Author: Chad Clemons

For my birthday this week, my wonderful wife, Kendra, whipped up a batch of amazing marshmallow ice cream. Definitely my favorite…although I love pretty much any ice cream.

We used to go to Cold Stone Creamery fairly regularly, especially before and during the early years of kids. There was one shop about a mile away, which was really dangerous. Part of me is glad that it closed…a very, very small part. ?

Anyway, Cold Stone likes to try out new flavors fairly regularly. Sometimes they are seasonal (pumpkin pie) and definitely rotate out, but others seem to be more like trials and last longer if not indefinitely (cake batter). Years ago, they introduced marshmallow ice cream. It was my instant favorite. Ohhhhh…marshmallow ice cream with a little brownie and maybe some caramel mixed in? Drooling.

I figured it wouldn’t last forever, but over a year went by and I thought, maybe it was popular enough to make it permanent? Could I be that luckily?

Sadly, no. They pulled it shortly after. I remember going to our nearby shop and asking the manager if she had any more that I could buy and take home. I didn’t know her name, but we were regular enough customers that she recognized me…and what I usually ordered. She took pity on me and sure enough, found some in the back. I bought it, took it home and made it last as long as I could.

After that, Kendra started working on duplicating it as a homemade ice cream. And I’m happy to report, she has amazing skills and nailed the recipe! I enjoyed a large bowl and told her so, although I’m pretty sure she still feels like it’s not quite perfect, but that’s her, especially when it comes to desserts.

Thinking about ice cream has conjured a kid memory for me! I can picture in my mind the little corner ice cream “hut”…it wasn’t really a store, more like a shack, but I think “hut” sounds less ghetto…we really did live in a very nice neighborhood. I remember what it looked like but not the name…probably something like Tasty Freez but I think it was another brand or maybe a mom and pop version. Definitely a great soft serve on a cone place…although the “dipped in chocolate shell” variety was my favorite. Actually, I think it was cake cone, half and half twist chocolate and vanilla soft serve, dipped in chocolate shell. I guess that was my kid equivalent of a complicated order at Starbucks these days. They also had another dip that was more like Crunch Cone at Dairy Queen…but like I said, this was much more low brow…I think their version was Twinkle Coat or something like that.

I’ll be looking forward to my next batch of marshmallow ice cream…although I do have a few more scoops left. Although I’ll have to move fast, homemade doesn’t last…and if I don’t enjoy it before Saturday, it will be fair game for the kids!

Okay, so I mentioned previously that some individuals have been shocked that I don’t remember certain events from my childhood. That’s fair I suppose, but I’m going to go with a belief that I’ve developed over a long time that I probably DO remember everything, it’s the recall mechanism that’s broken down. I have no idea if that is real science or not, but it seems plausible to me. Have you ever tried to remember something like a person’s name or quote from a movie you saw a long time ago, only to draw a blank, but remember it a few hours or days later? There you go.

So the event I got flak for was kite flying. I honestly have no recollection of flying a kite with my parents when I was a kid. That said, I’m pretty certain we would have done something like that, absolutely! In fact I have many very clear memories of visits to our neighborhood parks. So I’m going to run through a few of those and see what my internal recall mechanism comes up with. We had “kid friendly” names for them, maybe that helped etch them into my memory.

The Submarine Park

Seems like we had a lot of cool parks for kids growing up in a suburb of Cleveland. One of my favorites was the “submarine” park. It was this lower area in the middle of several neighborhoods with lots of trees for canopy, an odd stone building with barbeque grills, various “normal” playground equipment and in the center of the area, a huge (to me, anyway) skeleton of a “submarine”. It was formed from pipes, so no walls, but you could climb all over it. There were attached wheels you could spin to pretend you were steering or adjusting ballast or whatever one does on real submarines. And you could climb up a ladder into a small space that resembled a conning tower…and now that I think about it, it had some kind of representation of a periscope…I don’t remember it being functional, but it definitely looked like that. We would also climb up on the “deck” which was just a modified monkey bars and have a grand time.

Around the “sub” were all manner of old school playground gear that I’m not sure we see any more in parks…seesaws….really big wooden ones that went really high, and if you happened to run under one when it was on the down turn, you’d be in a world of hurt. I think that happened more than once. Swings, of course. And those spinning mini “merry go round” platforms. Those were awesome, especially if you got 2 or 3 kids, stronger ones (not me) to run around and get it going really fast, then jump on. That was good for a few solid seconds of G forces, and then the resulting dizzy-almost-want-to-throw-up feeling which was somehow considered “fun” in the kid brain. And now I remember those “animals on giant springs” that if you went just a bit too fast, you could launch yourself off as good as a mechanical bronco. Personally that was way beyond my “personal playground risk level” but I saw it done on several occasions.

The Steam Roller Park

This was probably one of my favorites, if not the most memorable. Short walk from home, not many trees as I remember, we had a few soccer practices there. Some monkey bars and hanging bars, and a few swings. But the best part of this park, yeah, see the name…it had a huge (in kid mind, remember) steam roller! Yes, it was a real steam roller from who knows, maybe the 1950’s, that had been decommissioned and painted over and fixed in place. A huge iron beast that we loved to climb on…and I think avoided death and other injuries probably every time, with the height of it and all the bolts, wheel well edges, fixed-in-place control levers, etc. One slip and it could easily have been a trip to the emergency room.

The Soccer Park

I played a lot of soccer when I was a kid. It was very popular back then and a great alternative to those of us who thought baseball was a bit too slow and football was a bit too violent. I would quickly discover that soccer could be pretty rough and tumble, too, especially as kids got older and more competitive. A lot of the parents got really competitive, too, but that’s another story. Anyway, I was a mediocre soccer player at best, but I remember having a good time playing, usually in the positions that required less “longer distance” running and more of the “sprint and use a little muscle to obtain or pass the ball.” I was not a skinny kid, definitely the short and stocky type. Anyway, I spent a lot of time at one very large park in our city. It had many different fields and I have great memories of those games and teams. And a fair share of disappointing games and performances, too. Did I mentioned that I sucked as a soccer player?

The Lake Park

Ahhh, this is a great one. We didn’t go to this park as often, which seemed to make it more special. It was right on the “great lake” known as Erie. Lots of trees with the typical playground equipment strewn about. In fact, this park had one of those really tall, metal slides that seemed to accelerate exponentially any kid who dared climb up to the top and had enough mass (like me) to make it that much more exciting. You know what I’m talking about, the slide that looked like someone had purposefully waxed it up to make the frictional coefficient almost zero? (There’s a Clark Griswald reference here if you are so inclined.) I can’t believe we survived that slide. And there was even a sandbox I think, but being on the lake there was also what passed for a beach at the edge.

And that was the best part about this park. Along this quasi-beach area was an endless supply of small to medium sized stones. And I’m not talking about jagged-edge rocks, these were smooth, cool stones….of the skipping variety. Now you see where I’m going with this. I learned to skip stones at this park and wow, I think I could have skipped stones for hours…come to think of it, maybe that’s why my parents didn’t take us to the lake park all that often…perhaps they were more clever than I’ve given them credit for. Of course, I now have a “parental view” of the world which I lacked earlier in life.

Anyway, skipping stones was grand fun. My dad taught me how to hold the stones just right for maximum skip count. I don’t remember what our record was, but with just the right size, weight and aerodynamic properties, we could get them to go really, really far.

So there you have it. No kites, but great park memories. But there seems to have been a lot of what would now be considered “dangerous” playground equipment. Yet somehow I survived. Go figure. I think I will have to hop over to Google Maps satellite views and see what’s become of those childhood parks.

Recently it has been brought to my attention that I’ve become rather forgetful. And yes, in my defense, as I turn forty-ish today, I’m pretty sure such a state comes with the territory.

That said, it does pain me a bit that a few of these forgotten moments were supposedly quite happy and meaningful times during my childhood. And the fact that they are remembered so vividly by others (you know who you are), I thought it would be appropriate to share at least one of those happy and memorable times that I do indeed remember!

So for those of you who just can’t understand how I don’t remember absolutely everything from back when I was a kid, here is one of my favorites…

I’m riding in a car, my dad is driving. It feels like I’m sitting on the passenger side, front seat…yeah, I know, I was a child of the 70’s. Seatbelts were there but seemed more optional than the default habit they are today. Funny, now that I’m thinking about this, I seem to recall one of my friend’s parents having a car back then where they actually cut out the seatbelts because they were annoying. Yikes.

Back to the memory. I think we are out running some errands, maybe picking up dinner, too. Sunny day, maybe early fall because I think we have the windows down, it’s cool but not cold and the colors seem orange and brown and red…good fall leaf colors back in Ohio where I grew up.

My dad turns to me and says, “You know, we’re picking up burgers for dinner tonight so mom doesn’t have to cook.” Back then, McDonald’s and Burger King were kind of a special treat and…in my mind at least…good eating, so I was excited. We get the burgers and are heading home. I’m holding the bag and picking a few fries out of it, without permission if I remember correctly. As I’m rooting around in the bag, enjoying the fry aroma, I discover what seems to be an “extra” cheeseburger. I count again, and sure enough, there’s only four people in our family, but five burgers in the bag!

I’m sure I wasn’t astute enough back then to hypothesize that the McDonald’s worker in charge of quality control accidentally gave us an extra burger. But I was pretty good at math (not so much anymore, but that’s a different story).

I turned to my dad with what surely was a puzzled expression. Before I could ask the obvious question, I see the corner of his mouth start to turn up into a mischievous smile. “That’s for us,” he said. I think he winked at me, but it really wasn’t THAT vivid of a memory, so maybe I just imagined that part…or added it later. By the way, the exact words used here are probably way off, too, but hell, I was just a kid and not really capable of direct quoting, so I think if you get the spirit of what I’m saying, we’re good.

My dad glances over at me and apparently I still looked puzzled, although I’m sure his meaning was starting to form in my brain. “Well you know, Chad, we’ve got to have one for the road, right?” Now I start to smile, because I was quite certain that neither of us was supposed to have “dinner before dinner”. Don’t get me wrong, my mom was pretty cool on most things, but this “One for the Road” concept immediately struck me as some sort of misdemeanor violation of family policy.

I remember doing my best to rip the burger in half, struggling a bit with the pickles…luckily there were two which made it easier (score one for McDonald’s quality)…and handed one half to my dad. We enjoyed our “one for the road” burgers, basking in the taste, but also in the somewhat artificial notion that we were getting away with something we shouldn’t be getting away with.

As a bonus memory, my dad had the radio on and “For the Longest Time” by Billy Joel was playing. My dad started singing along with the song. I remember him singing in our church choir, but not that much out and about. I liked the tune, too, and started to try to sing along. The song ends and we are both smiling.

You ever hear a song that immediately triggers a distant memory? That song does it for me, every time. It occasionally comes up on my Spotify playlists and I remember that car ride, quite vividly as you can see. My dad probably remembers it very differently…perhaps not at all. I’ll have to ask him.

Over the years, we’ve applied the “One for the Road” concept to many situations. And of course I had to share with my own kids, who are now quite familiar with the notion. Although in their case, I apparently didn’t explain it very well the first few times, since they immediately blabbed to their mom as soon as we got home. Either I failed or somehow they ended up a bit too honest.

Speaking of honesty, I always thought that my dad and I kept that little secret from my mom…but thinking back now, when we got home, I’m pretty sure she must have smelled the cheeseburger on our breath.