Battle Fields and Ice Cream: Iconic American Satuday

One week ago Knights Ferry had their Civil War reenactment. A friend told me about it so I could pass it along to my brothers. Turns out being in a Civil War reenactment was on a bucket list somewhere, so on Saturday Domi and Joey “joined up”. There weren’t any spare muskets, so they ended up as Confederate marines on cannon duty.  Not what they wanted but as Joey said, it made the experience authentic since that’s probably how things would have actually happened.

My sisters Suzi and Mary, Sophie, the above mentioned friend, and I showed up for the afternoon viewing. I must admit, battle field wise the terrain was much cooler than the flat open field of Fresno. Unfortunately because of the terrain and the covered bridge, (which we thought would make the battle way more “authentic" if they blew it up), we didn’t see our brothers or even know where they were until after it was all said and done.

After the battle we headed back to the rebel camp to find the boys and figure out what we wanted to do next. Sophie told us about an ice cream shop a short walk away in Knight’s Ferry, which finally gets us to the point of this entire blog. Since we’d been sitting in the sun, it was after 5 pm and no one had dinner we decided ice cream sounded great.

The ice cream shop was AWESOME! I got a wild blackberry Sunday, which was great except that it was served in a hot dog holder. I’ve never had ice cream served in a paper hot dog holder. Granted it was coated paper, but the sides aren’t high all the way around and it’s loaded with ice cream, hot fudge, nuts, two cherries and whip cream, it tends to drip. Thankfully there was no room inside the shop to eat, so we trooped outside, sat on the steps, and ate.

 As we sat there we watched an assortment of people drive or walk by. Some were still in costume so you knew they were civil war redactors, others I’d guess were locals, and then of course there were the park rangers. It hit me that for those 5-10 minutes, we were living the classic all American summer (or spring) evening.

Ice cream, porch steps, making observations as the traffic goes by. This may sound like no big deal to you, but when you grow up in the country you might eat ice cream you get from the freezer outside, but the most traffic you’re gonna get is the dog chasing a rabbit, or an occasional tractor going by. As a kid I always thought it would be cool to be able to walk or ride my bike to the store, get a scoop of ice cream and just hang out sitting on a curb, watching people as I ate. Last Saturday I got to do that, and this time my ice cream didn’t land in the dirt..

But you know the best part? My Sunday was $5.00 even. I cannot tell you how happy that made me. Everything there was exact change.  Got to love classic ‘murica.