Carvel

I've always enjoyed vanilla soft serve ice cream. Sometimes I ask for chocolate and vanilla swirl, but vanilla soft serve is my favorite. I never liked sprinkles (I think they call them jimmies in Massachusetts) on my ice cream cones. They taste like clay to me. How I know what clay tastes like is inconsequential. I know what matches taste like, too, but I digress ;).  So sprinkles weren't my thing, but you know that chocolate crunch at the center of Carvel ice cream cakes? I LOVE the chocolate crunch.

I grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on Linden Boulevard between Nostrand and Rogers Avenues. I lived there from 1977 until I left for college in 1991, and one of my favorite things was to go to the Carvel shop on Church Avenue and get an ice cream cone.

I'd walk down the stairs from the second floor of the C building at 201 Linden Boulevard, through the courtyard (the grass wasn't fenced in when we first moved there, but things change. I'll blog about my feelings about gentrification in Brooklyn another time), down the block toward Nostrand Avenue (we lived closer to Rogers) . . .

Past the fruit market
     Past Michael's Meat Store
          Past the Shoe Repair Shop
                Past White Sheep Cleaners
                     Past the Chinese restaurant
                          Past the laundromat (not the one we went to. The other one on Martense)
                               Across Martense Street
                                     Past the check cashing place
                                          Past the fish market
                                               Past Pumpkins Bar (I think that was there, then)

And made the right turn on Church Avenue near the train station to the Carvel shop. I remember the woman who usually served me. She was short and traditionally built (all my fellow/sister No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency fans know what I mean ;), she had dirty blonde hair, a weary, somewhat sad look on her face, and she wore a black Carvel uniform shirt. I feel like her name was Pat.

There was a large light yellow container where she kept the chocolate crunch for the ice cream cakes. I don't know why she ending up telling me that I could get chocolate crunch on my cone instead of sprinkles - knowing my personality, I probably let her know how much I loved it, and something in her made her offer it to me. She didn't have to. She could have just let me choose the plain cone without offering me an alternative. She chose kindness and generosity, instead, and brought me so much delight. We need more of that in the world. 

I remember watching her roll my cone in the container to get the chocolate crunch on it, and I was always a little nervous that the ice cream would fall from the cone . . . but it never did. She was so careful with it. I would ask for chocolate crunch every time I went there, always a little afraid that she'd say that she was no longer willing/able to offer it to me as a topping. That never happened. She would always give it to me.  Even until I left for college.

Carvel isn't there any more. Now it's Carver Federal Savings Bank, and Church Avenue is now also Bob Marley Boulevard. 

As I'm thinking about ways to improve the novel, I see how important it is to explore the details of memories, both good and bad. In exploring the texture of memories - like when you caress fabric between your fingers - interesting thoughts and questions start to surface. I wonder what Pat's work hours were, how she got to work each day, and where she lived. What made her choose to work at Carvel? Was she sad and tired as the lines on her face and her posture seemed to indicate? Did she have a family? Maybe her own kids who didn't like sprinkles, either? Maybe offering me something different was her own creative outlet? An escape from the mundane? Imagining answers to questions like these will add depth to the characters I create.

Wherever you are, Pat, thank you for making the chocolate crunch available as a cone topping. It was a small kindness that added joy to the tapestry of my childhood, and I'm so grateful.