January 7, 2009
The burnt-down, froze-up Taco Bell
featured by JustinSpace in one of his holiday blog entries from North Dakota
reminds me of the old Polar Bear ice cream shop near Lake Cliff Park in Dallas. A faintly Moorish igloo.
Back in the wayback days, the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Polar Bear’s neighbor was an establishment that sold fresh-squeezed orange juice and was shaped and painted to resemble an orange. The orange juice shack no longer stands, but the Polar Bear building may still exist. It would appear to have evolved into a Mexican-food joint. And so we come full-circle.
comments
Leave a Reply
Great picture, Sheila. And I used to visit the Polar Bear place you mention here. I was working for a meat packing company as a grinder and a driver (you’ve heard the story) and we picked up cases of whipped cream from the Polar Bear place to deliver to all of the DQ-like places that bought our hamburger patties. Anyway, I only went there a few times since I didn’t work for the place very long; they actually made the ice cream there–big stainless steel machines with all kinds of hoses running this way and that–and each time I went they would give me a giant cup of ice cream, whatever flavor they were making at the time. The guy would tweak a lever and a blast of semi-frozen ice cream would flop out all in and over the cup. The peach ice cream was the best.
Ah, Polar Bear Ice Cream and Lake Cliff Park. It was quite a treat to go there, until I was old enough to drive myself or go with friends. I remember it well, though the orange juice place seems very vague to me. I do well remember, however, the Electric Orange on Loop 12 in Oak Cliff in the early ’70s. A half-dome painted orange and attempting to compete, more or less, with Orange Julius, it seems.
Groovy, guys. (Clusterflock’s been busy while I’ve been in Madison attending to my roots.)