Upon arriving in Park City back in the day as a bright-eyed expatriate from distant climes, one of my first attempts at bonding with the predominant culture involved the two-lane journey over Parley’s Summit and down into the western environs of the Sugar House neighborhood. It became an oft-repeated pilgrimage.
The target was a slowly-spinning giant double ice cream cone sign located in the 800 block of East 2100 South that advertised “Snelgrove: This is America’s Finest Ice Cream Store.” A better place to bring together the seemingly opposing viewpoints of both existentialists and Mormons could not be imagined.
I really thought I was on to something. I figured if “Canadian Vanilla” and “Burnt Almond Fudge” couldn’t smooth the waters between the discordant factions of “make love not war” and “love it or leave it,” well, the future didn’t bode very well, indeed.
These were the days of “Mama Eddy’s Right On Beanery” down on State Street, the “Terrace Ballroom” over on Main, and the “Mr. Lucky Club” just off Redwood Road. There was “Round Records” on “9th & 9th” and “Cosmic Aeroplane” at a few different locations. The rotating cone, however, figuratively at least, held fast.
You could be sitting there snuggled in a Snelgrove’s booth with a stack of Kerouac, Vonnegut, and Neruda while waiting for your extra large double-thick chocolate-marshmallow malted to arrive. Salvation itself was at hand, with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
The service was so slow you required at least two backups in reading material. That was all right, though. One wouldn’t have rushed Picasso while he applied the finishing brushstrokes to Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, now, would’ve one?
And whether the young white-bloused innocents knew it or not, they were serving nothing short of heresy and decadence straight up in a tall glass. Pleasure at the level that Snelgrove’s parceled it out had few peers. It made you want to give testimony.
And the more often you dragged your rock-n-roll self across their field of vision, the more accepting became the environment as a whole. Once, a banana split from heaven arrived with a tiny Book of Mormon and a wide wink-infested grin.
Snelgrove’s flaunted a comfortable period art-deco sensibility within both its décor and architecture. A few years down the road, Otto Mileti’s “Zephyr Club,” another shrine to under-stroked pleasure centers, would add a more sophisticated, yet similar, take on Salt Lake’s historic modernism.
There were times at Snelgrove’s, to be sure, when a troop of nondenominational secular types would parade through the front door in various stages of dress and deportment and cause spoonfuls of Bear Lake Raspberry and English Butter Toffee to become suspended in mid-bite.
With the parlor having served as headquarters for the Ezra Taft Benson brigade over the years, this infestation of free-spirited ice-cream aficionados oftentimes proved unsettling. Especially the way some of these greenhorns exchanged high-fives with the help and seemed more familiar with the menu than new kids on the block ought to be.
It was the texture and the taste of the smooth, sweet coldness when the frozen dessert first encountered the tongue that so captured hearts and minds among these tribesmen from Park City. All tastes that went before were instantly forgotten.
In fact, a neighbor then working on a paper toward her graduate degree in Comparative Religion down at the “U” went through a full gallon of “Burnt Almond Fudge” as a flavor modifier while researching the use of peyote in Yaqui religious ceremonies. To this day she insists she owes her Ph.D. to the quality-control bunch down at Snelgrove’s.
The end of the 1980s saw the company hand over its name brand, factory, and ice-cream parlor to Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream Company. Then came the closure of the parlor itself during the early summer of 2002 when Dreyer’s decided to expand its manufacturing operation.
The following year, in an attempt to mollify growing unrest among the underground ice-cream-connoisseur community, Dreyer’s announced an expansion of the Snelgrove line. Visions of Canadian Vanilla Brownie, Cherry Chocolate Chunk, Strawberry Cheesecake and Silky Chocolate danced in their heads.
Without a comfortable clubhouse in which to carry on secret and highly caloric rites, however, the distinction began to fade. Picking up a gallon at the market and taking it home for private consumption just didn’t pack the same punch. Bringing together diverse cultural mindsets for a communion of the spoon seemed much more profound.
So, when news began to filter down recently that Dreyer’s, who had already stopped production on some Snelgrove flavors, had thrown in the towel completely on the entire line, it proved rather anti-climactic. Final batches will continue to roll off the production line until later this month, and then the long-familiar logo will disappear through attrition.
The powers that be haven’t yet figured out what they’re going to do with the iconic double ice cream cone sign. Possibly, in a nod to the Christo Redentor statue high atop “Corcovado” overlooking Rio de Janeiro (also art-deco), they could plant it on the summit of Mount Olympus in such a way that it would be visible to the salivating believers down below.
It’s not that an end to an era is at hand. That horse has been out of the barn since they closed that clubhouse of an ice-cream parlor next to the sign on 21st South. But the search is on for substitute cross-cultural communion media now that Canadian Vanilla will no longer be an option. There are always green Jell-O shots with Cuervo, I suppose.
Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and a free-lance writer with a background in commercial and community radio, among other pursuits. He has been a columnist and feature writer for various Park City publications going back to 1973.