Watermelon and Ice Cream

This first appeared in the July 6, 2022 issue.

Summertime means watermelons, or it used to. Now they’re heavy and cumbersome, too big for the fridge and too much for one to eat, not to mention messy to cut and eat. You won’t hear me complaining, though, if I’m offered a freshly-sliced chunk of cold watermelon with ready access to a salt shaker. It’s the fuss I dislike, not the flavor.

Summertime also means ice cream. If I hear the familiar chimes or ditty of a roaming ice cream truck, the 9-year old me surfaces. Off I go to catch it to order a special treat. Till this boomer thing kicked in, I enjoyed ice cream year ‘round - always chocolate or a derivative thereof and with chocolate syrup if handy.

But now strategic consideration is necessary to enjoy this summertime treat. It must be: *hand-dipped, the hard-serve variety. The soft-serve version has little appeal unless it can be somewhat camouflaged in a shake, yet highly unlikely.

*served with chocolate syrup so a nearly full bottle should be on hand.

*eaten with that medical marvel of a tablet that makes milk issues manageable.

* time to thoroughly savor each bite of a big bowl without bouts of brain-freeze.

*spaced out . Some events call for ice cream, so the frozen treat must be planned to experience the anticipation as well as the consumption. (However, with that magical pill, it’s hard for me fathom too much of this good thing).

Both watermelon and ice cream signal picnics and cousins. We gathered mid-summer for long-overdue visits for rowdy fun in the hot, sticky Missouri weather. Watermelon and homemade ice cream rank right up there with snipe-hunting, collecting lightning bugs and cleaning up in a washtub sitting in the yard -the stuff of marvelous memories.