Yes, I Was a Former Friendly's Ice Cream Fountain Girl | Cooking Stories

Yes, I'm a Former Friendly's Ice Cream Fountain Girl

My very first high school job was as an ice cream fountain girl at Friendly's. I remember them telling me during my training session that "fountain" was one of the available positions, and I didn't understand. Would I be filling soda cups all day? No, that just meant I got to scoop delicious flavors of ice cream, oh blessed, heavenly ice cream, for hours upon hours at a time.

Thankfully, those blue "Flo from Mel's Diner" uniforms were done away with just prior to me and my buddies all getting jobs there. At the time I applied, the girl who handed us our applications was wearing one when we filled them out. But alas, times had changed and it was on to stylish '80s tan acrylic shirts, blue wraparound skirts, NYLON STOCKINGS (do they even sell those anymore?) and you had to have your ponytail tucked up and away, lest a hair accidentally fall into the ice cream vats.

Ahh, Friendly's. So much ice cream, so little time. We had a blast experimenting with various flavors of ice cream and the shake machine, making "mini" sundaes for ourselves in little plastic Dixie cups and harfing them down while manager backs were turned.

Some of my personal faves:

The orange creamsicle shake: Vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet, swirled in the shake machine (if you were dieting, you could substitute ice cream with Fribble mix which was simply lowfat ice cream but I don't remember doing that).

Sprinkles with cookies 'n cream. This treat, invented by the infamous Chris Peterson or "Crispy" as we like to call her, had more sprinkles than ice cream. Half-fill a cup with chocolate sprinkles, top with a mini-scoop of cookes 'n cream, stir and munch to your sprinkle- loving heart's delight.

The coffee, hot fudge and toasted almond Happy Ending sundae. A Happy Ending was Happy indeed, for it had an upside-down sugarcone perched on top and Reeses Pieces for eyes and a mouth - or wait, was that called a Clown Sundae?? I'm forgetting now. Anywho, we had the Friendly's Employee version which was the standby Dixie cup filled with the above ingredients and slathered in whipped cream.

Black raspberry ice cream with hot fudge. I started eating this after getting bored with the same old unlimited supply of Peanutbutter cups, rocky road and other thrilling frozen dessert treats.

The mini rootbeer float. One of my all-time favorites to this day! Why is it that when root beer hits vanilla ice cream, your drink goes into Super Foaming Action? Oh dear God, I loved these. I'm starting to salivate thinking about this.

I'd better stop talking about this before I make a mad run to the ice cream place down the road.

- Dina at Wordfeeder.com - "I write web copy that has nothing to do with food!"