I grew up in my grandfather’s house, on a hill surrounded by woods and fields. My mom ran a daycare out of it, so there was regular traffic up and down our gravel driveway for pick-up and drop off during the work week. Otherwise, we were fairly isolated on the outskirts of town, our nearest neighbor a tenth of a mile down the hill. Two carts-full of groceries were purchased in town exactly once a week, but our milk was physically delivered to the house by an actual “milkman”. It was kind of like living at the mouth of a wormhole to 1950--except that our milkman arrived in a beat-up, kidnapper-style van, looking more like a plumber than a crisply-uniformed extra from a Rockwell painting. Plus, our milk was delivered in plastic gallon jugs, rather than the misappropriated glass wine carafes people always picture. Milkmanhood has apparently become considerably less quaint and romantic over the years.
Our milkman may have delivered ice cream as well, although I can’t vividly remember. Ice cream was, in fact, a staple in the house, usually taking one of the four following forms:
- a freezer-burned half-gallon of generic “black cherry” that my siblings and I boycotted with palpable disdain for its barf-able sacrilege of deflated cherry husks where chocolate chips or crushed Oreos should have been.
- a five-gallon drum of brand-less “neopolitan” that looked and tasted like the ice cream equivalent of government cheese.
- a fleeting supply of “Moose Tracks” or “Cookies & Cream” that must’ve been on sale and lasted less than half the week.
- the rare unicorn of “Breyer’s Vanilla Bean” (bought specifically for the parents) that we weren’t supposed to touch, but naturally, devoured in all its vanilla-flecked, name-brand majesty.
My parents, like most parents, tried in vain to reserve a few precious treats for themselves. Breyer’s Vanilla Bean was one; the other was Tab, a suspiciously sugar-free cola that promised a zero-calorie soda experience and a significant likelihood of cancer in lab rats. My parents bought it in cans and used it as a mixer for the mid-80s aperitif known as “Rum & Tab”, consumed exclusively at my house by my parents until Tab mysteriously disappeared from mainstream retail sometime prior to the year 2000. One can only assume its disappearance was precipitated by the discovery that Tab’s carcinogenic effects were probably not strictly limited to rodents… Nevertheless, a baseless anecdote like that didn’t mean shit to my siblings and me. Even if Tab had been found to cause bleeding from the eyes and spontaneous generation of watermelon-sized tumors bearing their own teeth and hair, I’m positive we still would’ve physically fought each other for a sip. After all, our soda--the “kids’ soda”--was served out of 3-liter bottles stamped with bobo logos like “Dr. Check” and “Cherry Cola”. They went flat almost immediately but had to be consumed in their entirety before we were permitted to open a new bottle and enjoy a few fleeting moments of fizz. Carbonation-deprived as we were, those gleaming cans of cancer called to us, and we wouldn’t hesitate to suck them down in secret, cold from the fridge or room-temp from their stash-point under the kitchen bench.
While Tab was pretty much a constant in the house, Breyer’s Vanilla Bean was a “sometimes” treat, even for the parents. Most days, we made do with the aforementioned rotation of regular ice creams. Black Cherry, of course, would be left to rot in the recesses of the freezer. But whatever else was fair game--especially, given the added accoutrement of Magic Shell topping, a chocolate sauce that solidified on contact with ice-cream to form a hard-candy coating. Much like Tab, with its artificial flavors and threats of untimely death, it’s easy to imagine that Magic Shell probably wasn’t the most natural product ever marketed. On the one hand, it’s probably banned in a country or two for forming a hard-candy shell in less desirable places--like your arteries or digestive tract. But on the other hand, it’s fucking delicious. And a hard layer of chocolate goes a long way to dress up a giant tub of generic neopolitan.
Every afternoon, my mom’s daycare kids would go down for their naps. I can remember her daily ritual of folding laundry during the opening credits of General Hospital, which came on at 3 pm and was probably where the naptime window of household multi-tasking came to a close. Within minutes, somebody's kid would cry and she'd be off to the races until pick-up time. In these memories, it’s always summertime, with the afternoon sun streaming through the windows of her bedroom overlooking the vast expanse of field in front of our house. Another memory marked by perpetual summer is the recollection of my after-dinner ice cream, consumed in hulking quantities, narrowly contained by a cereal bowl and generously decorated with heaping globs of Magic Fucking Shell.
We maintained consistent “family dinners” on Wednesday and Sunday nights for most of my childhood, but other evenings were characterized by 2 sittings: one, at roughly 5 pm, where the 5 children were rounded up and positioned around the trough just long enough to make noise and a God-awful mess; and the other, around 8 pm, after the kids went to bed, when the parents would sit down to something more sophisticated, paired with some pink Peter Vella and a little peaceful conversation.
Directly following the earlier sitting, particularly in summer, I would retire to the living room with my giant bowl of Magic-Shelled sundae. I’d sit Indian-style in front of a floor-mounted TV the size of an antique sideboard, eating ice cream and watching reruns of The Facts Of Life. Afterwards, I might go outside to play again in the late-waning sunlight of the year’s warmest months. Or I might just continue to sit on my ass, watching clean through to A-Team reruns with chocolate smeared across my face. Now that I have my own kids, I’m completely appalled at my reckless disregard for the ancient oriental carpet I was no doubt dripping ice cream on and the sheer frequency with which I inhaled copious amounts of liquefied coronary disease. Screen time and saturated fat be damned, though; I somehow survived to adulthood in spite of myself.
Thirty years later, I was thrust into a panic over my younger son’s most recent bout of what I refer to as “Pediatric Mystery Virus-Not Otherwise Specified”. It’s a broad category of childhood ailment ranging in severity from a runny nose to something that literally presents like a resurgence of the Black Death. It is neither name-able nor treatable, but still guaranteed to keep your child home from school or daycare for anywhere from 2 to 5 days. The main ingredient of Mystery Virus is fever, which could be “low-grade” (aka, ~99 degrees), a range so slightly elevated, it could possibly be replicated by standing too close to a toaster. The fever could also be “nearly catastrophic”, (aka, slightly beyond 102 degrees), a point where your child is nauseated, delirious, and possibly cooking from the inside out. My son’s version was coupled with a raging sore throat this time around, but after 4 consecutive days of fever and 2 trips to the doctor to rule out strep and mono, it all boiled down to the ubiquitous “mystery virus”. Armed with an anti-climactic prescription for “fluids and Advil”, we ventured to the grocery store and translated that recommendation into popsicles, jello, ice cream, and yes, Magic Fucking Shell. As luck would have it, grocery stores still sell that shit--and I saw a killer sore throat as the perfect occasion to debut a family classic.
Earlier that week, in a similarly nostalgic vein, I’d introduced my son to Chloraseptic, a throat spray from my childhood composed of red dye and some sort of mildly toxic numbing agent (possibly, Choroform, if the brand name is any indication). Growing up, Chloraseptic spray had been my family’s go-to remedy for throat irritation, so naturally, it was the first thing I thought of when struck down with a crippling sore throat of my own last winter. Imagine my surprise in discovering that Chloraseptic had apparently joined the ranks of Tab, falling out of public favor and subsequently disappearing from reputable retail shelves, just when I needed it most!. After almost convincing myself that maybe--just maybe--there was a damn good reason they’d stopped selling it, I ultimately tracked down a bottle of Chloraseptic contraband and squirreled it away for emergencies like this one, when only a mixture of red dye and horse tranquilizer will do the trick.
When my son eventually lost his taste for both cough drops and medicated lollipops, I gave him a squirt of Chloraseptic, hopeful my semi-radioactive family remedy would be his miracle cure. He was not a fan. As it turns out, his young palate isn’t as accustomed to the battery-like acidity my generation considered medicine. I also learned (by actually reading the directions for once) that Chloraseptic is more of a “rinse” and not really meant for ingestion of any kind. This was pretty much news to me after literally drinking it by the shot as a child.
My son’s fever persisted for more than 4 days, which is damn-near the upper limit of “normal” for mystery viruses, just one tick before a trip to the emergency room and a full panel of blood work would be warranted. Hoping to avoid any fever-related dairy-induced vomiting that ice cream might bring about, he was encouraged to indulge in his “over-the-counter” jello and fruit-based popsicles while we waited for his temperature to drop.
Once my son’s fever finally resolved, I retired the Chloraseptic to the back of the bathroom closet, right next to the strychnine, paint thinner, and ant traps. After dinner later that night, I busted out my newly purchased bottle of Magic Shell to drizzle on the ice cream my son was at last well enough to eat. Well-received by both my sons, it was also a welcome blast from the past--proof that that while the world may have lost its taste for saccharin, red dye, and even milkmen, congealed chocolate shell is still a timeless culinary masterpiece.
Long live Magic Fucking Shell.
Comments
Post a Comment