Summer of 1957, the Old Supermarket on the corner up the street from our Pasadena house burned down. My Dad, always looking for a bargain, was there as the firemen rolled up their hoses. An hour later a hired truck was in our driveway, being unloaded by four Mexicans and a black man my Dad had hired from the crowd watching the fire. From the back of the stake-bed emerged a glorious mystery and wonder: A twelve-foot long, three foot wide and four foot deep chest of wonders. It was a freezer, and it was fully stocked with ice cream.
Ice cream: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and even pistachio. Pints, quarts, gallons and mini-cups. Bon-Bons and Eskimo Pies, Nutty cones, Half And Half bars, Creamsicles and Dreamsicles. It was a ten year olds own frozen version of Aladdin's cave, and they muscled it right
into our garage, that big old former carriage house out behind the Greene And Greene home we had on Orange Grove, just a couple three blocks away from the Rose Bowl.
Up that hundred-foot driveway they rolled the treasure, on a crab dolly, and into that garage, parking it carefully on the far wall from the old Crosley Dad kept out there.
We used to push the Crosley out on summer afternoons, Bobby, Jim and I. We'd pitch pennies to decide who got the first ride, and "drive" that old Crosley down the driveway to the gate. Then the three of us, somehow, would (incredible as it seems to me now) push that mini back up the hill and the next one of the trio would get his turn behind the wheel. But that was before Grandpa, who lived next door, caught us "cruising the Crosley" and chained it to an eyebolt some previous owner had sunk into the foundation of the garage.
Anyway, all that summer we were the kings of the block, the nabobs of the neighborhood. For a nickel kids could have a peek at the Chest Of Wonders, including a glance inside to imagined "Hallelujah" choruses. Disbeliever’s were especially courted, as their conversion to the One True Faith of Good Humor was always a source of great mirth in the retelling at night in the seclusion of our upstairs dormer bedroom.