Ice Cream Chronicles (Year 5): Bucyrus...This Is Truck 275, Over

As a younger lad, I was a huge fan of TV medical shows (something which may have come from my mom's love of the soap opera "General Hospital".)  I wasn't particularly picky, so I enjoyed the broad spectrum of shows from "Marcus Welby, M.D." to "Julia", progressing on to "Medical Center" and "Quincy, M.E.", and finally "Doogie Howser, M.D." and "ER."

But perhaps my favorite of the bunch may have been the exploits of paramedics Johnny Gage and Roy DeSoto on the show "Emergency!" on the NBC Network. One of my favorite things about the show is that not every dispatch was necessarily worthy of a true 911 call, though there almost always would be one multi-alarm, disaster-in-the-making challenge in each episode.

While the hot weather around here can feel sometimes that there was a rapid-response service for rapid cooling relief, the true 911 is generally not the manner to call for that.  However, the closest thing for that might just lies roughly one hour north of the metro in Bucyrus, a town of roughly 12,000 people that celebrates the Bratwurst like few others.

Ice Cream Chronicles (Yr. 4) - Toasted Marshmallows and Other Miscellany

The Mitchell's of ice creams (both San Francisco and Cleveland renditions) are
no longer my only case of California-Ohio deja vu after a visit to Cincinnati

Some time ago, I wrote a bit about Mitchell's Ice Cream. However, depending on the part of the country you were from, it could refer to the longtime ice cream maker in San Francisco which married tropical flavors like jackfruit, ube and mango (its most popular flavor, even now) to its dense, old-school, high-butterfat content ice creams to consistently long lines into its cozy Bernal Heights shop. Or it could refer to the Cleveland-area confectionery which spins hand-crafted, locally focused artisanal ice creams that have time and again earned it "Best Of" honors in Northeast Ohio as well as one of the top ice cream purveyors within the Buckeye State.

Social media has been a source of confusion between the two Mitchell's, with people using one shop's media handles to tout their latest ice cream experiences when it belongs to the other (and I won't even mention another Mitchell's Ice Cream in Chicago that I've seen bandied about.)

On a recent jaunt into Cincinnati, I found another Buckeye State ice cream purveyor that reminds me greatly of one of my favorites in the Bay Area, so much so that it's put both of them for visits in the future for more exploration.

Ice Cream Chronicles (Yr. 3): Treat Tasking in Pataskala

Not too long ago, and only noticed by a select few people, a sliver of life from the past died. A milkman ended his route.

Gary Bocock, who along with his father kept this highly appreciated service for numerous decades, couldn't make the math work when the price of gasoline exceeded the price of the milk he was delivering. According to the article by Mike Harden of The Columbus Dispatch, about 150 people said their tearful goodbyes to their favorite dairy deliverer on his last day in late March, 2008.

Thankfully for the folks who live in and near Pataskala, the other dairy endeavor of Mr. Bocock and his wife Karen, is still going strong.