Ice Cream

Growing up, most holiday's were spent with relatives. Christmas Day was spent at my grandmother Ferguson's house in Townley. We really didn't celebrate New Years but Easter and Forth of July were big ones. Aunts, uncles, cousins and neighbors came to Aunt Edra Mae's house for Easter. She laid down a feast that would make a hyper child want a nap. After lunch came the Easter Egg Hunt. This wasn't just for the kids because my cousin Jimmy was a master of deception and he had a sadistic streak that was legendary. Like the Easter he hid the big prize egg in a fire ant bed.
On the Fourth of July, we went to my Aunt Edith's house (every other year we'd go to Aunt Nannie's) and the food there was pretty good, but what made that event memorable was the home made ice cream. It was always hot so home made ice cream was the perfect desert. She'd have kids on the porch turning hand cranked buckets and other's fetching ice to keep the cream at the perfect temperature. She and my mother tried to out do each other. I can tell you my mother is not slouch with it comes to making desert. She's made peach, vanilla, butter pecan, black walnut, hickory nut, banana, orange sherbet, and strawberry. My mother's philosophy is: if you're going to eat cake or ice cream, it should contain enough sugar to put you into a coma.
She also made these pound cakes that were really moist and they were kind of gooey on the bottom. You could slap some ice cream on there and you were in heaven.
I'm not sure what happened to her ice cream freezer. I looked for it last summer when I went by to cut her grass. She doesn't remember.
I went on a quest to buy one for Jilda and me. I looked in the Williams and Sonoma Catalog and they were $199.00 plus shipping. I remembered The Old Vermont Store Catalog carries the White Mountain freezer ---- $199.00 plus shipping. It's beginning to look like I'll have to shell out about two bills to get a fresh taste of that old memory, but the more I think about it, I think it will be a small price to pay.