The Occasional Odd Crop

Previous // Current // Next

Where: At home in North Park, San Diego

When: February 2011

My dad's mom lived with us since before I can remember. As a result, my brother and I never had to dish up our own ice cream. This is the only scoop Grandma ever used.

Other families had fancier scoops, the kind where you'd press a button and a little C-shaped piece of metal would slide along the inside, supposedly separating the ice cream from the bowl of the scoop. Those didn't work all that well, and they were flimsy.

This scoop is not flimsy. It is a single hunk of steel, and it does not bend. Its neck will never lose a battle with a gallon of chocolate ice cream right out of the freezer. Forty-five years ago, it looked just like this, which is why I recognized it immediately among Grandma's stuff after she died.

They say cockroaches will be the only things to survive a nuclear war. Well, this ice cream scoop will be right there with them.

I'm a frozen-yogurt guy these days, and we buy it by the pint, not the gallon, so I haven't found a use for Grandma's old ice cream scoop. But it'll always have a place in our silverware drawer.