When We Had Orange Pineapple Ice Cream for Breakfast

Another Way for week of July 21, 2023

When We Had Orange Pineapple Ice Cream for Breakfast

Ask any of my siblings for one of their memorable vacation stories and at least one of them will come up with the story of being forced to eat Orange Pineapple Ice Cream for breakfast.

Now, I know that doesn’t sound so terrible and many kids would be excited to have ice cream for breakfast but on this particular trip to Niagara Falls our family found a small local motel which housed each of their visitors in small separate cabins which they called “huts.” Hagar’s Homey Huts to be exact. The “huts” were very cute and self-sufficient. With a refrigerator of some kind, this was long before anyone had microwaves and such in their motel or hotel rooms.

On a vacation, Mom and Dad usually visited a nearby grocery store to buy simple-to-make sandwiches, fruit, and maybe some veggies, chips and dessert of some kind. On this particular trip Dad saw Orange Pineapple Ice Cream in the store’s freezer department and thought it would be a wonderful treat. He had enjoyed it in times past and wanted to introduce us to it.

I’m sure we all enjoyed it for our dessert that night before we went to bed.

However, in the morning, there was still Orange Pineapple Ice Cream in the freezer and Dad wasn’t about to throw it out and so pushed it for breakfast. I don’t remember what else we had. I think it didn’t taste quite so good for breakfast, if my memory serves, because we all remember Dad making us eat the ice cream, even if it kind of turned our tummies at that hour of the morning.

Well, my husband and I just returned from a nice summer trip to northern Michigan and enjoyed a range of hotels: some were great, some just so so, but most of them had free breakfasts (well, at least the price of your breakfast was paid for by your room price, right?). One place kind of apologized for just serving coffee and small blueberry muffins, but hey, it was a breakfast.

Our last hotel was a very very nice one at a higher price bracket. Quite lovely. If Deep South comedian Jerry Clower were still alive he would have called it a “ritzy ditzy shore’ e’nuff fancy do-dad hotel.”

It had a sparkling breakfast area but with a big difference: no free breakfast! Our opinion of that place soon rocketed to the bottom. You had to PAY for food (free coffee), but I’m talking $12.95 or more for a breakfast dish. Times two of us. Plus tax and tip.

Yeah, it was a little stiffer than we wanted to pay for two breakfast plates so I began to comb through the food items I still had in our cooler and bags. I found some leftover pizza slices, an apple we could share, and chocolate chip cookies. There were other odds and ends we could have found and of course we could make “free” coffee in our hotel room, but it certainly brought to mind the Hagar Homey Hut breakfast of my childhood.

What memories or stories does this trigger for you?

My parents gave me the travel bug and thankfully, my husband enjoys traveling too, so the state of Michigan was mostly our destination this trip. He had never been to the northern parts. While we live in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley, I can’t help but envy Michiganders who enjoy lakes, rivers, and three of the “Great Lakes” we all learned about in geography: Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Lake Superior all touch its borders. Boundless miles of natural forests met us over many miles. But the other thing I enjoyed a lot were the beautiful flowers at many homes in some of the resort towns. Growing and sharing flowers is something many of us enjoy at our own homes.

But don’t buy orange pineapple ice cream and ask me to eat it for breakfast.

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What is your favorite place to travel to? If you could travel anywhere you wanted, where would that be?

Share your story, travel nightmares, or future dreams by commenting here or by mail at Another Way, P.O. Box 363, Singers Glen, VA 22834, or email anotherwaymedia@yahoo.com.

Another Way is a column by Melodie Davis, in syndication since 1987. She is the author of ten books, most recently Memoir of an Unimagined Career. Another Way columns are posted at FindingHarmonyBlog.com a week after newspaper publication.