Sunday, June 24, 2012

Sunday afternoons, summer



North Louisiana summer hot
hot on a Sunday afternoon, 4 p.m.,
and we would walk the short block
to the red-brick church, the open field
behind it, to the prize all eyes
turned to, the white-painted
cinder block building for
the lawn mowers, the mowers
removed to make space for
the tables of ice cream, homemade,
ice cream swirling in ice and
hands still turning the cranks and
pouring the salt, with every flavor
that could be imagined but I went
straight to the vanilla, and we’d run
across the open field behind
the church, clutching our bowls
of ice cream, hoping all the while
they wouldn’t remember if we crept
back into line for seconds.


This is another in the series of poems on growing up int he South, suggested by my friend Nancy Rosback.

8 comments:

Sandra Heska King said...

That makes my mouth water. I'll have some peach, please.

caryjo said...

VANILLA??? Oh, maybe chocolate would be a good choice, too. Or just about anything icy creamy. [Hope you had a LOT of fun, when your memory is pouring forth.]

S. Etole said...

This awakens some tucked-away memories and now I am wishing I had some homemade ice cream!

Maureen said...

Really enjoyed reading this, Glynn. When we were kids, we had an old hand-crank ice cream machine. It seemed to take forever to make and was gone in minutes. I never tasted anything as good as that ice cream until many years later in Italy when I tried the gelato in Rome.

Martha Jane Orlando said...

Simply delightful! I could picture every savory moment and feel that summer heat.
Blessings!

Megan Willome said...

Oh, they knew. That's why they made so much.

David Rupert said...

New orleans has a unique culture. Much of the rest of the US is pretty homoginezed..

SimplyDarlene said...

After I read sir David's comment, I done gone and forgot what I was going to say. That's a good one.

Happy cranking, eating, and sneaking back for 2nds.

Blessings.