Looking for "Ice Milk" in Grand Union
Grand Union Supermarket, 1952, Courtesy of the Library of Congress
All this hot weather makes me think about ice cream. My Grandmother Lucy Opie migrated from Cloverdale, Virginia to Sleepy Hollow, New York in the late 1920s. One time she sent me to the Grand Union grocery store to buy “ice milk.” I was in middle school at the time and as a northerner, I had no clue what she meant by ice milk and felt too embarrassed to ask. I soon found that the northerners who worked in Grand Union knew no more what ice milk was than I did. I had the employees going around asking other employees what ice milk meant,. In reflection, this might have made a good skit on in Living Color. We finally found an older southern migrant in the store who could interpret Grandma's request: she wanted vanilla ice cream.
