Except for apple pie, what could be more American than an ice cream sundae? As the saying goes, we all scream for ice cream.
A love of ice cream, however, is not original to America. “Iced cream” was apparently consumed by Nero in Rome. It became a commercial product during the 1700s in France, where gelato (from Italy) was served in a Paris restaurant named Café Procope. In America, the first ice cream parlor opened in New York City in the 1790s, and an ice cream factory was established in Pennsylvania in 1851. An invention patented by African American inventor Alfred Cralle in 1897 increased the efficiency of serving ice cream. It was a “modern” ice cream scoop.
From its beginning, Fallon developed a lively ice cream and soda fountain culture. Early records show that a business called Allen’s Confectionery Parlor was established in 1906, selling candy and ice cream. A 1906 news item reports that Allen’s had also acquired a peanut roaster.
However, it was Prohibition that nationally transformed a taste for ice cream into a craze. The habit of drinking alcohol shifted to a habit of imbibing ice cream and sodas. Between 1920 and 1929, consumption of ice cream grew by 40%. By the end of the 1920s, there were over 100,000 ice cream parlors in the United States.
In the early 1920s, in Fallon, an ice cream parlor called Laveaga’s opened on Maine Street just north of the Fallon Theatre and became a favorite haunt for young and old. In their oral histories, as archived by the Churchill County Museum, many locals fondly remembered Laveaga’s.
NADINE DOMONOSKE: “Ooh, I loved the ice cream parlor. It was great. All kinds of ice cream, at least 12 different… types of ice cream, like vanilla and strawberry. And it was a wonderful place. It had a piano in it. People either played the piano, or else they had a… those rolls. They used their feet and away they went [ed- she is describing a type of player piano where a person pumped pedals to get the music to go forward] and everybody sang. It was a lot of fun! There was really more kids than there was adults…. It was called– and don't ask me how to spell it – Laveaga's Ice Cream Parlor.”
WILLIE CAPUCCI: “Laveaga owned that and I think he's still living in Sparks. Brian Laveaga. And as kids we used to love to go in there 'cause they had marble top tables and the little chairs made out of twisted wire painted gold. They had fans running and us kids from the ranch couldn't believe that the fan could put out wind, and we'd follow the fan around wherever it turned and made a noise. …When we had ice cream, I remember they used to serve a little cookie with it, Nabiscos, and that was something.”
CONNIE WALTERS: “[I remember] those Saturday night dances [held at the Fraternal Hall], but that was just wonderful because I can still remember coming up the steps, and I could hear Harry Marsh's slide trombone. You know, it was just like the pied piper. Come on up and dance, (laughing) and there would be children lined all along the benches covered up with coats. Nobody bothered to have a baby sitter come in. You just took the children to the dance with you, and they laid down on the benches and would sleep, and they were never too young to learn to dance. There were dancers of all ages. ….Laveaga’s was right downstairs right near it. Their ice cream parlor. That was where we used to go after the show. We would go to the ice cream parlor. My father dearly loved pineapple sodas, and he would have a pineapple ice cream soda, and the rest of us would have some other kind of a soda that we would like.”
Laveaga’s was later called the Sugar Bowl. During the 1940s, another soda fountain establishment, named the Do Drop Inn, opened at 380 S. Maine St., where Fallonite Ralph Ratti remembered spending an extra dime on a thick milkshake. In an article written for “In Focus,” Volume 20, Nathan Bailey recounted that his parents once owned the Do Drop Inn and that he revisited it many years later during a trip back to find the Fallon of his youth. “Upon entering Daisy Mae’s [a flower shop then occupying the same building] I felt as though I’d entered a time capsule and was once again inside our business. As I stood reminiscing, within my head the sound of Rock ‘n Roll began playing in the background…. The sounds of the old fashioned pinball machines were ringing out; the chatter of high school students permeated the room…. And there was Mom, working the front counter serving milkshakes, malts, and burgers.”
Ahh, the magic of ice cream memories.
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