Ice Cream

The Ice Cream van was a daytime distraction for my dad, taxi work was always busy in the evenings and he was looking for something to make money with during the day.

In Whiston, mum and dad had a shop on Milton Avenue and mum would look after that during the day while dad was out on the Ice Cream round. Occasionally I would help out in both places, although the van was far more exciting than the shop.

The van was equipped with a soft serve machine, so it had to be loaded periodically with industrial sized portions of the mix, that was subsequently cooled and then extruded through the taps. I think the machine had the ability to do two colours but it was never loaded that way, so ice cream would be made more exotic with crushed nuts and raspberry or chocolate syrup.

The options were cone or cup, and of course, in addition to those toppings the deluxe version would include a Cadbury's Chocolate flake, called a ninety-nine for some reason, the occasional mega deluxe version would include two flakes, not sure what they were called (besides expensive).

The end of the shift would be marked with the extraction of what was left in the soft serve machine into a big stainless steel bowl, and, what the family did not want was always a treat for our alsation dog, Sooty.