#recipe beaver tv prankcalls icecream meth summer friends

[recipereruns]

#TBT Recipe - 'Volcano Sundae Ice Cream Cone - What We Ate to Make Prank Phone Calls By'

Summertime meant free time which meant sprinklers, old TV shows, mid-day ice cream and making prank phone calls. 'Leave It To Beaver' was one of my dailies and not just because of hot Wally 'Don't Let Your Messy Friends Touch My Hair Tonic and Shaving Stuff' Cleaver' but because of the myriad of ways Beaver managed to get in to hot water. A lot of times because he was too much of a weenie to say no, he'd just make is Jerry Mather's constipated thinking face and agree to go along with it.

First time Beaver's left alone he's allowed to have Gilbert and Alan come over. After a few minutes of sitting around the living room eating apple slices off of dessert plates, Gilbert grabs the phone, dials up a butcher shop - because all 12 year old boys know the butcher shop number by heart - puts on a fake deep voice and asks if 'they have pigs feet' and when they say 'yes' he said they should 'get some shoes so no one will see them'. Ugh. Worse than the joke is the fact that Gilbert rushed the punch line and didn't stick around for the reaction.

Brother and I often amused ourselves with prank calls. The calls were usually an afterthought; a way to wind down after riding bikes sans helmets on the hilliest of hills of Redmond that made up The Plateau, which by the way is Native American for 'Big Attitude No Sidewalks'.  The calls came about in a very casual way like an after dinner smoke or a 'night cap'- the old TV trope that I recently learned was not actually about a drink.

On Saturday evenings, Meth mom and Scotch dad 'went out'. Which I now surmise meant having steak and prawns at Sea Galley followed by drinks at the Denny's lounge, where they would get buzzed and dance to an Loverboy cover band.

Meanwhile, Brother and I full, from our microwaved hotdogs, made our selves a 'bed time snack' and sat on our parent's bed with the local phone book and the Margaret Mead Elementary School Directory.

We went down the list calling homes of students and informing who answered that we were from the Seattle Times and they had just won $1,000. or a 'spa' or a trip to the Grand Canyon - As soon as we'd hear the screech of joy, we would hang up and laugh our selves silly.

One time we called this family that we didn't know was connected to the mob and my classmate answered and believed she was a winner and then went crying and screaming 'Mom! Dad! We Won! We Won!' We cried over that one. Later in life when I would see that girl acting cooler than the rest of us trying to pull off purple contacts, I would hold that call like a trump card in my heart: you are not that cool, Fina Terrelli. You fell for my prank call in 1983.

Eventually *69 and caller id eradicated the art of the prank call. It ended sooner than that for us because of an answering machine incident where my brother and one miscreant friend left death threats on the machine of one of their other friends. These boys, not even trying the Gilbert deep voice were instantly recognizable and the family called the bored Redmond police who showed up at prankster's houses to scare them straight off prank calls.

While I miss the days of flopping down, dialing numbers, putting on a fake voice and tricking friends and strangers, I can relive the feeling by making a kid’s Van Auken original ice cream creation - ‘The Volcano’. Enjoy! 

INGREDIENTS:

Ice cream, any flavor

Cake cone

Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup

DIRECTIONS:

Fill the cake cone with ice cream, packing it down. Add a final scoop on top.

With the handle side of a spoon, poke a hole all the way down to (not through) the bottom of the cone.

Squirt Hershey’s Syrup in the hole until it starts to ‘erupt’ out the ‘mouth’. Take the spoon side of the spoon and cover the ‘mouth’ with more ice cream.