What did you say about my mother?

Baskin Robbins has never been one to let a marketing opportunity pass by unexploited, so when their good friend DreamWorks released Shrek 2 some ten years ago now, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to introduce the world to Puss in Boots ice cream.  While the ingredient options for an ice cream flavor based on a cat, even a cartoon one, may have given the casual consumer pause, the chocolate and vanilla that ended up comprising most of the recipe should have served to reassure devotees of both ice cream and Shrek.  Baskin Robbins patrons could also choose from Fiona’s Fairytale, a cotton candy-flavored concoction that boasted “a fairytale fantasy in every bite,” and Shrek’s Swirl Sherbet, a green and purple, pop-rock-filled spectacular.  In comparison, the chocolate, vanilla, chocolate chips, and chocolate-covered pretzel bits of Puss in Boots seem a bit tame, though considerably more enjoyable to this particular connoisseur of frozen delectables. 

I don’t remember whether or not these flavors made much of a splash here in the States – if I’m honest, I don’t actually remember them at all – but I can tell you one thing with absolute certainly: a decade after this groundbreaking pairing of fairytale creature and desert, Puss in Boots 2 continues to delight ice cream lovers in Baskin Robbins shops all across South Korea.

In fact, when I lived in Cheonan, South Korea, and was in need of ice cream (the frequency of which need not be discussed), the flavor I got more often than any other was Puss in Boots 2, which, as far as I can tell, had the same basic components as the original Puss in Boots.  I never knew what had become of poor Puss in Boots 1, or even that this ice cream had anything to do with Shrek, as it had been some time since any Shrek movie had graced theaters, but I didn’t ask any awkward questions.  I handed over my money, crunched my chocolate covered pretzels in the satisfaction and slightly too-alert joy that comes with every good sugar fix, and left such esoteric concerns to be pondered by other minds. 

So you can imagine my incredulity when Korean friends told me one day that they didn’t know anything about this Puss in Boots 2, but there was a different flavor at Baskin Robbins that I absolutely had to try.  It was so good, it was delicious, it was better than anything called Puss in Boots 2 could ever hope to be.  It was called Your Mother Is an Alien.

I didn’t really know what to do with that.  I think I might have snorted a little.

I well knew that none of the ice creams in my Baskin Robbins were called any such thing.  Along with Puss in Boots, we had standards like Cookies and Cream (쿠키 앤 크림), Cherries Jubilee (체리쥬빌레), and Shooting Star (슈팅스타).  I was the only alien in the shop when I was getting ice cream and I was registered, thank you very much.  To buy myself time to formulate a more appropriate response, I asked what was in it.  Chocolate ice cream, vanilla ice cream, chocolate chips, and something crunchy and covered in chocolate.  A pretzel perhaps?  Yes, a pretzel!  It was my beloved Puss in Boots 2, incognito.  Fond as Koreans are of transliteration, especially where names or titles are concerned, in this inexplicable case, the Korean Baskin Robbins powers that be decided to chuck Shrek and all his friends out on their collective ear and go with something that made more sense to the Korean ice-cream-eating public.  Like the obvious choice, Your Mother Is an Alien.  And the English name of my ice cream had always so preoccupied me, I’d never bothered to look at the Korean name alongside it on the label or cared how it translated.

Defying any effort to explain the phenomenon, I can only tell you in solemn honesty that it tasted better the next time I ate it.  Any ice cream that could inspire nonsensical names in two different languages deserved all the respect and attention I could give it.  A person could waste a lifetime trying to unravel the logic that turned the American Puss in Boots ice cream into the Korean Your Mother Is an Alien, but that time would be better spent just having another scoop instead.  Which is what I did.  Rather often.

See, I like to consider myself something of a connoisseur of ice creams which obviously requires regular consumption.  It sounds better than saying I don’t have much self-control, and I’ve been on enough job interviews to know the value of being able to dress up a personality flaw as a positive quality.  In any case, call it Puss in Boots, Your Mother Is an Alien, or Choco-Vanilla Swirl with Stuff in It, I’ll try whatever you put in front of me, and I’ll thank you for it.

Which is why, when I heard about the Lakeland Ice Cream Festival, I used pen when I wrote it on my calendar.  (Okay, so it might have just been a note in my iPad, but I typed it emphatically, I can assure you.) 

Now, while I will try most anything that isn’t the abomination that is sherbet, my mother is a devoted chocolate ice cream aficionado down to her core.  It’s hard to fault the choice on any particular occasion, but she expresses only grudging interest in exploring the world of ice cream beyond that.  Oh, Mom might throw in a walnut or a berry if she’s feeling wild, but I maintain that there’s more to life than variations on Rocky Road.  In any case, stick in the mud pie or not, she needed little convincing when it came time to head to Lakeland.

So we set out for Ice Cream Festival on a fine, sunny morning, and only detoured once into the little town of Bartow after spying a sign from the highway that promised an outdoor antique show downtown. “Antique” may have been too strong a term, but it was pleasant to stand for a while in lofty judgment of strangers’ bits and baubles and the prices they were cheeky enough to consider reasonable.  On the way back to the car after deigning to buy some old postcards written by borderline racists and someone who was took a trolley to Somerville in 1907, I saw a book shop that was calling my name.  

At least, from a block away the sign said Book Shop, but as we came upon it, it had shifted somehow and become Bake Shop.  A bit surprising, but not unwelcome.  I was, after all, in a desert mood.  What was unwelcome was the revelation that my questionable ability to read signs from moderate distances didn’t matter at all because it was closed.  It might as well have been a Lima Bean and Lug Wrench Shop for all the good it did me.

After pausing briefly to curse the ground upon which the little shop stood and every business that would occupy it from now until the end of days, we resumed our progress toward Lakeland and vats of waiting ice cream.  The website had promised me taste-testing, popsicle stick sculptures, ice cream eating contests, an ice cream museum, and more flavor choices than I could shake a scoop at, and with the help of all these things I was ready to wring every last cone crumb of life out of this day.

And crumbs seemed all I was likely to get.

Upon arriving, it quickly became apparent that my overwhelming love of ice cream and the fact that my dollar off admission coupon had been printed so professionally had whipped me into a flurry of largely unfounded hopes.  These hopes were dashed not long after I paid my three dollars, had my bag rifled halfheartedly at the plastic table that seemed to serve as a security checkpoint, and found myself watching with some concern the two unimpressed children riding the smallest Mini-Himalaya I’ve ever seen. 

The couple rows of tents and carts were selling mostly snow cones, cotton candy, and bourbon chicken, though there was one extolling the virtues of CPR which was very civic-minded and helpful.  There were a few requisite balloon-popping and ring-tossing carnival games and three or four inflatable play things that I didn’t pay much attention to as they were suffering from an infestation of children at the time.  The closest thing we were able to find to an ice cream museum was a tent that boasted several rows of ice cream scoops along with some Betty Boops and old-timey Norman Rockwell prints.  The guy manning the tent was a knowledgeable fellow, but I wouldn’t call him a docent or anything.

Even with this lackluster offering, I might have enjoyed the scoops and the snow cones more if not for the Pumpkin Show, which has ruined my ability to appreciate unexceptional food festivals.

I will tell you why.

Charging no admission fee and thus hailed by the residents of Circleville, Ohio (among whom I was once numbered) as “The Greatest Free Show on Earth,” the Pumpkin Show elevates the food festival to a plane heretofore unseen in the annals of celebratory food-based gatherings.  Granted, Circleville has had more than a hundred years to get it right, but they have spent that time productively and there is not a right-thinking patron of that festival who will go away unhappy or hungry.  It is nothing short of a pumpkin extravaganza and you can have pumpkin for every meal of the day without having to walk more than three blocks.  Pumpkin donuts and pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, pumpkin burgers and pumpkin pie for lunch, and pumpkin pizza and pumpkin cheesecake for dinner.  And, if you find yourself a bit peckish between times, you can always tide yourself over with a bit of pumpkin fudge, pumpkin log roll, a pumpkin whoopee pie, or, yes, even some pumpkin ice cream.  There are buildings full of things to be judged and awarded prizes – photography, painting, needlework, quilts, pies, cakes, painted pumpkins and even pumpkin people. 

Schools and businesses shut down, the center of town is overrun by parades, pig-calling contests, bluegrass bands, and people waiting in line to see the world’s largest pumpkin pie at Lindsay’s Bakery.  The air is crisp and redolent of fall leaves and elephant ears.  In the shadow of the town’s painted pumpkin water tower, for a week every October, anything is possible.  As long as a pumpkin is involved.

This is a food festival.  (But don’t call it that.  It’s called the Pumpkin Show.  Seriously.)

Having spent more of my youth than is probably healthy hunting down specially-flavored versions of ordinary foods in the pursuit of the perfect pumpkin delicacy, I am willing to admit that my standards regarding such fare are perhaps now a bit unrealistic.  I have tried to temper this as I’ve grown older and seen more of the world.  Not every town can manage the levels of food-related excellence to which Circleville, Ohio, has aspired. 

Even so, I think that if popsicle stick sculptures are promised, popsicle stick sculptures should be delivered, but I never saw one in Lakeland.  Graeter’s Ice Cream – an Ohio company, no doubt with the Pumpkin Show in the back of their marketing mind – had a tent there, but they were one of only about four places actually selling ice cream.  The ice cream eating contests were entertaining, mostly because the emcee was an enthusiastic Australian in a boater hat who managed to convince us that a stage full of children slowly and neatly eating half pints of vanilla ice cream was in fact a spectator sport.

In order to buy anything inside the festival, actual money needed to be changed into Moo-lah at conveniently located tents around the field.  It was a one to one exchange rate that ended up feeling like one step too many as I stood in line to change my four dollars into four Moo-lahs then stood in line to give my four Moo-lahs to the Graeter’s Ice Cream guy in exchange for ice cream which was all I really wanted.  Graeter’s may not have made the trip to Lakeland worth it all on its own, but there’s a reason Oprah once made it an audience gift.  My trio of Black Raspberry Chocolate Chip, Salted Caramel Fudge Brownie, and Dark Chocolate Truffle Gelato was well worth my four Moo-lahs, even if it wasn’t as exciting to order as Your Mother Is an Alien or Puss in Boots 2.

The festival itself was held in a field just outside of town that was connected to a small airfield and the Florida Air Museum, which made for an odd mix.  As I was finishing off my last bit of Dark Chocolate Truffle Gelato in the cargo bay of a FedEx plane, I briefly considered the dichotomy before the distraction of not being able to find a trash can overwhelmed me entirely.  I feel very strongly about the obscene lack of moral fortitude of those who litter, but I feel equally strongly about the unconscionable sadism of event planners who force people into the untenable position of having to choose between carrying around the tangible insult of an empty ice cream bowl or descending into the morass of self-abasement and throwing that bowl on the ground.  It proved to be a difficult moment for me.

Mom mostly enjoyed herself, as she usually does. She is, I think, less fettered by the specter of the Pumpkin Show than I am. She liked all the jokes our Aussie emcee told, especially when he was deriding the children on stage for not being able to eat ice cream with any sort of grace. 

And I know she enjoyed being moderately belligerent to the little boy who managed to foist a rubber bracelet on her as we were just arriving because naturally he had it coming.  We were on our way to the ticket window when we were stopped by a serious-looking lad of ten or eleven who asked if we wanted a bracelet.

“What’s it for?” Mom asked with narrowed eyes and palpable suspicion.  Most people think that children should be wary of strange adults.  Mom takes a slightly different position.

“Evolution,” replied the boy, who was wearing a black t-shirt emblazoned with the words “Evolution Martial Arts” alongside the outline of a figure performing a painful-looking kick.  Some distance behind him a tent and sign rose up out of the festival crowd bearing the same logo.  Not waiting for any further response and with more hasty relief than impoliteness, he shoved a rubber bracelet each into our hands.  Glad both to have done his duty and be rid of them himself, he continued on his way. 

Mom stared momentarily at the bracelet as it sat flat on her hand, touching as little skin as possible.  Her mistrust of the object seemed only to have increased.  “For or against?” she shouted with great force at the back of the boy’s rapidly retreating head, but by then it was too late.  Nine tenths of the law coming down to possession isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be and Mom takes her martial arts very seriously.

If she’d known that this was the best souvenir she’d bring home from the Lakeland Ice Cream Festival, she might have asked for two.

27: Because 26 Will Never Be Enough

I will concede that Melvil Dewey (of decimal system fame) may have been somewhat of a racist womanizer and harbored some very peculiar ideas about spelling.  And if his enemies had ever gotten together and organized themselves, they probably could have formed an entire baseball league.  But, you have to admit, the man did appreciate a well-considered number.  While all of his decimals and those little typed-up index cards may have flummoxed me a bit as an eight-year-old (and I may have been briefly under the impression that his name was actually Dewey Decimal), I think even then I’d have seen the value in not having to look for a book based on the year in which a library bought their particular copy.

But, of all the numbers in the world, decimal or otherwise (and I’m told there are quite a lot), through careful research and brazen conjecture, I’ve been able to determine categorically that the man’s favorite, hands down, was 27.  Or, at the very least, it should have been. 

Here’s why.

Aside from being just a lovely number on the face of it – it’s a perfect cube, for heaven’s sake! – it has all manner of worthy associations, some of which Dewey could have known.  It is, for instance, the number of bones in the human hand, the atomic number of cobalt, Catfish Hunter’s retired jersey number with the Oakland A’s, and the number of bridesmaid dresses a girl must wear before she can marry James Marsden.  It’s also, unfortunately, the age at which an inexplicable number of musicians have met untimely ends, but as long as you’re not an aspiring rocker this shouldn’t be a problem.

But for Melvil Dewey and the Florida town that eventually benefited from his particular brand of madness, 27 was special for a host of other reasons.  Turning southward in search of a better place to spend winter than upstate New York, his eyes lit upon Florida (the 27^th state in the Union) and the town of Lake Stearns (which sat on the 27^th parallel) upon one of the few dry patches in the middle of 27 lakes.  Nearly ten percent of the little town’s area – .27 square miles – was water.  Turns out ol’ Mel liked everything except the name and in 1927 he convinced the town commissioners to change it.  His choice?  Lake Placid.  Because he really liked the other one in New York and apparently had very little imagination.

But who needed  imagination?  How could anyone not like Lake Placid, NY, and desire its replication in all of the fifty states?  (Well, 48.  Hawaii and Alaska weren’t even a twinkle in America’s eye in ’27.  New Mexico and Arizona were still just spotty teenagers.)  It was, after all, the town that would be the home of two winter Olympics and such diverse and illustrious personages as madcap abolitionist John Brown, mean Back to the Future principal James Tolkan, and baroque pop singer Lana Del Ray (who is, unluckily, 27 until her birthday in June).  Plus the Nordic skiing has always been top notch.

Lake Placid, FL, on the other hand, is home to the caladium, a very ugly and poisonous plant that you can use to liven up your garden.  Which is nice, too.  But no Nordic skiing.

In any case, LPNY was clearly as close as it came to heaven on earth so calling this little corner of Florida Lake Placid was about the greatest compliment M. Dew could bestow upon it and the residents of LPFL have gone about their daily lives for the last 27+50 years in the comfortable knowledge that they were pretty dang special, thank you very much.

And this precious stone set in the silver, uh, lake, I suppose, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Lake Placid, is where I spent my last Saturday.  Rolling into town along US Rte. 27 with my homies, hereafter referred to as “Mom” or “Dad,” our eyes were instantly arrested by the prodigious Happiness Tower (which I maintain was named by a hippie), a narrow structure that looms 27 concrete stories over the north end of town and serves no discernible purpose.  When it was built in the sixties, visitors apparently flocked to the tower on the promise of an adequately elevated view and the chance to call home from the highest payphone in Florida and then buy a postcard to prove they’d done it.  Now, ever so slightly boarded up, it sits across the street from the “Sistine Chapel of Winn-Dixies,” so dubbed by local newsmen for its rendition in mural form of the old-time Florida cattle drives along the Cracker Trail.  It also moos at you if you stand near it.

Happiness Tower in the sixties, postcard style.  There's a lot more parking lot now.  (State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/163580)

So.  It might not be a big town in any particular respect, but Lake Placidians certainly aren’t hurting for moxie.  If they’re not calling themselves the “Caladium Capital of the World” (which, as it turns out, is pretty accurate), then it’s “Town of Murals,” of which they eagerly boast 44.  If you bring your own bus and arrange it beforehand with the Mural Society, you could even persuade a Mural Professional to narrate a tour for you.  Unfortunately, we were just driving a car, but I don’t think Dad would have let a Mural Professional ride with us anyway.  He has an instinctive distrust of people with “Mural” in their job titles and, if I’m honest, so do I.  In any case, I don’t think a Mural Professional would have appreciated my fairly indecent and certainly irreverant enjoyment of the Melvil Dewey mural.  Official photographs of Mel do not do him justice – maybe it’s because they’re all in black and white.  Not once had I guessed that he looked like old Tom Selleck until I saw that mural. If you want to find out what Magnum P.I. will to look like at the age of 80, head east on Interlake Boulevard.  It’s on your right a couple blocks past the clown college and well worth standing in an anthill in order to get a picture.  Mom agrees with me.

See?  SEE?  Incontrovertible proof.

So we saw the tower, a few ugly caladiums, murals of cattle drives, bank robbers, and Melvil Selleck Decimal, the much-touted American Clown Museum and School, and the Lastinger Memorial Park, which turned out to be a smallish corner lot near the train mural that consisted of a tree and a plaque.  And then we stopped at two thrift shops because that’s who we are.  We may look suspiciously on muralism (and with some distaste on clowns), but we like a good deal and you know I’m always in the market for fancy cutlery. 

I had to stand in the street to take this picture.  This is, quite factually, the entire park.

 

Though actually purchasing any cutlery proved trickier than anticipated.  Maybe it’s the decades of elevated self-importance, maybe it’s the prolonged exposure to both shuffleboard and public trashcans hidden inside fake cars that rev when you walk past, maybe it’s just the poison from the caladiums seeping into the local water supply, but the residents of Lake Placid are a peculiar bunch and hard people to engage in trade. 

If you do manage to find an open shop on a Saturday, don’t expect to be helped by those working there.  And if, against all odds, you do find a soup spoon that you like, don’t expect to be allowed to buy it under any circumstances.  In a thrift store.  Where everything that isn’t nailed down is for sale, including the bucket that holds stray Tupperware lids.  But not the silverware.  And when you are confused, as you inevitably will be, don’t expect sympathy or explanation from the clerk.  When she chases you down to bark that you need to put the silverware back where you found it, you’ll be lucky not to get tossed out on your ear.  Especially if you loudly express your disgust and make rude faces on your way out of the store.  For instance.

Though, at other times, clearly starved for human connection, some other poor shop worker may indeed become your new and very best friend, commiserate with you over the oppressive heat of an 82 degree afternoon, and want to know all about how you are Jewish after she notices the star on your necklace.  A star with five points.  That is also a little swirly. 

One gets the impression that Lake Placidians don’t have a whole lot of contact with the outside world and aren’t quite sure what to do with it when they run up against it unexpectedly.

I found these in thrift store #2.  Do you remember that song from Sesame Street?  "One of these things is not like the others.  One of these things just isn't the same."  For some reason I'm thinking of it now.

This is the town that likes to remind people that it is “the center of everything in the middle of nowhere,” and it’s a boast that sums up Lake Placid for none of the reasons it intends.  A bit perplexing and without much meaning, it’s an attempt at eccentric charm that both hits and misses.  If you’re in the market for a poisonous garden plant or have a hankering for clowns and old Tom Selleck, this is the town for you.  If you like unremarkable business transactions or soup, you should probably buy your vacation home somewhere else.  I hear upstate New York is nice.

In January of 2013, Reader’s Digest in its infinite wisdom declared Lake Placid, FL, “America’s Most Interesting Town,” based on what may not have been strictly scientifically obtained data.  And interesting it certainly is – a nice, indistinct sort of interesting that can adequately obscure whatever it is you’re trying not to describe.  What I can tell you with certainty is this: it is legitimately funny when that boxy jalopy in the shuffleboard park turns out to be a trashcan and the Golden Corral on Rte. 27 has a magnificent chocolate fountain.  But it’s easier to get into clown school than it is to buy a secondhand spoon in Lake Placid, and I can think of at least 27 reasons why you shouldn’t try either.