Confession of ice cream addict
Anoka County history by Tom Ward
Two Scoops, a new ice cream store in Anoka, just opened recently across the street from the Grass Roots Coop on Second Avenue.
It’s also just across the street from where I live at the Walker Plaza.
Talk about “Back to the future.”
The store is located in the old Anoka Dairy Building where the famous Anoka Dairy Ice Cream was made.
People would drive out from the Twin Cities just to buy some Anoka Dairy Ice Cream.
That is also where my old friend and classmate, Marilyn Smith Douglass, bought her first Eskimo Pie ice cream bar.
That is where Mr. Hack and several of the Ottenstroer boys made all dairy products with milk only from local cows.
We also had Shadick’s Ice Cream Shop and Swifts Café where you could buy a malt for just 10 cents.
There was also Wards Confectionery and Witte Drug Soda Fountain.
Another memorable spot for a really big cone was the Bing Goss Tavern on the corner of First Avenue and Jackson Street.
There you could take your little kids in the side door, right by the freezer and Bing Goss himself would put one big scoop on a cone, take a look at the kid and say, “That’s not big enough!” and slap another scoop on and watch the kid smile.
What a smart merchant he was.
Maybe that is where the new “Two Scoops” came from.
By the way, that cone was only five cents.
Another Bing Goss memory that my cousin Jimmy Ward and I well remember occurred when we were about nine or 10.
Once a week we were always willing to help the Ward Transfer trucks return Bing Goss’ empties to Minneapolis to the Jersey Ice Cream Company and haul back the new, full containers.
We also would do what the truck driver did.
He, after loading in, stick his hand in a big mixer and grab a fist full of ice cream on the way out — and so did we.
How many of you had the old hand cranked homemade ice cream maker?
What fun it was on a picnic to take turns cranking.
I blame my parents for my addiction to ice cream.
I had to have my tonsils out in 1933.
My parents said I could only have ice cream malts for 10 days after.
That did it. That’s when my addiction started.
Back then, most people had the old ice box where you could not keep ice cream.
On Sundays, dad would go two blocks to Wards Confectionary and bring home for our Sunday treat.
One time my cousin Charles Ward and I stopped at Bridgeman’s Ice Cream Store in Columbia Heights and ordered seven scoops of different flavors.
The poor lady said she didn’t have any dish large enough.
Charles said, “Lady, we don’t care if you serve it in a dish pan or on a large napkin. Please we just want seven scoops.”
We got it in three dishes each.
One time, in my adult life, I woke up — half sleeping — and went down to the kitchen got a bowl and put several scoops in it and went back to bed.
The next morning my wife got up to make the coffee and made me clean up the mess.
You see, I put the ice cream container in the cupboard and it melted all over the shelves, the counter and the floor.
In my funeral plan I have instructed my family to pour a malted milk on my grave every Memorial Day.
Hey , this is enough. I’ll see you at the new Two Scoops. You need the carbs to stay warm this winter.
Editor’s note: Tom Ward a member of the Anoka County Historical Society Board of Directors.
Comments are closed