DI NI NG
Packed with
Charm and Whimsy
Despite its name, Crossroads Custard & Coldbrew, located at 45 Slabtown Road in Cashiers, offers far more than sweet frozen goodness and coffee. There’s magic here, and the secret of Time Travel.
A
re there taste sensations stored away in your brain pan that will not be diminished by the steady accretion of decades and the indifference you’ve paid to your mind and body? The sort of emotional-sensory memory that can arrive, unbidden, as you’re drifting off to sleep, that’s so acute that it can make you gasp and issue a half-smile that’s as wistful as anything captured by da Vinci? For me, there are a few dishes that can do that – my Mom’s Strawberry Pie, Basque Marmitako (served in a never-emptying bowl in my son’s adopted town of Pamplona), Mrs. Wilma Gordon’s still-warm-from-the-oven cornbread in a long-ago supper at Highlands United Methodist Church, and, somehow, a Banana Milkshake. By way of explanation for the latter’s inclusion, let me supply a bit of context: In the wake of my truly astonishing (even to me) grasp of the
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arcane mysteries of long division and the subsequent attaining of 100 on a big, big test, my grandmother, the estimable Mildred Hannum, responded by taking me (and only me, my sisters weren’t invited) to Evan’s Ice Cream Parlor in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and treated me to a Milk Shake. Mrs. Evans, the owner and chief scooper, turned this into a transcendent event when she told me that she could whip up a shake using any of the parlor’s 16 flavors – Moses parted the Red Sea, Lincoln freed the slaves, and a throng of angels acclaimed “Hallelujah!” – it seemed impossible! This offer was made in Iowa in the midst of a gray, icelocked February, so I naturally chose Banana. Banana seemed tropical and sweet. And sure enough, that simple Banana Milk Shake was a treasure, a grace note from the tropics and I could imagine that Jane would have served it at Tarzan’s Birthday Party. Blend it in with the pride I felt at mastering the upper reaches
