JIm Taylor & A Perfect Strawberry Ice Cream Soda
Saturday, August 24, 2013
To lighten the anguish that a re-shoot is
to a photographer I invited my daughter Ale who was 16 to accompany me. It was
an extremely hot day so I took off the roof of my yellow Fiat X-19.
Taylor posed by his pool while holding an early Radio Shack computer. I
was careful not to get a reflection on his glasses.
After the shoot I told Ale, “I have an
idea.”
It was a relief to leave Taylor's house and I told my daughter,
"I feel like having a strawberry ice cream soda. It was a hot Saturday
afternoon, in the waning days of a late August summer. We went to Bar Centrale
on Commercial Drive.
It is now long gone. Back then they served the best coffee and the best
strawberry ice cream. I asked for a couple of ice cream sodas. The young
Italian attendant told me, "We don't have them here." So I asked him
for:
1. Two tall glasses and two long spoons.
2. A couple of scoops of strawberry ice
cream in each glass.
3. Two bottles of San Pellegrino.
Ale and I had the best strawberry ice cream
sodas of our life.
I remember telling Ale how back when I was 8
or 9 my grandmother Lolita would take me to the movies, late afternoon in Buenos Aires. We always went
to Calle Lavalle that was home to a string of movie houses. We went to see Westerns,
war movies or films with swordfights. My grandmother loved this sort of thing. And
so did I! After the movies we would walk around the corner to the Roxy. The Roxy
was a bar lácteo (an Argentine fixture at the time) where she and I would have tall,
cool strawberry ice cream sodas.
Today Saturday, Hilary and her two daughters,
Rebecca and Lauren were over for the evening. I brought out five Mexican blue wine
glasses, five spoons, one container of Häagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream and two
bottles of very cold San Pellegrino.
We loved them and of course I had to tell
the story of Jim Taylor, Ale, my grandmother Lolita and the Roxy.
Lauren, who is into details can explain on demand the subtlety that soda water (and not Seven Up, Ginger Ale or Pepsi) brings to perfect union of sweet ice cream and a neutral soda. She will speak at length at the delicious foam that is the union of ice cream with soda water.
Lauren, who is into details can explain on demand the subtlety that soda water (and not Seven Up, Ginger Ale or Pepsi) brings to perfect union of sweet ice cream and a neutral soda. She will speak at length at the delicious foam that is the union of ice cream with soda water.
