Garmon’s and the Nostalgic Power of Ice Cream
by Teresa Nicholas
When it comes to evoking memories, Marcel Proust and his bite-sized teacake don’t have anything over Garmon’s ice cream. Just ask Jimmy Giles, who was a carhop at Garmon’s Ice Cream Parlor from 1949 until 1951. Or ask any of the other seven or eight boys who carhopped along with him, among them Hal Whitaker, his cousin Paul Strode, Roy Andrews, Bo Peters and F.L. Stephenson. Mr. O.S. Cooper’s boys can tell you plenty about the nostalgic power of ice cream.
Garmon’s Ice Cream Parlor was located in downtown Clarksdale at 312 Yazoo Avenue, in a redbrick building built about 1900 that originally housed another ice cream factory, McLeran’s. When Jimmy Giles and his colleagues worked there, John H. Garmon owned the building and Garmon’s Ice Cream Company, and Oliver Spurgeon Cooper, who was married to Mr. Garmon’s niece, owned and operated the ice cream parlor in the front.
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“Spurge,” his boys called him affectionately behind his back. “He was about as nice a guy as you could imagine working for,” Jimmy Giles says. “Sort of a father/brother/Dutch uncle. Popular with the boys who worked there, and popular with people in the community.” Garmon’s was the place to work, Jimmy says, for another reason. “If you were one of Mr. Cooper’s men, you were well thought of.” He went to work there when he was fourteen and tired of delivering newspapers. “I was shy, and it helped me to get rid of my shyness,” he admits.
Garmon’s was also the place to go in Clarksdale, and just about everybody did. Old folks. Families with small children. Teenagers. “If you wanted to find anybody, you’d just go to Garmon’s and park,” Jimmy says. It was the town’s first teen hang-out, with the boppers coming and going, making loops in their daddy’s cars from Garmon’s to the railroad tracks, and winding up back at the ice cream parlor to see who was there and looking cute that night.
The parking lot had picnic tables and beach umbrellas and a jukebox, but most customers pulled up at the curb for the carhops to wait on them, with cars lining up sometimes from corner to corner. Inside there was a white octagonal-tile floor and tables and chairs and a marble counter, where as many as three soda jerks might be working. Pedestal fans were positioned to blow out the open door, keeping the sugar-crazed insects away. The parlor smelled sticky and sweet from Coca-Cola syrup, and from the fresh, milky scent of ice cream.
Mr. Cooper believed that his customers wanted to smell ice cream, not food cooking, explains Roy “Whitey” Andrews, who began as a carhop but later moved behind the counter when he was promoted to soda jerk. For that reason Garmon’s served only sandwiches—ham and cheese, pimento cheese, egg and olive, and occasionally chicken salad, available on Wonder bread, toasted or plain. Garmon’s also served fountain Cokes and other drinks, including limeades, lemonades and orangeades. And of course, ice cream, nine flavors in all—vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, lemon custard, black walnut, butter pecan, and pineapple, orange and lime sherbet—along with milkshakes, banana splits, and a concoction called a “Moron Sundae.”
“Mr. Cooper would only make those in slack times,” Jimmy says, because the Moron was huge, served in a flower-shaped glass five inches around and ten inches tall, the equivalent of three or four banana splits, with twelve scoops of ice cream, pineapple, strawberries, bananas, walnuts, and chocolate syrup, topped with whipped cream and a cherry. “A Moron cost $5, and if you could eat two in thirty minutes they were free,” Jimmy says. “I saw one guy try it once and he barely made it to the side door before he pitched.”
But some of Mr. Cooper’s customers went to Garmon’s expressly to sit inside, just so they could listen to the carhops banter with the soda jerks. Theirs was no ordinary back and forth, because they spoke in a code, like diner lingo but for drinks and ice cream.
For example, a fountain Coke was “shoot one”; cherry Coke, “shoot one wild”; large cherry Coke, “shoot a big one wild” (with the “one” referring to the number being ordered). Lemonade was 61; limeade 71, and orangeade 91. A vanilla milkshake was 101, chocolate 201, and strawberry 301. As for the ice cream, vanilla was 1/2, chocolate 1/4, and strawberry 1/3. A double dip of any ice cream was “stretched.” A banana split was “split one”; a chocolate sundae 1001. There was no code for the Moron.
Mr. Cooper invented the lighthearted jargon, along with his first two employees, Paul Strode and F.L. Stephenson. “We made it up as we went,” says Mr. Stephenson. Was it difficult to learn? “When you’re on the ground floor like that, it comes out easy,” he replies.
It may seem hard to believe, but there was a downside to working in an ice cream parlor. “We could have all the ice cream we wanted,” Paul Strode says, “but for a long time after I quit, I couldn’t eat it anymore.” Then there were the hours. “We worked until eleven at night,” says Hal Whitaker, who started at Garmon’s when he was twelve, and had to stand on two stacked Coca-Cola cases to wash dishes. The long hours hampered Mr. Cooper’s family and social life, so in 1952 he closed the business. He went to work for a car dealership and later for Chrysler’s regional office in Memphis, where he stayed until he retired. Mr. Garmon sold the ice cream plant to his manager, Harold Schuh, in 1964, who ran it until 1979. The ice cream parlor later reopened under a new owner. Now the building is the Big Pink Guesthouse.
Mr. Cooper’s boys went on to become military officers, hospital administrators, bank vice presidents, entrepreneurs, and city commissioners, having learned not only a lingo from “Spurge,” but something about life. “He taught me, ‘Do not be selfish, be truthful, control your temper, and work hard,’” Bo Peters says. Oliver Spurgeon Cooper died in 1987. Over sixty years later, his boys still remember this favorite saying of his:
Once a task is begun,
Never leave it ’til it’s done.
Be the labor great or small,
Do it well or not at all. DM
