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kingsuperspecial
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I grew up in Burlington, Vermont, where Ben and Jerry's started. First it was a little store, in an old gas station. You could only get cones or dishes, and only the flavors that had made - maybe 5 or 6 to choose from.
When the moved to having their ice cream produced in a factory, the policy was to only use the middle of the batch that came off the packaging machine.
The reason was that the start and the end of the batch did not have the right amount of "stuff" mixed into the ice cream. This meant that part of the "rejects" failed because they had TOO MANY chunks, or the chunks were TOO LARGE. Picture it; too many Oreos in the Oreo Mint, or GIANT pieces of Heath in the coffee heath bar.
They would sell these factor seconds in the Burlington store for .75, then maybe $1.25 later on. Yes, kids, that's right - $1.25 for a pint of Ben and Jerry's where the bits of Heath bar were too many or two large to be sold in the grocery.
Needless to say, I consumed a fair number of these as a kid. The routine was to get out of school, pound some Mt. Dew, throw a punk tape in the boom-box, and skateboard all over the city. This always included a stop at Ben and Jerry's for a pint of ice cream and some more Dew. Sharing a pint among us was out of the question, because too much "digging" would take place, leading to fights over the whole Oreo or 1/2 chocolate bar that someone had mined out of the ice cream. After filling our bellies with froze fat, sugar, and caffeine, we would skate the rest of the city, riding hard and taking chances, kings of our tiny little scene.
It's a miracle I didn't die of a heart attack at age 15. As it is, I am diagnosed with high cholesterol, which might just mean my cholesterol is still coming down from those heady days as a wild, ice cream stuffing skate punk.
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021003
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