The other night after the grand opening of the soda fountain a couple of my friends asked me a question about where the idea had come from to have a fountain at Wagner Farm. It was the first time anyone had asked me that. So, I thought I might as well share the story with all.
When I was a kid one of the biggest treats we could get was going over to the neighboring town and getting to sit at the only soda fountain in the whole county. I had two favorites; first was cinnamon ice cream. Not the hot cinnamon but the other one that when combined with soft thick ice cream is just heaven. The other favorite that came in as a close second was the malt. Now the funny thing was the taste of the malt was only part of the reason I liked it so much. The other reason was they made it in one of those metal malt cups that would fit into the mixer machine. The soda jerk would pour it into a glass they would then give you the rest of the malt in the metal cup. This was the greatest because you thought you cheating the system in getting "extra" ice cream and because the metal cup had a very special property. Being super cold the cup would freeze to your hand if you held it for a minute. I don't know why that seemed so neat to a 10 year old boy but it did.
This still doesn't tell the story of why we have a soda fountain at Wagner. On a road trip to Pennsylvania to see my friend Brett McNish we wandered into a antique store that had a working fountain and it was just packed with kids and families trying to get up to the bar. At the time we had just finished the Heritage Center and Sarah and I were trying to tie every part of the building to an educational use. In most of our programs we combine a little bit of history with a little bit of agriculture to layout a good story. If a visitor can see a cow fed, milked and then something made from the milk it tells a more complete story. All those kids at the fountain in Pennsylvania made me wonder if they had any idea where that ultimate of dairy products, ice cream came from. That was what started me thinking back to Jay Drug and finding a way to bring that awesome soda fountain to Glenview. Educationally and programmatically it worked. It would be the perfect demonstration of an end product in agriculture. After a year of planning and construction we have Wagner Farm's Sweets and Treats.
On a recent trip home I revisited Jay Drug and I'm happy to say that the malt cup still froze to my hand. Not all childhood memories are burst upon adulthood.
