Freddogg Off The Chain

Brownie’s drug store in downtown Penndel circa 1955 outside of Philly had a soda fountain and counter with red swivel stools where they served “ice creen” cones and “ice creen” sodas and dishes of “ice creen.”

Any of it could be had for coinage so little heathens or what the nuns called pagans like me and my fiends and Luigi the Beagle could go there and be obnoxious and stupid and laugh at adults and no one stopped us and we needed to be stopped obviously we were plagued by low self esteem and looking for attention while craving discipline and if any of us had ever gone missing our pictures in horizontal striped polo shirts would have been placed on the backs of frozen fish sticks cartoons. In fact, we were the leading edge of the flamer generation.

This really old bent guy who probably had Parkinson’s but back then all that disease shit wasn’t on the street, he was simply, the old shaking guy, came into the drug store everyday and lined up a stool like it was spinning out of control. He’d grab it with two hands then mount it like a cowboy on a miniature pony. Needless to say, we thought that was hilarious, but we stayed dead quiet because this was “punch line” gramps and the fact we knew the joke only made it funnier each time it victimized it’s teller. Speaking of victimizing tellers did I ever tell you my fat Aunt Rose used to work the drive in window at a sperm bank?

Now I don’t know why the “soda jerk” didn’t alleviate this daily delivery of punch line madness and simple ask “the usual” perhaps because the head of Gramps was always shaking in the affirmative but he'd grab a fancy ice cream dish which looked like a small vase in his left hand and a scooper in his right and just stand there and wait wearing some stupid white hat cut in American Legion fashion.

No one ever noticed that the local pagan children and Luigi the Beagle had all gone stone quiet falling into audience mode.

Getting his tremors under control gramps would begin, ”Choc, Choc, Choc, Choc” and finally way too loudly “Chocolate!”

It’s arguable whether dogs laugh but Luigi always went belly up. Did he just yell ‘Chocolate” at me, I asked the “jerk” behind the soda counter. “No, he said, “shut the fuck up” and allow me to add “get the fuck out” and out we’d go and motor home on our fat fendered J.C. Higgins 24 inch bikes purchased from the Sears catalogue.

We’d be “choc chocing” and “get the fuck outing” and just having a great old time. Certainly in retrospect it was way wrong and when my mom asked me if I had ever met the man who went to Brown’s Drug Store everyday and ordered a dish of chocolate ice cream and did I know he’d won the Medal of Honor in World War One and had shrapnel in his head and that he died and was going to be honored at the little league park at the end of the Memorial Day Parade?

Luigi immediately went belly up on the kitchen floor. ‘What’s he laughing at,” my mother asked.

Peace Chocolate Freddogg