Plan C: pillow tents and pirate ships INSIDE, singing (daddy)/attempting to sing (mommy) duets from musicals on request ("we want the ones about loving each other!!") so the girls can dance to them, dollhouses and blocks, laundry and dishes, and Mommy collapsing in a nap while still recovering from a knock-down stomach flu.
Then Mommy pulls out her trusty book, "Iowa: Off the Beaten Path." I bought it about 3 years ago and have dragged the family on various Iowa adventures. (They've loved every one of them, too!) As time here grows short and weekends sparse, I have become more frantic in my insistence that we go places so I can cross them off my list. Today's adventure: The Wilton Candy Kitchen, the world's oldest continuously running old-fashioned soda fountain and ice cream parlor!! I was picturing "It's a Wonderful Life," with young George Bailey working at Gower's store, sprinkling toasted coconut on little Suzie's sundae in a cute little glass container with a cherry on top.
Plan D: We load up for lunch at the soda fountain. Wilton is about 20 minutes away, so with gas prices the way they are, I figure we've spent about $157 by the time we get there. Looks cute enough from the outside. There's the required counter with red-topped bar stools and all kinds of nifty pulls and levers to release the flavored soda ingredients. The walls have the menu handwritten on them. The first thing we hear is the owner lady telling a dad to make sure his kids don't touch the walls. In the 45 minutes we are there, she tells them at least 5 more times not to touch the walls. For the record, the kids are not paying any attention to the walls, and to top it off, the mom is sitting in between the kids and the walls, making it virtually impossible for them to touch the walls.
Pete goes to the counter to order after about 15 minutes of no service. They have three sandwiches and variations on them: ham, turkey, and tuna, with or without cheese, all grilled. They are out of both turkey and tuna. The guy tells Peter, "If you had come on a different day, we would have had tuna." In a tone suggesting it is perhaps our fault that we came today when there was no tuna. So, grilled cheese for 2 and grilled ham for 2. We're looking forward to the hand-pulled flavored sodas and ice cream sundaes anyway.
Pete comes to sit down and in about 10 minutes, the lady with a bee in her bonnet about the walls comes to tell us with a sigh, "Normally we have people order at the counter, but I'll take it here." We tell her we've already ordered at the counter. "Oh." She turns and walks away. Passive-aggressive, anyone?
Sandwiches with barely melted rubbery cheese arrive, sans chips or any fixin's. The sodas are warm, ice has been added but is melted, watering them down, and there is no detectable fizz. So far, not "It's a Wonderful Life."
So we order a "homemade chocolate sundae" to share. I'm excited about the pretty glass container and the cherry. Instead, a small styrofoam cup arrives with an even smaller scoop of ice cream and chocolate syrup on it. No whipped cream, no glass, no cherry. I think seriously about instructing the girls to wipe the chocolate syrup on the walls with the writing on them. But I don't. Because I am a good mother.
We are so disappointed by this encounter that we bypass the World's Largest Truck Stop on I-80 on the way home. Too much to bear.
1 comment:
What a hilarious story. You know it will be THIS trip that they remember forever and talk about. "Remember when mommy took us to that bad ice cream shop?" You will hear about it for years to come!
Post a Comment