Ice Cream Worth the Wait
August 4, 2023 – Gulf Shores, Alabama, USA
When Gabriel Alvarez asked his family where they should go for a summer vacation, his teenage daughter and tweenage son agreed on the beach. Gabriel decided only one beach would be boring, so he made a plan to visit multiple beaches along the Gulf of Mexico. The family left their dusty Texas hometown and drove toward the water. Their second stop was on Alabama’s little slice of the shoreline.
The Alvarez’s arrived early enough in the morning to find a good parking spot. Gabriel and his wife, Teresa, carried most of their gear from the car to the sand and they settled on a spot close to a lifeguard tower. After raising their shade canopy, Gabriel proposed building a sandcastle. His daughter, Selena, shook her head as if he had asked her to swallow a sea cucumber.
“How about you, Marco?” Gabriel asked his son.
“I’ll go out in the water, but I’m too old for sandcastles.”
Gabriel and Marco waded into the warm water and bobbed around in the waves. Teresa eventually joined them but Selena stayed on the sand, glued to her phone and afraid of missing messages from her friends in Texas.
           After the rest of the family returned from the water and dried off in the sun, Gabriel wondered if they had experienced enough of the Gulf Shores beach.
“Who’s hungry for lunch?” he asked.
“I could eat something,” Teresa answered.
“Do we give up our spot and take our stuff back to the car?” Gabriel looked around at the growing crowd.
The family stayed put for another half hour before making up their minds. Then they grabbed towels, water bottles, and the shade canopy and trudged back to the car. Once they were off the sand and farther from the water, the outside temperature seemed to rise by ten degrees. Selena ignored her phone long enough to complain about the heat. Gabriel led them into an air-conditioned hamburger joint near their parked car.
While waiting for hamburgers, young Marco suggested ice cream for dessert. Ice cream was not on the burger restaurant’s menu, so when he picked up his order from the counter, Gabriel asked an employee where to find ice cream.
“Most people go to Scoopers. Right down the street. Best ice cream in the country.”
Gabriel returned to his family with hamburgers and the ice cream news. His wife did not believe the Scooper’s review.
           “Best in the country? There’s no way it’s better than Blue Bell. Maybe the people around here have never been to Texas and tasted the real number one ice cream.”
“I don’t care if it’s the best. I just want ice cream,” Marco said.
The family finished eating and dragged themselves out into the blazing heat. Marco was the first to spot Scoopers on the street closest to the beach. An ice cream cone sign hung from the front of the wooden building, which looked like it was once a large house. The cream-colored walls were accented by yellow window shutters. An open porch wrapped around three sides, set with small tables and chairs below spinning ceiling fans. Most of the outdoor chairs were occupied by customers.
Gabriel opened Scoopers’ front door and immediately felt a wave of cool air from the indoor air-conditioning. A line of people stretched from the door to the front of the building.
“Kind of a long line. You sure we want to wait?” Gabriel asked his family.
Marco nodded his head. Selena shrugged her shoulders.
“The line must move fast,” Teresa said, looking around at the occupied tables inside the shop. “Lots of people have ice cream.”
Gabriel scanned the building’s interior without finding an empty table. “How about Marco and I save us an outdoor table while you and Selena wait in line? When you get to the front, I want something with chocolate.”
Teresa agreed and after taking another look at the line said, “I’ll see you in a few minutes. Ten at the most.”
Gabriel and Marco disappeared out the door to find a table. Teresa was happy to remain inside the chilled interior. She counted the number of people ahead of her in the line, which followed a wall built down the center of the building. It was hard to tell exactly how many bodies were gathered near the ice cream counter, but she estimated between 30 and 40 people stood between her and a purchase. She stood in the same spot for several minutes before saying to her daughter, “I’m a little worried the line’s not moving.”
Selena looked up from her phone indifferently and then returned her attention to a group text.
Two customers appeared, moving from the counter to the door. They carried cones topped with gigantic scoops of ice cream. A young woman licked her pink scoop as she shuffled past the line. Teresa eyed the departing pair optimistically. Maybe they were causing a traffic jam up front and now that they were gone, the line would move faster.
The line finally did creep forward, but only by a few steps. Then it stayed in another long stall. More people walked in the door and stood behind Teresa and Selena.
“What should we do?” Teresa asked her daughter. “If we’re going to bail, we should do it now. We’ve already been here for the ten minutes I thought it would take to reach the front.”
Selena looked up from her phone and said, “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”
Teresa shifted her weight nervously and heard the wooden floorboards creak beneath her feet. On the wall next to her hung old photos of the shop from at least fifty years ago. The place had been in business a long time and must know what it was doing. The people who had been served seemed thrilled with the large portions. The problem with the slow line had to be a temporary glitch. The store manager must be working to fix it so they did not lose customers. Teresa stayed in line.
Twenty minutes after entering the store, Teresa was hopeful that she was more than halfway to ice cream. The line in front of her shrunk slowly and she now had a good view of the prices and 80 flavors posted behind the counter.
“I’ve never been to a place with so many flavors,” Teresa said to Selena, who nodded her head. “And their prices are cheap. I was expecting to pay twice as much.”
While Teresa tried to convince herself she had decided correctly to stay in the line, Gabriel and Marco grew restless at their outdoor table. Gabriel sent a text to his wife’s phone asking how much longer she would be.
“Almost there,” Teresa texted back.
Teresa instantly had misgivings about her message. As much as she wanted to believe she was almost there, with each step forward she had to accept a sad truth about the line’s waiting surprise. Teresa could now see that it veered to the right instead of making a straight shot to the counter. If it bent very far, her wait could grow much longer than anticipated.
Thirty minutes after entering the shop, Teresa reached the end of the wall to discover it divided the building into two equal halves. On the left side were the ice cream counter, tables, and chairs. One the right side were more tables and chairs, initially hidden from view. To Teresa’s horror, she realized the line made a sharp right turn into the unseen space before doubling back toward the counter. The extra turns doubled the line’s length!
“Now we’re only halfway there!” Teresa cried to Selena, who offered little sympathy. “But we can’t leave now. We’re too far in. And look at all the people behind us.”
Selena frowned as she turned to look.
With the realization that they still had plenty of time to wait, Teresa decided she needed a trip to the restroom. She said to Selena, “Hold our place. I’ll be right back.” Then she hurried to the restroom located on the far-left side of the shop.
Seconds later, Gabriel and Marco walked through the front door and followed the line until they found Selena.
“Where’s your mom?”
“The bathroom.”
“We thought you’d be out by now. I could have driven to Mobile and back for ice cream with all the time it’s taking.”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“Why didn’t your mom just leave when she realized how long it would take?”
“I dunno. Ask her.”
Gabriel looked toward the front and back of the line and then at the list of flavors on the board behind the counter. “Well, Marco and I are done waiting outside. We’ll stay in here. Go get your mom and save us an outside table before they’re all gone.”
Selena shuffled toward the restroom and intercepted her mother before she could return to the line. Together, they walked outside to find an empty table.
Back in the line, Gabriel said to his son, “It’s a lot cooler in here.”
“Why do we have to wait? Can’t we find someplace else selling ice cream?”
Gabriel glanced again at the line. “Look at all those people behind us. Your mom already waited this long. We can’t back out now.”
As he crept forward in the line, Gabriel made the same arguments to himself that Teresa had used. The portions were huge and the prices low. And look at all the flavors. All the other people in the shop surely knew Scoopers ice cream was worth the wait.
Forty-five minutes after their arrival, Gabriel and Marco made the final turn in the line and were anticipating their arrival at the counter. Gabriel could now clearly see what was taking so long.
“There’s only one girl taking ice cream orders,” he said to Marco. “They need to get more help in here. Two girls would make the line go twice as fast.”
As Gabriel shook his head over the shop’s terrible service, Teresa and Selena wandered back inside.
“You’re supposed to be saving us a table,” Gabriel said to his wife.
“It’s hot out there. I’ll watch out for a free table in here while I’m waiting with you.”
“How did we end up standing here for so long? You should have given up after ten minutes.”
“Too late now.”
The Alvarez’s watched the girl behind the counter work as they slowly crawled toward their chance at ice cream. When the family directly in front of them got to the counter, the parents and three little kids seemed to forget all about the long line of people behind them.
“Can we sample your Chunky Monkey Banana Crunch?” the dad asked.
“We’re out of that one,” the ice cream girl replied.
“How about Lemon Berry Pie?”
“That one’s gone too.”
“What about getting Cookies and Cream?” the dad asked the mom.
“I know it’s good. That’s the Scoopers Ice Cream flavor I buy at the supermarket.”
The family continued to ask about different flavors while behind them Gabriel rolled his eyes. He whispered to Teresa, “Why would you stand in line this long if you can get the same ice cream at the supermarket?”
Teresa shrugged her shoulders and shook her head.
Sixty-three minutes after entering the shop, it was finally the Alvarez’s turn. Gabriel spoke loudly to the girl behind the counter. “I’m going to make this fast and easy for you. We want four single cones. Two of them Rocky Road and the other two Strawberry.”
The girl produced giant scoops of both kinds of ice cream and Gabriel paid a second girl who was acting as cashier. The second girl was so slow, it had to be her first day on the job.
None of the existing customers were eager to give up their indoor tables and chairs, so the Alvarez’s walked past the line to try and find seats outside. All those chairs were also taken.
“How about we eat as we walk and try to find some shade?” Gabriel suggested.
“This better be worth the wait,” Teresa said, looking down at her ice cream cone.
“It’s supposed to be the best in the country,” Gabriel reminded her.
Everyone in the family took their first licks of ice cream as they strolled away from the shop.
“Okay, so what does everybody think?” Gabriel asked.
“I like it,” Marco replied.
“Tastes like ice cream,” Selena said.
“Not as good as Blue Bell. No way,” Teresa concluded.
Gabriel took another lick. “Yeah, I think I agree with you. The long wait makes anything taste better, but it’s no Blue Bell.”
They continued to lick and stroll, moving in the direction away from the beach. They had still not found a shaded sitting area by the time they had eaten the last bit of their cones.
“Let’s find the car. I’m ready to leave,” Selena said.
Before he turned around, a hand-drawn picture on a sidewalk sign caught Gabriel’s attention. The picture showed an ice cream cone next to a bell with an arrow pointing toward a small shop squeezed between a T-shirt vendor and real-estate office. Gabriel followed the arrow to find a newly opened ice cream counter, proudly serving Blue Bell, the pride of Texas. No one was in the shop except for two employees behind the counter.
“Best ice cream in the country. No waiting,” Gabriel said dryly.
“I’ll take some more,” Marco said eagerly.
           “Not me,” Teresa said with a sarcastic smile. “I can have Blue Bell anytime. Everybody knows when you’re at the beach, you should wait for Scoopers ice cream.”
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