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The snowcone maker

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By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor I love snowcones. In fact, my entire family loves snowcones. We frequently patronized the shaved ice place there at the end of Missouri Street back when it was a thing. When we go to ballgames, there’s usually a snowcone vendor of some kind there, and we’re always in line when there is.

And to be honest, it doesn’t even have to be a good snowcone. I love going to the games out at Tilden Rodgers Park, but they have the worst snowcones I’ve ever had … but hey, they’re still snowcones.

When I was a kid, I had a Snoopy Snowcone Maker. You might remember this contraption or the polar bear variation. Snoopy had a little Woodstock squirt bottle you could fill up with flavoring (the polar bear one had a little penguin squirt bottle with it). Anyway, you basicall shoved ice cubes down in this little chute, stuck a driver down into the shoot and hand-cranked yourself your very own personal snowcone.

And it was a chore! You had to crank and crank and crank just to get enough shaved ice to fill up your little dixie cup. But, hey it was your very own snowcone, and you earned it (you also earned an nice workout, so the snowcone served as a nice cooldown as well. My sisters and I got quite a bit of use out of old Snoopy … for about a week or so. Then we used up all the flavored syrup packets and all of the little cups that came with the snowcone maker, and well, it got shoved into the closet or put on a shelf and mostly forgotten (although I do remember experimenting with it, making shaved crayons and jamming it with Play-Doh and such).

Well, years later, we got our boys a snowcone maker. It was the polar bear one (I guess the Snoopy licensing fees were too much to keep making those). And they enjoyed it for about as long as my sisters and I did. They also had over the years, a cotton candy maker, an Icee maker, an Easy-Bake Oven, and a cool popcorn popper thingie that was cool but super inconvenient and messy, especially compared to the ease of just putting a bag in the microwave for three minutes.

Well, we continued to be a snowcone-loving family, even when my daughter came along. In fact, by then you could get these ridiculous over-the-top snowcones, like The Incredible Hulk (Lime and Grape), or the SpongeBob (Pineapple and some other weird flavors). My personal favorite of those was the Orange Crush, which was an orange snowcone with sweet cream, so basically a dreamcicle in snowcone form.

So, one Saturday in April, we’re all chilling at a softball tournament my daughter is playing in, and of course, between games, we’re enjoying some delicious snowcones. And my daughter, probably 9 or 10 years old at this point, asks …

“Hey, why don’t we get a snowcone maker?”

“We used to have one when your brothers were little,” I said. “They’re really not very good and they are kind of cheap and clunky.”

“Well, then get a good one,” she said.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before then. So, I whipped out the old cell phone and pulled up Amazon. Sure enough, there were a bunch of different higher-quality-than-Snoopy snowcone makers and an infinite variety of flavored syrups.

“This is going to be awesome!” I announced as I went about picking out a mid-range-priced shaved ice machine and gleefully began rattling off all the flavor options Amazon had to offer. After a request from my wife that I “make sure you get Tiger’s Blood” I found a 12pack of syrups for a bargain and made my purchase.

A few days later (thank you, Amazon Prime), a couple of big boxes were waiting on me when I got home from work. I tore into it and there was my very own snowcone maker and a crate of bottled flavorings. The bottles even had those cool flip-up pouring spouts like the vendors always use. The machine itself said you could use basically any ice, but it came with these specialized silicone molds you were supposed to fill up with water and freeze for the “perfect” shaved ice.

Of course, I immediately took the three molds and filled them with water and stuck them in the freezer. That evening, my wife, daughter and I enjoyed some amazing homemade snowcones.

“We can do this every day!” my daughter declared. And we did. We had snowcones every day … for about a week. After a while, it just wasn’t special any more.

You really can have too much of a good thing. So, whatever your “snowcone maker” is, enjoy it, but keep it special.

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