“I feel like I’m in a Norman Rockwell painting,” I said. The lady behind the counter, the one dishing out homemade peach ice cream, laughed. “Boy, that brings back memories,” she said.

I was at an Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Social sponsored by Eatonton’s Old School History Museum, whose tag line is “Preserving the past for the future.”

When I first got to the event, I said hello to a friend who was handing out lemonade near the front door of the building. “Did you get a hot dog yet?” he asked me, nodding toward the table on the other side of the entrance. “Not yet,” I said. “Where do I buy tickets?”

He smiled and gave me a “What are you talking about?” look. “No tickets,” he said. “Everything’s free.”

I got a hot dog, a slice of watermelon, and a bottle of water, then looked for an open seat at one of the tables set up on the lawn.

“May I join you?” I asked a woman who was sitting at a table with her young son. “I promise not to sing.”

She just laughed and said, “Of course. And it’s okay if you sing.”

It was hard not to. “Going to the Chapel” was being piped through the sound system, and it was followed by a number of other classics from the ’60s. I know all the words to most of them, and usually sing along when I hear them.

I had been told earlier that the ice cream was provided by numerous volunteers who had spent many hours churning and cranking their ice cream makers to make enough ice cream for the day. So the next thing I did was make my way inside the museum to the old-time diner, with its checkered floor tiles, old-fashioned counter stools, and huge, ornate cash register—the kind with a curved front, typewriter-like number keys, and a drawer that pops open with a “ding” when you pull the lever.

That’s where I felt like I was in a Norman Rockwell painting. I enjoyed just sitting there, soaking up the atmosphere, eating my ice cream, and chatting with others who were doing the same.

I wasn’t at the event  at the right time to hear the Barbershop Quartet or join in the Cake Walk, and I decided to pass on the dancing and face-painting. But later, as I walked back to my car, I was smiling—as were most of the people around me.

It was heartwarming to realize that despite all the gloom and doom, the fears and the fighting in the world around us, we can still find joy, generosity, comfort and camaraderie in something as simple as an old-fashioned, small-town, ice cream social.

Norman Rockwell would be proud.

August 25, 2024
©Betty Liedtke, 2024

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