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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v101) (the December 2011 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This writing also appears in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Perfectly Imperfect” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book:

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Yutzler’s

Sarah Mallery

    Sometimes memories come loaded with all five senses: hearing, seeing, feeling, smelling, tasting. The more potent these sensations are, the stronger the recollection. Case in point: Yutzler’s.
    If I close my eyes, I can travel back to a time when I was just shy of twelve years old; a time in the 1960’s when I was tiptoeing on the edge of puberty. It was also a time when my body hadn’t quite changed and I could still enjoy simple things without the heavy backpack of teenage angst.
    Just getting to Yutzler’s was half the experience, with four giggling cousins squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder on top of a lowered Ford station wagon tailgate. No adult ever thought of seatbelts, or the piped gas fumes wafting up around us. Those things just didn’t seem to matter then. What did matter was the humid 50 mph summer breeze making our hair fly every which way, singing popular songs of the day at the top of our lungs, and how our calloused bare feet hovered slightly over the softened tar pavement as we barreled down the final hill that led into the tiny town of West Cornwall, Connecticut.
    All around us was a blanket of green. Green leaves from Oak, Maple, and Birch trees; green Forsythia and Smoke bushes, as well as Mountain Laurel, polka-dotting the roadside. Holsteins lazily jawed their cuds, totally unaware, as were we, that the stone walls enclosing their feeding grounds were painstakingly hand-built by farmers during the 1700’s.
    As we arrived in the town itself, my aunt reminded us that on the way home, we might go towards Sharon. We knew what that meant: we would be taking the Cornwall Covered Bridge route, over the Housatonic River. We would also get to do our high-pitched yodeling in the bridge’s dark cavern, then listen to our echoes and the double echoes of our laughter on top of the first echoes, without any thought of General Washington’s weary troops having marched through there on their way to fight the British.
    My aunt cornered into the town’s only graveled parking lot, and instantly, there was a frenzy of flailing arms and legs as we all hopped off the rolling tailgate, just before coming to a dead stop.
    “Last one into Yutzler’s is a rotten egg!” Martha cried, as always. She was the third oldest, and by far, the toughest; if Martha told you what to do, you did it, no questions asked.
    Then we raced to open the screen door, with its simple aluminum frame and its Coca Cola sign plastered across the bottom. It squeaked as it was opened, neglected after a rainy spring, and upon our entering the store, it slammed shut with such a bang, it made me utter, “Ouch!” although I hadn’t even been hit.
    Once inside, I heel-toed on the dank wooden floors, as tiny renegade gnats landed everywhere; in noses, eyes, ears, and sometimes even a mouth or two if they were open. I stood there, swatting these creatures away, as the smell of the brined pickle barrel almost burned my nostrils. But none of these obstacles fazed me at all. I was far too busy thinking about the five-cent ice cream cone I could design myself. After all, this one-a-week ritual trumped everything else.
    How it was done was easy: first, you scurried over to the waist-high metal freezer, and after opening up the heavy, horizontal doors, you grabbed a nearby scooper from its watery bucket, looked down, and made your decisions. Would it be vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, coffee, chocolate chip, or, for a special treat, chocolate mint chip?
    I was usually joined by two of my equally gluttonous cousins, Jody and Lilly, who shared my tastes; maybe a scoop of chocolate mint chip (save the best for last), a scoop of vanilla, and for starters, a scoop of strawberry on top. But whatever combination, stacking three over scooped balls precariously on a sugar cone was definitely the only way to go.
    Soon the smell of freshly baked bread competed with the taste of our dripping ice cream. But as we licked our sticky fingers, we wouldn’t let ourselves get sidetracked from our second mission.
    “Teen” magazines, strategically placed next to copies of “Time” magazine, “Field and Stream,” and “The Cornwall Gazette,” gazed up at us seductively as we angled for a good place to read. If we had been the daughters of our forefathers, we might have been sitting around the fireplace, carefully pulling our needles in and out of our intricate embroidery piecework. But we were children of the 60’s and so we spent the next hour, devouring all the latest Hollywood gossip as we licked, then munched through our treats, in a state of total bliss.
    Eventually, my aunt came in, and after the usual exchange of niceties with Mr. Yutzler, turned to us to say, “OK, kids. It’s time to go home.”
    To my surprise, I found I was more than willing to go. I was even willing to by-pass the covered bridge, the swirling currents on the Housatonic, and the birds circling over the tops of trees. Sometimes too much entertainment news and a stomachache can be more than enough for one day.
    As I gazed out the window at the blur of natural beauty on the way home—the back seat had replaced the tailgate—I suddenly wondered if my great-great-great-great grandmother would have taken bicarbonate of soda?

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