Snow Cone Time Machine

Rural communities pride themselves on creative efficiency. Using a hay barn as a dance hall is not only practical, but it creates lasting memories of good people making the best of what they have available.

Our town had a Wal-Mart that sat on a hill in front of our only high school. The back of the store had a fenced area where they would take deliveries, and beyond that fence a grassy slope led down to an open field the high school used for football and soccer practice. The hill was steep and in the winter became a hot spot for sledding. My earliest memories of Utah snow were formed on that chaotic hill packed with eight-year-olds on plastic discs.

As time went by, the hill served countless functions. Our parents used the hill for bleachers to watch our soccer games. Some of the older kids would smoke cigarettes on the hill when they were ditching class. At football practice we used the hill for conditioning and would have to carry another player on our backs as we ran to the top. I even kissed a girl for the first time one summer at the top of Wal-Mart hill.

Before we could drive, my friends used the hill as a meeting place. It was centrally located to our houses, but more importantly there was a snow cone shack next door where we could get our sugar fix. The year before I got my driver’s license we would hang out on the hill nearly every day, and that summer is cemented in my memory as the final summer of my childhood. Summers after I could drive were still great, but they were filled with the embarkation to adulthood with summer jobs and chasing girls. Our last summer on the hill is where we said goodbye to long days without purpose.

I’ve probably eaten one thousand snow cones on that hill. We’d meet at the hill as soon as our chores were done, usually between eleven and noon. I’d get Tiger’s Blood or Maui Wowie, and we’d sit and talk while we sucked the liquid from the bottom of the cup. When our cups were empty we’d walk to the bottom of the hill and wash our sticky hands in the irrigation ditch that fed the gardens of the nearby houses with cold mountain runoff. After our hands were clean we’d race our Styrofoam cups in the ditch, running alongside them until we reached my house. We’d been racing sticks and cups in this ditch since we were in elementary school, but we secretly had more fun with it when we were too old to be playing childish games. The rest of the day was for home run derby in the church parking lot or swimming at the city pool. If we got back together after dinner to see a movie or to sleep at a friend’s house, we’d head back to the hill for another snow cone before they closed at seven.

Now that we are older, I’m the only one who still lives in our home town. Our city built a Wal-Mart supercenter over in the newer part of town, so the old one became a local farmer supply house. Most of us still refer to it as Wal-Mart hill, which is confusing to the move-ins and anyone born after 1995. The snow cone shack is still open in the summer, but they moved it across town to be near all of the new stores.

Sometimes when I’m feeling nostalgic, I’ll take my wife and our three little boys to get a snow cone. I won’t let them eat it until we arrive at the top of Wal-Mart hill, so I can watch a new generation bask in the carefree sun with sticky fingers.