Conversari House: Conversations by the Moonlit Night

The best ice cream I ever had wasn’t a consolation prize at Dairy Queen after yet another Little League loss. Nor was it the time our family tried to make homemade ice cream from the “Ice Cream Maker,” one of those gizmos one buys at Sears because it looks like a grand idea, but then gets shoved into the basement to collect dust until a garage sale years later. And no, the best ice cream I ever had was not accompanied by the sound of arcades, amusements and Jersey waves along the boardwalk.

If not these, where then could better ice cream be found? For me, and for countless others, the answer is simple: In one’s imagination.

A word of explanation, then: Picture a sidewalk, and on that sidewalk picture a child – perhaps you – squatted down in front of an overturned tricycle, Big Wheel or Huffy bike. You are using your arm to hand-crank the pedals as fast as you can, the wheels spin freely in the air, and out comes some delicious ice-cold imaginary ice cream. Voila, the Magic Big Wheel Ice Cream Parlor!

When, where and why did this phenomenon start? I’m not sure that anyone knows the answer, but I am certain that countless people remember flipping over their prized vehicles, be it a Green Machine or a pink Barbie bike with the necessary free-flowing tassels, and making ice cream. I don’t remember being taught to do this. And I don’t remember teaching anyone else to do it. Yet the tradition continues . . . children making ice cream, from spinning wheels and spinning imaginations.

For years I thought this practice may have been just a weird idiosyncratic plaything of my neighborhood. In college, though, I risked embarrassment by asking a classroom of students if they churned ice cream from their overturned K.I.T.T., General Lee, or Strawberry Shortcake Big Wheel. To my surprise – and to my relief – an overwhelming majority of these students partook of the same mysterious activity in their youth. From states as far-reaching as California these students came, and yet we all made ice cream. Yes, from Big Wheels.

Googling my way through the web, I’ve tried to find an explanation for this mysterious phenomenon. While the explanation eluded me, it was fascinating to find countless posts on Big Wheel message boards and blogs (yes, such things exist – and in abundance), all with roughly the same exclamation:

“I can’t believe it! I did that too! I thought I was the only one! Why the heck did we do that?!”

And yet no one could seem to identify the root cause the Big Wheel ice cream shop. Most likely, it seems, the action of hand-cranking a pedal is similar in motion to hand-cranking an old-fashioned ice cream maker. Seems logical, and perhaps even believable, but that in and of itself raises additional questions.

How many of us have actually seen ice cream made in a traditional hand-crank ice cream maker? Without firsthand experience of the original ice cream maker, was the process explained to us by irritable and jealous parents?

“Back in my day we had to make our own ice cream. There was none of this processed custard crap from Dairy Queen. We had to work for our dessert. Get off that damn Big Wheel and make some ice cream, boy!”

It seems odd to me that so many children – from different generations, geographic regions, and backgrounds – made and sold ice cream from their Big Wheels.

For a moment I thought the explanation could be found in a famed ice cream shop in San Francisco. Opened in 1955, over a decade before the first Big Wheel was introduced at the 1969 New York Toy Fair, Polly Ann Ice Cream is known for its enormous selection of ice cream flavors. With over 500 flavors, some 50 of which are available daily, Polly Ann has a big wheel of fortune, similar to those found at carnival booths, to help customers choose a flavor. The wheel is spun, and the customer must eat the flavor the arrow comes to rest upon.

Again, though, could a tiny shop in San Francisco inspire the Magic Big Wheel Ice Cream Parlor? Could California kids emulating the Polly Ann experience on their sidewalks incite a national movement of young ice cream makers? However much I’d like to buy into this romantic hypothesis, I somehow think it’s full of chocolate brownie (one of Polly Ann’s 500-plus flavors).

If not from Polly Ann, then, I thought the Big Wheel connection might have come from what are historically known as industrial or work tricycles. According to the website of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association (the existence of which gives credence to the old "birds of a feather" adage), the industrial tricycle was developed in England in the 1870s and used by grocers, druggists, and the like. The site claims that 4,000 ice cream tricycles were in use in London in 1939. Could the Big Wheel, which itself is an "inverted backbone tricycle" (so categorized by the IHPVA), and its use as an ice cream maker be merely a modern take on the first ice cream peddlers? Possible, but not likely.

This leaves us back at the old fashioned ice cream maker and the hand-crank theory. You would think, with today’s children yet another generation removed from firsthand experience of the original ice cream maker, the Magic Big Wheel Ice Cream Parlor would disappear.

And yet the activity continues still today! A few years back I visited my best friend from childhood and, as we were “catching up” as old friends do, his six-year-old sister came up to us and nonchalantly asked:

“Chocolate or vanilla?”

Indeed, a pink bicycle sat a few feet away, turned upside down and ready to make ice cream! My friend assured me that no one taught her to do this.

“I’ll have grape-bubblegum mixed with strawberry and rainbow jimmies on top.”

“Coming right up,” she smiled.

A few spins of the wheel and out popped my magical ice cream cone, jimmies and all. It tasted as good as I remember all those imaginary ice cream cones of my youth tasting.

There’s something special about the Magic Big Wheel Ice Cream Parlor. Something, quite literally, intangible – but delicious just the same. You name the flavor. Pepperoni pizza ice cream? Not a problem. Quadruple scoops with a cherry on top? Coming right up. No sticky hands from a quickly melting cone. No lost ice cream from a rebellious scoop that wasn’t quite perched on strong enough. And best of all, no charge!

Sure, I’ll have a chocolate-dipped vanilla cone from DQ this summer. And yes, I’ll enjoy a peach double-scoop on the Sea Isle City boardwalk too. Still, they won’t compare to that imaginary ice cream cone a neighborhood kid will create for me from his overturned Big Wheel and his overactive imagination.

You’re never too old to enjoy the Magic Big Wheel Ice Cream Parlor.