Every time I drive home to North Fairhaven, I pass a notable landmark: the Frates Dairy milk bottle. Located on Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford, this replica of a milk bottle is over 50 feet tall. Now, it is part of a pizza restaurant. But when I was a girl, it sold ice cream — and importantly, it had a role in a family ritual.
Basically, if I — and my younger sister, when she became school age — made the honor roll, the family went to Frates for an ice cream sundae. It was the reward, one that was shared, for doing so well in school. And, yes, I never failed to make the honor roll.
I remember being handed the tall paper cup containing scoops of ice cream, chocolate sauce, maybe nuts, whipped cream, and a cherry on top, which we ate with a long plastic spoon in the car. I ate every bit of it.
I don’t know what inspired this ritual. It certainly wasn’t a part of my parents’ childhood. Both had to drop out of school to work. So, they were happy their children had the educational opportunities they didn’t get.
As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, ice cream was a big deal for our family. We would get a cone after one of my father’s softball games. My Dad, a big ice cream aficionado, knew which places served the biggest ones. I am guessing my father didn’t get to eat much ice cream when he was a kid.
I read online that the Frates Dairy bottle in New Bedford was one of three built in the 1920s. The other two were in Boston and Raynham. The bottles, designed by Les Labrose, were constructed using a boat-building method that involved steamed boards. They looked like the bottles that milk was sold in then, painted so it appeared cream had separated from the milk below a red paper cap. See the vintage photo I found online, alas, with no credit for the photographer.
These kinds of bottles were familiar to us. When we were kids, we had milk delivered to our door by White’s Dairy in Acushnet. Glass bottles were dropped off in a metal box outside our kitchen door. The milkman would take the washed bottles we were returning. That went on for many years.
The Frates Dairy building in New Bedford is owned by G&S Pizza, which serves ice cream in the warmer months. I haven’t gone back inside although I stopped to take that photo above, which is a bit fuzzy because of the smoke from Canada. The original wording is no longer on the outside. The milk goes all the way to the cap.
Sometime during my childhood, the ice cream sundae ritual stopped. I don’t remember when or why, but I always smile when I drive pass that gigantic bottle, thinking about that sweet reward we got for good grades.