Moose Tracks and Connie's Kisses

My beautiful bride and I took our evening walk again tonight, as we do most nights after we close up our shop, and went down to Grannie’s Ice Cream and Cookie Jars shop in the center of Metamora for some ice cream. They (Grannie’s) are open until seven every evening these days, so we know we can count on them being there. There are few things better than some of their delicious ice cream to cool you down at the end of a hot day.


When we walked in, Doris (proprietor of Jackie B’s in the old Post Office building) and Pat (Ramos, of silhouette-cutting fame- her shop is on South Main) were sitting there talking while watching Connie make waffle cones.

Grannie had already gone home, so Connie was running the place by herself, not too hard since there was not too much traffic through the shop after six o’clock.

Connie interrupted her work to serve my wife and me our ice cream, in between pulling waffle cones off the special irons she makes them on. Brenda got to talking with Doris and Pat, as I studied what Connie was doing.


Probably most people just take waffle cones for granted. Buy ‘em full of ice cream, and they taste great and crunchy all the way to the bottom of the cone. But, as I came to realize, there is a real art and skill to making great waffle cones. They are so good that we’ve had people write emails to the Metamora website asking us where they get those great waffle cones from (we tell them they’ve got to go to Grannies to get them.)


Connie was turning out about two waffle cones every two minutes, using two grills. The work station is very hot and steamy as the waffle irons are closed on fresh batter each time. I asked her how many of the cones she had to make- she said three batches was her goal today. I thought, that doesn’t sound too bad- only three batches.

Connie and her waffle cone making art

Then she said that there were about sixty cones to a batch. That’s a hundred and eighty cones that evening. I asked her how many evenings a week she spent doing that, and the answer was Wednesday through Sunday, usually three batches each of those days, and sometimes more during the day depending on how much business there was.

That’s a lot of waffle cones!

 As I studied Connie’s fluid motions making the cones as she talked with me, I admired the skill involved. The perfect amount of batter must be dipped onto the iron- too much and there is too much waste (I saw very little waste around her waffle irons) and too little doesn’t give you a full sized cone. Close the iron slowly and carefully. When I asked, she said if you accidentally dropped the top half of the iron when closing it, you had to hurry up and dip more batter into that grill to make a full cone, because dropping the top would splash out about half the batter, making a mess on the clothing of the cone-making person.


Once the hot waffle comes off the grill, with her bare hands, she quickly places the soft waffle on a cute little waffle-rolling device, using a waffle-rolling aluminum-looking cone-shaped thingy with a handle to quickly roll the soft waffle into the proper shape, then shove the shaped cone into a paper cone-holder. She has to move quickly because the sucker is hot!


She can slow down once the cone is in the paper holder, but she isn’t done yet. We now get to the headline subject of Connie’s kisses.


The final step in making the waffle cone is to take a Hershey’s chocolate kiss (I hope I’m not violating any trademark laws here) of the saucer in front of her and place it in the bottom of the cone, pointy-side down. A visual check is immediately required to ensure proper positioning of the kiss.


As I watched and discussed this whole process with Connie, I noticed that about half the time she tossed or dropped the kiss in place and immediately put the cone in the rack to cool, whereas the other half of the time she had to use a table knife to adjust the position of the kiss. She told me it’s a skill thing- sometimes she has better aim.


As I continued to watch, her little saucer ran out of kisses. She went to her freezer and came back with the saucer full again- but they were all wrapped in foil, just like you see ‘em in the grocery store. While we talked, she patiently unwrapped each kiss. Let’s see, a hundred and eighty kisses an evening…. She said they buy them ten pounds at a time. Gotta unwrap them a handful at a time because if you unwrap them too soon, they’ll melt.


So, every time you eat a waffle cone at Grannie’s, you are getting one of Connie’s kisses. Which I guess doesn’t sound too bad, unless you go there when her dad, Paul, is making the cones, in which case every cone contains one of Paul’s kisses. Now there’s something to think about!


Intent on learning the entire waffle cone making business, I asked Connie about the batter. It’s a mix they purchase from Gold Medal supply in Indianapolis. But, of course, the mix is “doctored up” to make it “right” for Connie and Grannie. Secret process, of course. But she said the people at Gold Medal told them they go through more of the mix than anyone else they know. The stuff comes thirty pounds to a case, and they just got another ten cases in.


I didn’t tell you about Connie’s “bucketing” process to store the cones without crushing until used, but you can ask her yourself about that. The only thing I’ll tell you about this is that they are going to be in trouble when their current bucket supply gets used up, because there ice cream is now delivered in cardboard pails instead of plastic, and the cardboard ones can’t be re-used for storing waffle cones (or anything else, for that matter.)


So, to wrap up this article, Connie buys her kisses ten pounds at time at Sam’s, and passes ‘em out one at a time to everyone who buys a waffle cone full of ice cream.


Oh, and Moose Tracks? Absolutely my favorite ice cream flavor at Grannies- after all, it’s got both peanut butter and chocolate in it!

Rambling Thoughts on Metamora Log Cabins

My wife and I just returned from an evening walk around our home town village of Metamora. It is so pleasant, with the corn coming up in the fields (finally, after a late start due to all the rain) and the low-in-the-sky sun casting wonderfully bright shadows (bright shadows ?!) over the quaint buildings.


We walked down Main Street through the heart of the historic district, down to the Firehouse and then around the back of the village down Mount Street past Al and Pat’s house (the big yellow house whose historic name is the Gordon Brother’s Double Residence), where we continued on into Duck Creek Crossing past the two beautiful log cabins owned by Bonnie.

The shop in the one cabin (Brook Hollow Creations, log cabin number one) will not be opened until Labor Day, and may not open again next year, another sign of the ongoing economic shrinkage of Metamora. The other (The Red Sleigh, log cabin number two) Bonnie opens every weekend. Walking past these two fascinating, well-kept cabins caused us to count how many log cabins there were in Duck Creek Crossing. While there were no log cabins in town originally, their presence since the early 1970's are sort of a Metamora icon to many tourists.  We came up with the number eleven twelve.

Besides Bonnie’s two cabins, the next one up is Pam and Ron Colvin’s (Wood Works Etc., where they make a lot of their wood furniture) (log cabin number three), followed by Dorothy Wagner’s cabin (Country Peddlers) (log cabin number four) with her great smelling candle selection.

Number five is right next to Country Peddler’s, and I think the people who were in that shop finally gave up on business in Metamora as they had been promising to do for years. A look through the window showed it to be empty.

Number six is at the end of the row, just before the public restrooms, and is known by many as Button’s & Bow’s, a great little place full of miniatures and hand-crafted padded photo albums and other cool stuff. The three ladies that run this shop are faithfully open several days a week.

Before we got to number six, we had already passed numbers seven and eight on the opposite side of the walkway. Both are owned by Jeannie, neither is a shop and both are for sale.

We continued walking up past the Cat & the Fiddle B&B and Food/Gift Shop now run by Catrina (of great local fame, currently the Catrina of the local Baggy Bottoms Boys music group) , and Don’s long-present Wood Shack (Don is thankfully still with us after beating cancer last year) into the Duck Creek Crossing gravel parking area. Turning east in the parking lot, you find yourself staring at log cabin number nine, Angie’s delightful Serendipity Frog.


And just on the other side of the parking lot is Bob O’Rourke’s log cabin (number ten) that doesn’t look like a log cabin from the outside because of the siding now installed, but once you step inside, it is unmistakably an 1811 log cabin moved into Duck Creek in the early 1970’s from Tanner’s Creek in Dearborn County. I know a bit of the history of this cabin because it was our first shop in town eight years ago. Bob’s got the place for sale, price recently dropped to about $80K, if you’re looking for a great little shop in town. Bob’s health hasn’t been the greatest lately- his doctor just made him quit his position on the local Sewer Board. His wife, Chi, had a pretty bad fall recently, so they are both hurting lately. These two have been a significant part of the village life over their close to thirty year business presence.

As we kept walking, we passed Marc and Rachel’s place, the Metamora Country Store, now sadly closed. The bottom half of the structure looks like a log cabin (the upper half has siding) so, right or wrong, we’re counting that as log cabin number eleven.

And I almost missed number twelve- The Leather Hatchery. Rose Marie would be upset with me if I forgot them. Her hubby Dale used to work with my Dad back when they were both Air Traffic Controllers. The Hartledges are still open for business with their leather products on weekends.

Bear with me for a minute: Log cabins closed with no business in them- numbers five, seven, eight, ten and eleven. Open, at least on weekends, numbers two, three, four, six, nine and twelve. Open late in the year and probably not next year- number one.

Almost half the log cabins have no businesses in them. That’s sad. It’s also typical of the non-log-cabin buildings in the village as a whole. That’s sad also. These log cabins represent so much of our nation’s history, just like so many of the other buildings in town.


The past couple of years has been pretty rough on Metamora. We think its mostly due to a lousy economy, but for whatever the reason, tourism is down, resulting in a number of businesses closed. And that makes it even more of a challenge for those of us still here to keep the history alive. But we’ll keep at it, regardless, because we love this place, the beauty and history of the canal and railroad era, and the gorgeous Whitewater Valley.  It's like a disease some of us have contracted- this places infects you to where you just love it so much.  A number of Metamorons have contracted it- there doesn't seem to be a cure.


p.s.- Lest my nostalgia make anyone think the place is dead, very much the opposite is true. Besides the people already mentioned by name in this post, there are also a number of others thriving in the diminished business environment.


In Duck Creek, there is also Tom and Monica at the Fudge Shop, Janice at Kaleidosaurus, Kathy at the restaurant, Joy with a lot of handmade things and that gorgeous Lenox porcelain at the Briarpatch, Mr. Ed’s Shop, and of course the jewel of Duck Creek, the Cranberry Junction Gift Shop run by Paul and Shari.


And then on down Main Street there’s still Chris and Myrna’s Unique Creations, antique shops run by Nancy, Dave, and George and Gail train and book shop, Anne’s two shops, Donna’s fudge shop, and others. Not to mention our own shop, the Smelly Gourmet. And Doris just opened Jackie B's where Jane & Friends used to be.  (It still up in the air if Tom will actually open a restaurant or juice bar where Jane's Road Less Travelled Cafe used to be- time will tell.)  Can’t name ‘em all.

The big move of the year award probably goes to Grannie and Connie for moving Grannie’s Ice Cream and Cookie Jar shop into the corner stone building at Columbia Street and Lover’s Lane building recently vacated by Judy (who retired after 30+ years and closed her shop, the Lace Place, to have time to take care of her father.) They’re moving a lot of ice cream and cookie jars these days.


So there’s still a lot going on in Metamora. The State Historic Site still anchors the village by running the Grist Mill and Canal Boat. So come out and check us out.