirts and slacks, carrying their aluminum serving trays with great flourish.  And there was entertainment provided by a local woman who was trying to establish herself on the New York nightclub circuit.  I remember that she sang a sultry version of “Bye Bye Blackbird”, and I remember being amazed that she had managed to fit into her skin-tight red-sequined gown.

When 4:00 AM came, I had planned for Bonnie and me to watch the sun rise --- in New York City.  We went to our town’s train station and caught the next train into the City.  From Penn Station, we walked over to to Fifth Avenue, as the sun rose.

Frank Sinatra said that New York was a city that never sleeps.  It was clear that Frank had never walked up Fifth Avenue during sunrise.  Bonnie and I were about the only humans visible at this time of day.  The city that never sleeps was not awake.  But we were happy to be strolling up New York’s most glamorous street, even though the buildings blocked out any chance of seeing the sun rise in the east.

We crossed streets without having to worry about traffic.  The stores were closed, but we checked out their windows.  St. Patrick’s Cathedral was closed, but we crooked our heads back to look up at its spires. 

Then we came to the Olivetti Typewriter Store.  In front of the store, right out in public, was a typewriter sitting on a pedestal.  A working typewriter.  It was time for a gesture.  I walked up to the typewriter and typed: “BOOM BAH BONNIE HAS GRADUATED FROM HIGH SCHOOL.”

Our energy was wearing down.  We walked back to Penn Station and took a train back home.  I hoped that I had been a suitable graduation night escort for my friend.

But there was fallout from that evening.  When I took a part-time job at the local library, I discovered that Bonnie’s aunt worked there.  Whenever her aunt walked by me, she would flash a smile at me and flutter her eyelashes at me because I had escorted her niece to the graduation dance. 

Those smiles and flutters made me cringe, almost wiping out my fond memories of having dinner at 1:00 AM, dancing until 4:00 AM, going into New York City at sunrise, and typing a historic message on a public typewriter,

I thought that my message was so historic that Olivetti might have decided to send it off to Italy, and maybe it now sits in the company’s archives somewhere in Rome.

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New York has changed since Boom Bah Bonnie and I strolled up Fifth Avenue.  Johnny T (of Glove And Boots) has updated Frank Sinatra's song.  3 minute YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=326RcOeSPGs

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.

Thank You For Being Present In The Moment

Was this concert sponsored by AARP?  I looked around the Fox Theater, and almost everyone in the audience was about my age.

We were all at the Fox Theater to go back to 1969, the year of the Moon Landing, Woodstock, and the Vietnam War --- the year when Creedence Clearwater Revival put out three albums.

John Fogerty was on tour.  To set the 1969 mood before his concert began, a large screen at the back of the stage displayed a hippie mantra: THANK YOU FOR BEING PRESENT IN THE MOMENT.

  

I waited to see if the concert really would take me back to 1969. 

The large screen at the back of the stage started a movie.  The movie showed hippies in long hair --- that was not me.  The movie showed hippies wearing beads and bell-bottoms --- that was not me.  The movie showed hippies decked out in tie-dye --- that was not me.

The movie showed people at 3 Days of Peace & Music at Woodstock --- that was not me, even though I had been visiting my parents in August 1969 and I almost decided to ask my parents if they needed their car for the weekend because I wanted to drive upstate to a music festival, but I did not ask them and I did not go.

Then the movie showed a door gunner in a UH-1 helicopter --- that was me.

In 1969, I was in the Army.  I was a 67N20.  This meant that the Army had trained me to repair UH-1 helicopters, which were the work horses of the war in Vietnam.  The Army also trained me to be a door gunner, just like the guy in the movie playing on the large screen at the Fox Theater. 

It was the door gunner image in the movie that took me right back to 1969. 

I fell into the mood of the concert.  The movie ended, and John Fogerty came out on stage. Familiar Creedence Clearwater Revival songs blasted out into the theater.  I stood; sometimes I swayed to the infectious music; I sang out “Down on the corner, out in the street”. 

I looked at the other people in the audience who were swaying and singing out.  Thanks to John Fogerty, it looked like they were remembering what they were like 46 years ago: younger and slimmer, with long hair and wearing beads and bell-bottoms, all decked out in tie-dye.

And thanks to John Fogerty, I was remembering what I was like 46 years ago: younger and slimmer, having short hair and wearing fatigues and wondering if the Army would ship me out to Vietnam.

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Come on and ride the wind! A 4-minute video promoting John Fogery's tour in Canada, featuring a Volkswagen minivan, of course:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV0-93vaSAk

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Find out more at http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com

How To Donate At The Devil's Elbow

I put my tourguide career at risk and took a bus load of senior ladies have lunch at the Devil’s Elbow.  It was a Continuing Education tour for St. Louis Community College, and typically the people who come on these tours are ladies in their senior years.

The college catalog described my tour as: “Bus tour of the historic Mother Road.  See Route 66 ruins, visit Route 66 businesses, and enjoy a barbecue lunch.”

On the morning of the tour, I stood in the college parking lot watching my tour people arrive, park, and get on the bus.  Then a car drove in, parked, and a woman in her fifties got out and opened the passenger door for a woman in her eighties. 

I found out that they were niece and aunt.  The aunt took a long time to get out of the car.  Then the aunt struggled, even with the bus driver’s help, to get up the four steps into the bus, taking her about three minutes.

The niece then came up to me and griped.  She griped that her aunt had trouble with steps, and the Community College catalog had failed to mention that the tour bus had steps.  I was stunned, and I had a hard time refraining from being snarky and saying: “Hey, the catalog also did not say that the tour bus has wheels, and, look, there are four of them.”

One gripe, and we hadn’t even left the parking lot.  What would the tour people say when they saw the ceiling when we ate lunch at the Devil’s Elbow, 125 miles west of St. Louis?  The catalog said “enjoy a barbecue lunch”; it did not say “enjoy a lunch in a Harley biker barbecue pit”.

At lunchtime, the bus pulled up to the Elbow Inn and let us off, but the bus did not linger because of a sign that said HARLEY PARKING ONLY, ALL OTHERS WILL BE CRUSHED. 

The Elbow Inn is a Route 66 icon.  When Route 66 was established in 1926, this was a family-friendly sandwich shop.  Now it is a place that posts a notice at the front door listing the 800 number for a bail bonds company.

My tourpeople sat down for lunch.  I waited for them to notice the ceiling – the fabric ceiling – the ceiling made of brassieres.  Would these ladies be shocked?  Would they complain, and demand that St. Louis Community College fire me?

One by one, the tour people noticed the ceiling.  And, one by one, they got up and photographed it.  They thought it was a hoot. 

I pointed out my favorite brassiere on the ceiling.  It was white.  The woman who donated it had written “From Akron, Ohio, Brenda St. Clair, 10 years a breast cancer survivor” on her brassiere.

One of my tour people said that she would like to come back some day and donate one of her old brassieres to the ceiling.  I had to tell her that you cannot donate an old brassiere, you have to donate your current brassiere, and it is a public ceremony.  The bartender will give you a free shot after you have donated.

I had taken a risk to have lunch in a barbecue pit with brassieres on the ceiling.  No tour people had complained, so I was happy.  I was also happy that I got to explain to someone how to donate at the Devil’s Elbow.

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This man has 98 tattoos of Route 66 icons.  Where is his Devil's Elbow tattoo?  On his elbow, of course.  (Note the Japanese Route 66 tourists taking his photo):

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  Send an email to ParadiseDouglas at gmail.com to find out how to purchase a copy by mail.