Ice Cream Cake

“What the hell is THIS?” roared Uncle Harry.

Aunt Leonia waved dismissively, “you know damned well it’s an ice cream cake.”

“For crissakes, when I want cake I want cake when I want ice cream I want ice cream!”

Harry turned back to the table, in that little run down house out in the country, and ate his ice cream cake. You could swear a hint of a smile crossed his face…he enjoyed teasing my aunt and putting on a show for us, his guests.

It’s was just a typical day at Aunt Leonia and Uncle Harry’s house. Uncle Harry was the latest of my uncles, for Leonia, my mother’s sister, had been widowed twice already and Harry was lining up to make it thrice. Marrying Leonia wasn’t a long gig, but at least the food was good, because man could she cook.

They’d met at Drakes Bakeries many years before, where Harry was a baker; the top of the baked confectionary world hierarchy. My mother’s side of the family ran in their own little world in Brooklyn, New York City, defined by Drakes, the Navy and the Lutheran church. It seemed that everyone they knew had one of those three connections.

Harry was big and boisterous, kind of a blowhard but he’d been tempered by tragedy. His son, an NYPD officer, had been shot dead in the line of duty. New York was a rougher place then, when I was growing up…much rougher. So I gave Harry slack for that…we all did. They lived far away, upstate, and so there was no time to absorb many lessons from him, except that you can live with a tragedy, though you never forget it, and a late in life partner can dull the pain.