Vanilla
After fulfilling my duties at the Summer Camp I was working at in 2000, Barret, a Canadian friend I made at camp, and I sought work elsewhere. Unfortunately for me my visa stipulated clearly that I was only to be employed by Ebner Camps Inc. (the company running Camp Awosting) as a Specialist Counsellor and nothing else. This of course meant that if I were to find alternative employment during my stay with that specific visa it would technically be illegal. But for a 19 year old South African America can be quite expensive so more dollars meant more travelling and thus I decided that I wouldn’t let technicalities impose on my adventure- so we looked around for less lucrative “under the table” jobs.
On one of our off days during camp we went to a place called Martha’s Vineyard- a beautiful summer island off the coast of Massachusetts- and decided that this would be a great place to start looking for temporary post-camp employment. After some searching we ended up scooping ice cream for $8 (almost R64 at the time) an hour. The tips weren’t bad either, sometimes after a 13 hour shift (yes, the shop specializing only in ice cream treats opened at 9am closed 11pm) I made up to $30. This might seem like pocket change, especially to an American, but it allowed me to pay for my accommodation at the youth hostel ($10/night) and earn some extra cash that I used in my travels later.
So my duties as an ice cream technician was to scoop ice cream, make sundaes, milkshakes and other assortments of tasty desserts for those holiday makers who desire something sweet and creamy. I imagined that when I would finish with that job my right arm would be much larger than the left (like a fiddler crab) just from scooping ice cream. The store made their own ice cream which ranged in flavours from “cream of Oreo” to Pistachio nut. And there was the vanilla ice cream which, if removed straight out of the blast freezer, was harder than a diamond. It’s enough to make any self respecting ice cream technician a withering empty shell of a man (or woman). Probably due to the lack of any other flavouring ingredients and colorants, a new tub of thoroughly frozen vanilla ice cream can sink a ship. Using scooping utensils heated in boiling water made little difference as you stabbed at the substance that puts the s in “ice scream”. It was so bad that all of the staff tried to persuade customers to try other flavours when a new vanilla tub was just opened and the worst thing a customer could ask for was a large vanilla frappe- a milkshake blended with three large scoops of this deliciously evil treat.
While a customer would say “Ooh you have an interesting accent, where are you from? Australia? New Zealand? Germany?” I traversed through a range of scooping ‘techniques’ to get the correct portion of ice cream. These ‘techniques’ started out with a normal scoop (usually failed), “the one armed stab” technique which later becomes a “two arm stab”, then “the chisel” that involves using another utensil to hammer the scoop into the stubborn flavour and “the rapid two arm grind” until you eventually have enough vanilla to qualify as large scoop- all this while entertaining pleasant conversation with the customer. The blender didn’t have a good time either: the motor ceased from time to time and had to be assisted somewhat with delicate repositioning and a metal spoon as it had to blend solid ‘rock’ piece by piece- and all that effort for such a bland flavour. I am sure when hell freezes over it will be covered with blast frozen vanilla ice cream and everyone will get a teaspoon to dig themselves out. Fortunately the vanilla ice cream did get softer after a few hours in the display bar and all the other tasty flavours where easier to serve.
I only worked there for two weeks as the seasonal shop reached the end of its operating term and ironically ate very little ice cream. Barret (who still owes me $20) returned to Canada and I left Martha’s Vineyard for Boston $800 richer.
