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Chocoholic fever The Flavor of the Week Is: ProgressBy Rick Horowitz
AVON, N.C. -- You can keep your safaris across the African veldt, your treks to the snowy peaks of the Himalayas. You can keep your skydiving, and your whitewater rafting, and your alligator wrestling. When it comes to vacation adventure -- vacation excitement -- I get all I can handle right here at the local Dairy Queen. It may not look like much from the outside, sitting along Highway 12 in one of who-knows-how-many mini-malls that dot this stretch of Hatteras Island. That's OK -- it doesn't look like much from the inside either. But that's not the point. Here's the point: For years now, my beachhouse mates and I have been spending a few summer days and nights in this pleasant little town along North Carolina's Outer Banks. And for years now, our visits to this pleasant little town haven't been complete without an after-dinner stop at the Dairy Queen. We go in search of chocolate. We are always disappointed. The Dairy Queen in Avon sells vanilla soft serve. Not vanilla soft serve and chocolate soft serve. Vanilla soft serve. Which isn't to say that chocolate has been banned from the premises or anything. You can certainly get chocolate hard-shell topping on your vanilla soft serve. You can get chocolate fudge poured over your vanilla soft serve. If you're so inclined (I'm not), you can even get all sorts of chocolate candies mixed into your vanilla soft serve. But if your mouth is craving pure unadulterated chocolate -- not chocolate on or over or into some other flavor -- you're out of luck at this particular Dairy Queen. And this has been going on for years. For decades. Every summer, I step up to the counter, hope temporarily triumphant over cynicism, and give the counter clerk my order: a hot-fudge sundae, please -- all chocolate. And every summer, the counter clerk says to me: "We only have vanilla." You're thinking this is wonderful. My friends and I have found a throwback, one place that's perfectly immune to the passage of time, to all those fads and trends that race across the multi-flavored, every-niche-covered, every-need-satisfied 20-ring circus we call modern life. It's not all that wonderful. We're talking chocolate, for pity's sake, not Rocky Jasmine Fruit Loop Mocha Crunch Supreme! And I can't be the only one, can I? There are chocoholics all over the country -- some of them have to go on vacation, right? Some of them have to show up at this particular Dairy Queen, right? You'd think it would be simple good sense -- not to mention good business -- for this Dairy Queen's managers to respond to their customers' desires, wouldn't you? And a year or two ago, they finally did. They put up a hand-lettered sign on the wall right behind the counter. If memory serves (or should that be soft serves?), here's what it said: "We only have vanilla. No chocolate." So much for responding. But then, this year... This year -- just a few nights ago, in fact -- we all troop into the Dairy Queen for our annual reality check, and we join the various lines snaking toward the counter. Almost immediately, two things happen: I notice that the sign is gone. And one of my beachmates whispers, "Look at the nozzles." She means, of course, the nozzles on the soft serve dispenser. So I look at the nozzles, at the nozzles and at the little tails of not-quite-dispensed Dairy Queen product hanging down from each of them. On the right-hand nozzle, the unmistakable flash of that old standby, vanilla. And on the left-hand nozzle, something different. Something darker. We've been fooled before. Uneven lighting. A stray shadow falling across the machine just so. Hallucinations. After so many disappointments, I'm not leaping to any conclusions. But then -- I'm nearly at the counter now, nearly ready to make my selection -- I see one of the clerks take another customer's order, walk over to the left-hand nozzle, pull the handle back, and... Yes. Chocolate, after all these years. When my turn comes, I'm nearly tongue-tied with the thrill of it, but somehow, I manage to get the words out: "A hot-fudge sundae, please -- all chocolate." And the counter clerk says: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. She simply goes and gets me my sundae, just as if there's always been chocolate at the Dairy Queen! It was every bit as good as I'd imagined it in my dreams. And when I was finished, I saved the cup, and I had my beachmates sign my napkin. So who needs the Himalayas? Posted 8/16/05. Get
tasty commentary from syndicated columnist Rick Horowitz twice every
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Rick Horowitz
