"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
We are fortunate in our corner of New England to live a short hop from two fine local soft-serve parlors.
The Tasty Treat, in Ashland, Mass., pictured above, scores higher on roadside kitsch, with its miniature golf course with dinosaur. I tend to go for the classic chocolate-dipped cone.
C&L Frosty, in Sherborn, Mass., is more sylvan. The kids recommend the lemon sherbet.
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The Brigham's vanilla with jimmies remains, for me, the ne plus ultra of ice cream cones. And on any list of worthy Brigham's take-home flavors: coffee, mocha almond and pistachio.
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On trips home from the beach when I was little we would stop at Friendly's, where the ice cream cones of choice were the black raspberry and the maple walnut. At the Friendly's of old, the hamburgers were served on toast, to be washed down with Friendly's version of a frappe, the Fribble.
Unfortunately, the chain was sold in the '80s and is not what it was. Articles in the WSJ and the Globe detail the rancor between one of the original founders, now in his 90s, and the current corporate owners. And a Boston.com message board asking people their favorite Friendly's memory is filled with flames: so much for nostalgia.
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A trip to the Swan Boats once meant a visit to Bailey's ice cream parlor, a now-vanished Boston institution, where overflowing sundaes were served in old-fashioned silver dishes.
When the former owner recently passed away, a Globe obit recalled the Bailey's of old:
It was once an important stop on any shopping trip to Jordan Marsh, Gilchrist's, R.H. Stearns or other long-forgotten downtown retail outlet: the venerable ice cream parlor, Bailey's of Boston.
"Where else could you get two and half ounces of ice cream with hot fudge poured over it served in a silver bowl?" Bailey's owner, Mr. Franklin Wyman Jr., often said, according to his friend and colleague John Wright.
Mr. Wyman, who was also an executive with R.H. Stearns and facilitated acquisitions and mergers late in his career, died of leukemia April 19 in his home in Brookline. He was 86.
For more than 100 years Bailey's on West Street served hand-made chocolates, gooey hot fudge sundaes, and chopped ham-and-sweet-pickle sandwiches to customers who sat at marble-topped tables.
The restaurant was founded by candymaker John Bailey in 1876 in a 19th-century home once owned by naturalist Louis Agassiz, who was reputed to have kept a pet bear cub in the basement. Bailey began selling barley candy bears, chocolates, and other confections.
Bailey chocolates were sent to every president from Theodore Roosevelt to John F. Kennedy. Calvin Coolidge favored Bailey's "delicious delights," fudge balls dipped in fondant and chocolate, Mr. Wyman said in an interview with the Globe in 1988. #
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