Very Berry Strawberry

My daughter and I made an ice-cream run Saturday afternoon. I had kept her cooped up inside most of the day while I paid bills and worked on trip planning for our upcoming vacation to the Northwest. She, in turn, had occupied herself by finishing the third of the four book reports she has to submit when she begins fourth grade in the fall.

An ice-cream run was the least I could do. It was hot and we’d both been working hard (although not as hard as my wife, who had just returned from a long shift that began early in the morning -- she begged off on the ice cream in favor of a nap). My daughter had done a wonderful job keeping ahead of the schedule she and I had worked on together weeks before for her summer reading program, and the quality of her written reports was high (like her dad, she seems to love words).

What’s more, she had had a good week at her summer school, even winning a singing contest. (Her mother and I have no clue where she got her lovely voice – neither of us can sing a note.)

So ice cream on a Saturday afternoon was a modest enough reward. We each kissed my wife as she settled into her favorite couch, then hopped in the car and drove to the Baskin-Robbins on Larchmont Boulevard.

We found a spot to park a few blocks away, then took our time people-watching and window-shopping as we walked to the ice-cream parlor. When we arrived, I opened the door to that ice-cream shop chill that’s so bracing on a hot summer day. As always, there was a faint fresh-cream aroma, pleasant and sweet.

It brought back memories. My dad used to bring my siblings and me to the Baskin-Robbins on Larchmont on hot summer days (or hot summer nights), and the chill and scent took me back in time. The store was at a different location then – across and down the street – and had huge black and white blown-up photographs of cows covering all the walls.

I’ve never quite understood the choice of cow décor, but I’ve never forgotten it, either. In any event, Baskin-Robbins later changed interior-design direction. The cow pictures are only a memory now

What hasn’t changed is the display, those wonderful glass cases that let you look down at the tubs full of ice cream, with the alluring colors and the flavor tags with the clever names (this summer’s favorite appears to be “Splish Splash” – blue raspberry sherbet “swirled” with blueberry sorbet).

My brother and I would take our time, ostentatiously checking out each bucket before making our final choice. His was usually pistachio; mine, Rocky Road.

My daughter follows a similar procedure, and then almost always opts for her favorite – “Very Berry Strawberry” (strawberry ice cream "loaded" with strawberries).

“Very Berry Strawberry” it was again Saturday afternoon. For my part, I stared long and hard at the “Pralines and Cream” until the scowling visage of my cardiologist appeared in my mind’s eye. I ordered lemon sorbet in a cup.

We sauntered back out to the sidewalks and resumed people-watching.

Larchmont merchants tout the street as a small-town Main Street in the middle of Los Angeles, and there’s something to that. There are other streets in L.A. that have a vibrant pedestrian ambiance – Vermont above Prospect and Franklin east of Gower, both in the Los Feliz area , come to mind – but Larchmont is in the top tier, for sure. It almost certainly has the highest sidewalk-eatery density in the city, along with clusters of real estate offices, bank branches, and small boutiques.

There still is a family-owned hardware store and an old-fashioned barber shop on the block, even if the green-grocer and the dry goods store are long gone. And, of course, the ice-cream parlor (sans cow pictures) still stands.

Larchmont serves as “Main Street” in relation to the surrounding Windsor Square and Hancock Park neighborhoods, graceful and tree-shaded (and very “high-end”) residential areas developed in the early decades of the last century, with large Craftsman, Italianate, Spanish Revival and mock-Tudor homes.

Paramount Studios is a few minutes drive north.

These days, singles seem to outnumber families strolling the Boulevard and there are more grown-ups than kids (very different from the way it was in my “Boomer” childhood years).

The women are beautiful and everyone seems to own big dogs.

My daughter and I walk and watch and talk a little. I think she is enjoying her summer. I know she likes her summer school friends. Like them, she listens to the radio a lot now (a significant change from last summer). Radio Disney (AM1110 on the dial) is her regular fare, at home and in the car, when she can persuade me to move the dial off KUSC. Hillary Duff, the pretty blonde teenager who is (or was) “Lizzie McGuire” on ABC Saturday mornings, is her clear favorite, but she also likes Jump 5, the Cheetah Girls, Kelly Clarkson, Raven, JoJo, and Avril Lavigne (I’m not sure who all these people are, and could be misspelling their names).

And her reading material has taken a more lighthearted turn (see July 31 post). The report this time was on a book called Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing. Peter, the fourth-grader of the title, evidently suffers something like the trials of Job at the hands of his toddler brother, Fudge.

But it’s very funny, my daughter assures me. She liked it a lot and gave it a thumbs-up review.

We walk down Larchmont feeling content. Very Berry Strawberry ice cream on a hot August afternoon in Los Angeles is one of life’s great pleasures, I suspect (and lemon sorbet isn’t so bad, either).