Pete’s – the best place for soft ice cream

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.

When I was little, I thought that was the most beautiful, most clever poem in the world. And on hot summer days, it became my credo. My brothers and I longed for cones and teamed up on my parents. First we asked, then we said pretty please, then we whined. They didn’t stand a chance.

There were three places in town to get ice cream then, or only three we thought worth going to.

For a while, the best place to get a soft ice cream cone was a little place called Pete’s. It was on Speers Road, near the present-day corner of Dorval. It was a little brick building, whitewashed to the same white as the ice cream. The cones were ten cents each. My dad bought us each a cone and we sat in the car, trying to eat all the ice cream before it melted in the heat, dripping down the sides of the cone.

For scoop ice cream, there was only one place worth going – Allen’s Pharmacy on Bronte Road. At the back of the store there was a little area with two open window freezers of ice cream tubs. For a double scoop cone you could even get two different flavors. And the size of the scoop! Well, it was only a rare day, when I had skipped breakfast and lunch that I could eat a double cone – or on a dare from my brother, who always had room for a double cone. Sometimes in the evenings, my mother would take us to Allen’s as a treat, and I often waited outside while the others bought the cones, the car parked against a brick wall with a giant poster on it. I sat waiting for the treat, listening to the sounds of a town getting ready for bed, the soft voices of people on the sidewalks, the growing distance between cars driving by. I watched the stars and the moon, and as much as I wanted that ice cream cone, when my mother returned to the car with it, a spell was broken, a spell which was part of and separate from actually getting the cone.

At last, but not least there was the little ice cream place at the corner of Kerr Street and Lakeshore road. It’s still there but some of the magic has gone. They had two specialities – soft cones dipped in chocolate which hardened into a fine crust before I could even get back to the car, and ice cream sundaes. Luscious toppings – hundreds, it seemed, to choose from, but always we picked either chocolate or butterscotch. After getting our treats, in a plastic coated paper dish with a small plastic spoon, our parents drove us to the end of Kerr Street, to a little park by the lake, next to the water filtration plant. The parking lot seemed to jut right into the lake. Always we were the only ones there as we sat in the car or at a picnic table, silently eating as we watched and listened to the waves slap against the rocks.

There is nothing that can match the taste or the memory of the taste of ice cream on a hot, lazy day in the middle of August. So this year I thought I would see if it was still the same. I went to the only one of the three places that is still around, bought a cone dipped in chocolate and headed for the lake. The coating was thick and delicious, the ice cream melted beneath it and dripped down the side of the cone. And the little park was taken up with an expanded plant, the parking lot full of trucks and cars and the gate to it was locked. The more things stay the same, the more they change.

Judy Wedeles
Oakville Today, August 10, 1989