The Brotherhood of the Rusty Ice Cream Sign

Let’s face it. We all love and feel nostalgia for the local ice cream stand. That wonderful building with a lot of glass in the front, a sliding window, a towering swirl on a sugar cone, and usually, an old sign on top, lighting up the night, welcoming in your poor, huddled masses, yearning to breathe soft serve. For many, the opening of the ice cream stand is the sign that spring is here, with the promise of many summer days ahead.

My local was the Jones’ Humdinger on the north side of Binghamton. They open in late March, so the ice cream season is just as likely as not to coincide with the end of winter. Yet people are willing to stand outside for their ice cream then, in the hopes to capture a bit of sunshine.

The Humdinger still has the old sign that was there forty years ago.

Here in Allentown, the Ritz Barbecue has an ice cream stand with some of the best I’ve ever had. Plus, they have a terrific old sign.

This sign, in part, led me to start the hashtag on Instagram #rustyicecream, dedicated to these seasonal paradises. There are quite a few still going in the Northeast, due to the fact that we never get tired of ice cream in the summer, so any chance I get to visit another local parlor, I get on over there.

Needless to say, when I discovered there was a beauty I missed in the Scranton area, I slapped my forehead a multitude of times. Credit Leah Frances of @americansquares for alerting me to the existence of Carter’s Dairy Freeze in Exeter, PA. Her picture a few weeks ago, coupled with the fact that I was going to be in the area in late March, sealed the deal. I was going.

Carter’s is on a stretch of US 11 which I had somehow missed, in between Scranton proper and Kingston. It doesn’t disappoint, containing all the requisite ingredients for summer nostalgia: glass, ice cream, outdoor space, sign at the top.

Only problem was, I was there too early. They weren’t open for the season. I consoled myself with a few shots. At the back door, there was a man doing some cleaning in the building. I didn’t know if he was working for some cleaning service or if he worked there, but he glanced over at me from time to time as I cast my camera skyward to get just the right angle for the sign. After a while, he realized what I was after and he walked over. “Admiring the sign?” he asked me.

Always great when I don’t have to explain what I’m doing. This guy knew that I was after the history, and he had the appreciation of it, too.

Turns out this was the owner of the place, Louis Venetz. He bought the old ice cream stand more than ten years ago. “I get called Mr. Carter all the time,” he mentions to me, with a laugh. “Probably be on my obituary.”

The neon is gone from the sign, and he’s looked into getting it restored. He told me what the quote was that he got, and I can readily understand why he hasn’t done it. That’s a lot of scoops.

On the way home, I wondered if it’s possible to set up a GoFundMe or some such for somebody else. Just a thought.

You could clearly tell that he loves this place and understands what it means to the community. In short, he’s exactly the kind of guy you want to run the local ice cream place. I don’t often do it, but I asked to take his picture. Honestly I don’t think I could have taken a better one.

Carter’s Dairy Freeze opens up this weekend!

Anybody have any memories of Carter’s (or your own home town ice cream stand)? Feel free to comment!