Hello, With summer fast approaching, this photo was almost a standard in most communities. A strip mall located within a lot of cities all over the USA. In So Cal, we had ThrifTmart and Thrifty Stores. They were ahead of the curve with tons of folks going to shop in the store for standard goods and the one thing our young family could afford… ice cream cones. 5 cents was a great price for a beige yellowish stubby cone or an actual dark brown cone style with one plop of ice cream. But, 10 cents for a double scoop? Heaven in one hand… yikes.. at the time, no one got the triple as it tended to melt and fall off, unless one was a fast consumer. Jnaki Compared to the one of a kind, pinkish store down the street specifically built with ice cream sales in mind… The costs were so much higher than what we could get at the Thrifty or ThirfTmart stores. Their fun thing was convenience. There was always something to buy at the Thrifty Stores. The low cost ice cream was handy to allow a toddler/kid to enjoy the A/C outside in the family station wagon, or while shopping plus, the cold ice cream inside. YRMV Note : As all good things come to an end… as bankruptcy shows its ugly nose, the Rite-aid corporation is closing all of their big box stores. So, as that takes place, one of our iconic memories also, goes down the drain. “Thrifty ice cream was launched in 1940 at a small factory in West Hollywood. Angelenos soon flocked to the flagship Thrifty Drug Store in downtown Los Angeles to sample ice cream from the soda fountain. The high-quality, small-batch ice cream even snagged awards from the L.A. County Fair. By the 1970s, Thrifty ice cream had attained cult status along the West Coast, with significant celebrity shoutouts.” Almost every city in California had a Thrifty Drug Store. It was like Starbucks, almost one on a corner and in an adjoining city, a few blocks away, another red Thrifty sign on a huge building serving the community. For us, it was Thrifty Drugs for ice cream, as it was the best, but also, the lowest cost for the most ice cream. The fancy B/R pink ice cream store had thicker, creamier ice cream, but for us and our limited budget, we found the Thrifty Ice Cream better overall. The good thing was by the time the pink B/R store opened up, yes, it was packed. But, our son liked the Thrifty Ice Cream cones vs. the single scoop B/R version. That was also good as our pocketbooks took a big hit due to the “almost three times” the cost of a single scoop cone… Unless, some big corporation comes in and rescues the fading Rite-Aid stores, that brand of ice cream is history… a cold one at that. YRMV
The Jalopy Journal
