Clamo, clamatis, omnes clamamus pro glace lactis

- I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream

One hot afternoon recently, while driving home from the office through Lake Oswego (the town, not the lake itself, although given the fact the temperature was approaching 102 that day)...I passed the local Ice Cream Shop. It is a nondescript little storefront on the main strip through this little chi-chi neighborhood. I remembered the too-do occasioned when Mayor Clint (Eastwood) put the clamps on the ice cream vendors in Senior Chi-Chi Carmel, that nothing could be sold as take-away since it presented a mess when kids dropped their scoops on the sidewalk. Fortunately no such law has yet hit the Lake Oswego Creamery (such an original name). The shop is a venerable little institution, and has been there in the center of town for a number of years, apparently pre-dating the current wave of excess that is the town's claim to fame in modern Portland.

The only reason I bring all of this up, was that as I sat there at the stoplight- the car sweltering away in the heat - I noticed a sign placed in the window. "Now Serving Breakfast." This genuinely has piqued my interest, inasmuch as ice cream has for many years been a breakfast favorite of mine but I was unaware that it had become a sales feature.

Mary and I have long-since taken to celebrating certain breakfast occasions with warm apple pie with vanilla or caramel ice cream and a side of bacon. Okay, so we have taken to a slightly more health-conscious approach, substituting no-sugar-added versions of both the pie and the ice-cream, and the result is still very satisfying. When you consider this, the combination satisfies all the major food groups; fruits, dairy, bread (all right this is a stretch, but the crust does have flour in it) and meats. The meat product is mostly grilled salted fat, but I don't remember anything in Health Class that specified that bacon was anything less than a meat. In fact, I think I remember on the chart we were all supposed to learn that bacon was specifically pictured on the triangular chart of building blocks. That was the good part of going to school in the 60's, the Surgeon General had not yet caught up with "bad" fats and had yet to start mucking around with nice solid breakfast institutions.

So now there it was, a monument to our good taste, a temple for the iconization of the ice cream breakfast. I felt that a letter of appreciation might be in order, so the next day I went to the Internet to look the place up. The website was generic, and hungrily I scanned it for details on its ice-cream creations for breakfast. I imagined plates of cream topped with berries. Waffles mounded with chocolate cream and syrup. Bowls of crumbled cones substituting for cereal with melted ice cream for milk.

I was horrified to see that they actually advertised the cases covered with a cloth, and plates of health-nut whole-grain pancakes and twig-and-rock cereal. No bacon was even demonstrated, only sausages with an asterisk indicating that Soy-protein sausage was available upon request.

I was stunned and perplexed - why tease me so from the street. I was so very glad that I had not suggested that Mary and I check out the place in person - I am sure I would have made a scene.

I suspect that Clint Eastwood has something to do with this.