After two days of unbearably, hot, muggy weather I’d had enough. I could have stayed there for the full four days that I’d planned, but then again, the way I looked at it, I could hang around indoors, doing nothing in my own house and it wouldn’t be costing me by the day.
The morning I left, the road coming down from Dee Lake seemed particularly long, winding, dusty and bumpy. I don’t know how many times I had to swerve out of the way to miss one pothole, just so I could hit another. By the time I turned off onto the highway, my mouth was parched.
Driving along the shimmering blacktop, I thought about all the fishing trips we went on as kids with my father and how we would always stop by the Half Moon Café for a treat on our way home.
Milkshakes were served in a thick milkshake glass and the waitress would always leave the metal container that she had made the milkshake in on the table so you could have a second portion, a bottle of pop was 25 cents and ice-cream cones were, well all I know for sure is that it was real ice cream made out of real cream. Most of the drive-through soft ice cream places nowadays serve up some sort of edible oil byproduct with artificial flavourings. It’s just not the same. Things change.
I was just about home, ready to turn off Highway 97B onto to the Trans-Canada Highway to head into Salmon Arm proper, when I noticed a little ice cream stand with a sign that said Johnny’s Ice Cream Parlor. The building, which stands in front of a machine shop just off the road, is all done up like something out of the 1950s. No pun intended, but the first thing that went through my mind was “Cool.”
I pulled into their parking area, got out, and as I walked up to the window to order an ice cream cone – butterscotch, two scoops – I could hear the voice of Buddy Holly drifting out the window. He was singing That’ll Be The Day. “Yes, very cool,” I thought.
The first lick told me that it was real ice cream – with enough butterscotch topping to make your heart sing.
As I stood there enjoying my ice cream cone, I peered into the machine shop and saw a fellow working on a ’50s hot rod. This place was getting cooler my the minute. The woman who had served me came over, introduced herself as Janis and invited me inside the ice cream parlor to have a look around. We began talking and she told me that all the money they make from the ice cream parlour is being used to send their daughter to Australia in September. I could not help but notice a little trepidation in her voice when she said that her daughter will be gone for two years. I still had two dollars and some-odd cents change in my hand so I dropped it into the tips jar. They seemed like a nice couple and I’m sure their daughter will have some great experiences in the land Down Under.
When I got up to leave, she handed me a little brochure that said “Take a step into the past at Johnny’s Ice Cream Parlour.”
She could not have possibly known just how much of a step back into my past those few minutes were for me.
Somehow, the thought of another whole month of searing heat doesn’t seem quite so bad now that I know there is a “cool” place to get real ice cream. And if I do manage to get away fishing again, I also know now that I have a special little place to visit for a treat on my way home.