Missing AJ's

Stopped in at the Berkey Creamery at Penn State again over the weekend, and it got me thinking about the late, great AJ’s, which was on the campus of VCU during my time there in the mid-1980s.

Of course, the Creamery is a must-stop for a lot of folks when they are in State College. The lines can be legendary, which is why they must enforce rules similar to those of the “Seinfield” Soup Nazi to keep it moving. There are usually two dozen flavors available, and a cone or cup costs $3.25 these days, while a milkshake is $4. You tell the person at the cash register what you want, he or she repeats it back and then you pay, and go to the dipping station, where they will find the appropriate person to complete your order. It’s all fairly efficient.

And the ice cream is outstanding. They say it’s less than 24 hours from the cow to the cone. If I may recommend a flavor, I would say the Chocolate Chocolate Nut, which was called Palmer Mooseum with Nuts the first time I stopped in the old Creamery in 2004.

Mixing flavors is not allowed at the Penn State Creamery, and only one person has been successful in breaking that rule. President Clinton managed to get strawberry and Peachy Paterno in one order, according to legend. Contrast that to the Michigan State creamery, where they will mix flavors and the line backs up accordingly.

And contrast that to the chief charm of AJ’s, which was the mixing in of nuts, cookies, candy bars and all other kinds of matter on a cutting board. Today, Cold Stone Creamery does that everywhere, but 30 years ago it was the kind of radical thing you’d only find in places like Georgetown.

When I got to VCU in 1983, AJ’s was in the lower level of some building on Grace Street, half a block down from a Haagen-Dazs store that was right on the corner with Shaffer Street. I probably frequented that store for a while before I had heard enough about AJ’s to check it out.

What Cold Stone does these days was called a personalized cup at AJ’s. They started with ice cream made fresh in the store earlier in the day. One of the best flavors was Coffee Oreo, which actually negated the need to get a personalized cup. Occasionally, you could find an entire Oreo in the middle of a cone, although they usually chopped them up fairly well.

Eventually, the Haagen-Dazs closed and AJ’s took its spot at the corner of Grace and Shaffer. It was a good place to slip away in the middle of my photojournalism class on Wednesdays. After all, there is only so much you can do in a five-hour class.

AJ’s eventually opened a location at Cloverleaf Mall around the time I moved to Luray, and I’m not sure when it disappeared from there or campus. If I had to guess, it was sometime in the 1990s.

That wasn’t the first time a Richmond ice cream institution disappeared. I still remember moving to the city in 1971 and Dad taking us to the Clover Room on

Broad Street

.

While many of these places come and go, others, like the Berkey Creamery, endure. Just make sure you know what you want when you get to the counter.

Yeah, I was in Indy for 15 minutes

I’m blaming this on Topper Shutt, although it’s certainly my fault.

Less than 24 hours ago, I drove past one of my favorite ballparks, a place I haven’t been in eight years, but skipped the chance to go to a game.

After spending an awesome extended weekend in Cincinnati, making friends with a bunch of trivia players from across the country, I had a free day before I needed to return to Winchester. What to do?

As soon as it became apparent that I was not going to have to ferry anyone back to town, I figured I’d find a game somewhere on the way home. Of course, most maps are not going to show Indianapolis as being on the way back from Cincinnati, but hey, Victory Field is awesome, I have never seen the AAA Pirates at home (the Indians were a Brewers club in 2003) and, what the heck, I still make the decisions around here.

The run up Interstate 74 was remarkably smooth and I pulled into Indy just after 1 p.m., an hour before the game. Drove past Lucas Oil Field, got closer to the baseball stadium and saw lots of people headed to the park, and plenty of guys who would be glad to give me a place to put the car for five bucks.

I also saw a black sky. I mean, a REALLY black sky.

OK, I got this one figured out. I drove past the stadium and turned onto the road that front the Indiana state Capitol. Having just been in town last year, I remembered where I had parked at a meter, and this would give me a chance to check the radar and make a few phone calls.

First up, check the weather. My phone has a nifty app from Channel 9 that includes a really good radar. When you start it up, the smiling face of chief meteorologist Charles “Topper” Shutt greets you. I had to swipe across the screen a couple of times to get from Washington to Indy. The colors west of the city included lots of red and purple, and some others I can’t properly describe. I was pretty sure one was black. And this IS tornado country. Strike one.

I called a buddy who I often get minor league sets for. “What do you need from Indianapolis, because that’s where I am,” I asked. He needed nothing, just picked up the 2011 set at a baseball card show a couple of weeks ago. Strike two.

I was still undaunted, that is until the wind kicked up. And the rain started to pelt the car.  I started thinking about a trip to Toledo earlier this year, which included two hours in a pregame rain delay followed by no game. And no chance to use the rain check. Did I really want to plunk down $5 to park and another $12 for a ticket to cower under cover for an hour or two, only to find out there would be no game and I was still nine hours from home? Strike three.

I briefly considered a couple of options. Go to the Speedway Museum. Find a mall and wait there for a bit to see if the weather would miraculously clear. But as I got on eastbound Interstate 70, it poured and poured, and I had no idea where I was, so the safest thing was to stay on the road home.

Which is why I cringed a half hour or so later when I found the Indians’ local radio station. They started the broadcast with all of the other International League scores from a handful of games in progress, then went on to the majors, and they don’t do that if they are getting ready for the first pitch.

Twenty miles outside of Indy, still in the pouring rain, I hear the guy say, “They are taking the tarp off the field and they hope to be playing here shortly.” What?

I stopped for a paper, looked at the radar again and somehow all that color west of town had disappeared, draining from the screen the way it did from my face. I’d just gotten out of the worst of the storm and would have to drive back through it if I even entertained the idea of going back. And if I’d go back, who’s to say the game would still be played? So I continued east as the play-by-play guy talked with the official scorer to fill time, putting up with static on my radio every time there was a bolt of lightning. And there was a lot of lightning.

I could still hear the game by the time I got to Richmond, Ind., and the kid for Indy had a no-hitter going into the fourth or fifth. When I got home, I checked the web. He didn’t manage to keep the no-no, but got a 3-0 win over Rochester in a game that was over by 5:30 before a crowd of better than 8,000. Thanks to modern technology, poor decision-making and, yes, Topper Shutt, I wasn’t one of them.