By Don Harrison
The banana split is one of humanity’s crowning achievements. But there’s no demand for it any more, so I suspect that nobody knows how to make it.
It used to be a staple at the neighborhood soda fountain. But the soda fountain, sad to say, is a thing of the past.
In just about every pharmacy and luncheonette, there was a soda fountain. It specialized in soft drinks (with or without ice cream), milkshakes (malted and otherwise), floats, sundaes, and sometimes, sandwiches.
Not only did the soda fountain provide minimum-wage jobs for teenagers, it was a terrific opportunity to show off when girls stopped by for a malted.
It was a gathering spot for adolescents, especially when the “soda jerk” on duty was “generous” (I often had to be warned by the boss against overdoing the ice cream in a friend’s soda).
This assemblage of teens was a mixed blessing. It brought in business, but some kids would hang out without spending, and large crowds of boisterous kids could scare off potential paying customers.
If the boss tried to control the situation (and the amount of ice cream in the soda), the poor guy — just a small businessman struggling to keep solvent — would be cast in the role of a villain.
None around anymore
Try to find a soda fountain today.
In my neighborhood alone, soda fountains were operating in two pharmacies just a few months ago; each has since closed, and to the best of my knowledge, no others exist nearby.
Besides cutting off a source of part-time employment, the demise of the soda fountain has made obsolete some important skills. And tastes.
Generations are growing into adulthood without exposure to a milkshake, let alone a banana split. Creating these magnificent concoctions has become a lost art.
Pieces of ice
I realized this recently in a restaurant whose menu listed, under Beverages, “ice cream soda.” The waitress seemed a little taken aback when I ordered it, but she bravely accepted the challenge.
What she brought me was a soda with ice cream in it ...
And ice.
Slivers of ice.
Ice chips don’t belong in an ice cream soda, I explained gently to the befuddled waitress as I was scooping out the pieces with a spoon.
“Oh,” she replied cheerfully. “I’ll remember that next time I make one ...
"If I ever do."
Inventors used to be celebrities— but nobody has ever heard of today’s
Inventors’ names were as familiar to us as those of sports figures, movie stars and presidents.
We knew about Marconi, who invented the wireless, and the Wright brothers, who invented the airplane, and Thomas Edison, who invented just about everything else there was to be invented.
We learned about them in school and at the movies. Spencer Tracy played Edison the man and Mickey Rooney was young Tom. Paul Muni was Louis Pasteur, and Edward G. Robinson played the title role in “Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet.”
Even more astonishing and more revolutionary breakthroughs have been achieved in the years since the world’s first telephone message, memorialized on screen when Don Ameche, as Alexander Graham Bell, said “Mister Watson, come here” to Henry Fonda, his assistant (that’s right, we even knew the names of their assistants).
Why the anonymity?
More amazing strides have been made over the years in medicine, space travel, computers, electronics and other technology, but those making them are practically anonymous.
There are probably many reasons; I can think of a few:
• Those guys worked alone, often against terrific odds. Today’s scientists and inventors work in teams in labs, usually bankrolled by corporations, universities or government, or a combination. How do you make a movie out of that?
• Some of the discoveries with the most impact are links in a chain of discoveries, often too esoteric for the lay person to comprehend, let alone appreciate the significance.
• And everything’s happening so fast that today’s breakthrough could be tomorrow’s yawn. Something developed today could be obsolete tomorrow.
This came to mind when I went to my computer (a revolutionary achievement whose inventors I can’t identify) and Googled an old friend to see whether he’s still alive. He is — Dr. Leonard Hayflick is a professor of anatomy at the University of California, San Francisco.
He revolutionized gerontology
Hayflick and I were in the same class at Shaw Junior High in Philadelphia, and at Penn, we hung out in the same crowd. Even then, he was into stuff we didn’t understand.
Over the years — at Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, then Stanford, then the Universities of Texas and Florida, now UCSF — he has come up with major discoveries in microbiology, particularly in cell research and in the field of aging. The “Hayflick Limit,” his discovery that human cells divide for a finite number of times (rather than forever, as had been believed) has revolutionized gerontology.
In fact, he’s a past president of The Gerontological Society of America and a founder of the Council of the National Institute on Aging. One of his several books, How and Why We Age, has sold more than 50,000 copies and has been translated into nine languages.
This guy is big-time, but just about nobody has ever heard of him. I can understand that — how would you do a movie about a scientist coming up with a theory about human cell division?
Besides, Spencer Tracy isn’t around any more, and Mickey Rooney is even older than we are.
Heartfelt gratitude
To those, over the years, who have questioned whether I have a heart, the answer is yes — and I can prove it.
Just ask the professionals at Lankenau Hospital’s cardiac unit, where I spent two scary days recently before being discharged intact, except for some stents to clear up blockages to the heart that I do indeed have.
Two days after being sprung, I was able to resume pretty much the routine I had been following — a tribute to the surgeons’ skill; the tender loving care of the nurses, technicians and others who had to put up with me; and the anonymous scientists who developed the techniques that saved my life...
Whoever they were.
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