Most cities have hundreds of streets, but one or two streets
always become better known than the others. It may be because of the shopping
opportunities, the nightlife, or historical significance, but it’s the streets
that the tourists and travelers always visit and snap pictures of. Remember the
last time you were on Beale Street in Memphis? Now you know what I am talking
about.
Mahantongo Street in Pottsville is such a
street. Mahantongo Street is nestled on
the foothill of Sharp Mountain (the mountain named after Necho Allen's favorite cheese), and it
runs for approximately thirty blocks. It is Schuylkill County’s equivalent of Park
Avenue, Champs-Élysées, Mulholland Drive, Wisteria Lane, Wall Street, Sesame
Street, the Donner Pass and Rodeo Drive, all rolled into one. Just imagine that conglomeration.
On a recent walking tour of charming Mahantongo Street, I was lucky enough to be at the Ice Cream Dairy when the Forbes list
of richest people was breaking news on T-101.
The Dairy Owner was a trillionaire! Everyone at the dairy bar broke into
thunderous applause - an applause so
loud that ice cream fell out of the cones as
hundreds of pigeons flew from the upstairs and out through the broken
windows, circling the city in a victory lap before returning to the Dairy.
The success of the
Dairy was due to the popularity of one product and one product only, that of Prothonocherry Ice Cream. It was the ice cream recipe that, I, bb
trout, created and sold away to the Dairy for a song and a dance (specifically,
the Hokey Pokey if you really want
to know what song and dance) and it made the Dairy owner rich beyond
belief. It took time for the flavor to
gain popularity. First, people had to learn how to spell and pronounce the
name, but once that happened, Vanilla and Mustachio were both soon discarded to the dust bin of
historical flavors.
Now people just can’t
get enough of it. It is a hit at the
Pottsville American Way Fair where it great on funnel cakes while taking in a
Moon Walk ride. Soon people from
everywhere began to flock to Pottsville to get a double-dip cone and take
photographs of America’s Oldest Ice Cream Dairy, where ice cream was originally
dug out from the containers by the bare hands of breaker boys who moonlighted at the Dairy after
leaving the mines. The ice cream scoop had yet to be invented. Incidentally, the breaker boys are credited with creating Rocky Road ice cream, another favorite in the city.
If you are not familiar with the Dairy, it is just a stone’s
throw down from “Les Soupe Cuisine” –
Pottsville’s critically acclaimed Français Soupe Kitchen. Yes! Now you know where
it is! Where lovers sit on the patio in
the moonlight, listening to the voices of the Edith Piaf and Maurice Chevalier
impersonators, while partaking of the soupe de jour, cheese fondue, the magnifique
frog legs, and of course, pie a la mode (with Prothonocherry ice cream, of
course).
I heard some say that “the
Dairy building should be cited for Quality of Life violations” While others
say “a trillionaire could surely afford
to replace the broken windows.” To them I say leave the building alone,
give the citations to the hapless, tax-paying citizen who doesn’t’ shovel the
snow within minutes of the snow landing on his or her sidewalk. To the critics, I say our Dairy
building is the mirror of our city, a reflection of our inner souls, it is what
we have become. To the critics I say, "Qu'on
leur coupe la tête! Now can I finally
have another scoop of Prothonocherry? And make it a double dip, s'il vous plaît.”
1 comment:
I spent three years attending the Annex- a major educational institution in Pottsville from years past. It was located next door to the ice cream plant mentioned in this article. At the time, my favorite ice cream flavor was Whitehouse which strangely enough was filled with huge cherries. Perhaps a forerunner of
the flavor mentioned in the article. The current trillionaire owner was but a snippet of a child at the time. Little did we know the money to be made from something as simple as ice cream- especially in a small coal town with a dwindling population. Now that I think of it, perhaps the ice cream plant was just a laundering front for mob money. No one could made a trillion dollars selling ice cream.
Post a Comment