Reflect

Many people now are at an age where they are a walking history lesson considering all the changes that have been made in the past 60 years. It is obvious with age naturally comes experience especially in this technical era we live in. TV’s weren’t even available till the late 40’s There were phone booths, phones with antennas, Morse code, stenography, cursive writing, an Aids epidemic, hand held electronic games, 33 and 1/3^rd records, 45 2 song records, vinyl albums, record players, non-electric typewriters, no seatbelt cars, no Special Education, no computers, no Google, no social media and now we don’t have custard places anymore.

Yes, places to buy custard instead of ice cream are hard to find now. Don’t insult the few places left that do sell frozen custard by calling the sweet desert ice cream just because it looks like ice cream.  The difference is that custard uses more eggs including the yolks. The result is an infinitely more creamy experience. The only place it is especially popular now is in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In fact Milwaukee has the highest concentration of custard shops in the world. Now we can ask machines in our homes called Google Home or Echo Dot for lots of information. The devices even spell words for you. Years ago that wasn’t available. We had to learn and then we got a custard.

One Milwaukee custard institution is called Gilles Frozen Custard that is the oldest place serving custard since 1938. The former Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, is a regular customer at custard establishments. He is careful not to claim favorites between custard and ice cream. He never claimed favorites when it came to baseball teams too. The baseball announcer, actor and former player Bob Uecker is also a fan because he got free custard every time he got a hit while playing for the Milwaukee Brewers. He claims that you just can’t get good custard on the coasts like you can get in the mid-west. He says that cows in California are just too hot. Cows in the winter shake and shiver and that is what gives the milk the air! Can we take what this guy says seriously?

Actually, frozen custard as we know it was invented in Coney Island in New York in 1918. Why isn’t Coney Island famous for custard then? New York should be a destination place for Custard. It should be a major tourist attraction at least for Coney Island when Nathans Frankfurters landed on the boardwalk one hundred years ago. Coney Island once had a place called Kohr’s Frozen Custard. They eventually migrated west   on to Chicago and was featured at the   World’s Fair there in 1933. Now there are many custard places in Chicago like Leon’s Frozen Custard place.

I say bring back the good old stuff made with real eggs and fresh milk used just for one day for freshness. Bring back stuff that doesn’t need to power up the batteries all the time like typewriters, foot pedal sewing machines, old pianos, turn the crank record players, hand mixers, paper and pencil and write a good old letter in cursive to a friend instead of sending faces on a device. Go have a creamy healthy custard with a friend on a good old board walk.
By the way, today is the anniversary of another recent relic the I Pod. It is National I Pod day. That device was introduced to us by Steve Jobs from Apple, 16 years ago. Tell teenagers about that relic where you heard and stored all your favorite songs and had a circle for a dial. Sigh! The past was wonderful and it was in my lifetime.