NOT EVERYONE LOVES CARL'S, BELIEVE IT OR NOT

IT'S BLASPHEMOUS IN THIS TOWN TO CRITICIZE THE ICE CREAM SHOP. NeverthELESS, I ASK, "IS IT REALLY THAT GREAT?"

By Christopher Markham

When I started as a freshman at the University of Mary Washington in 2013, I was immediately bombarded with the questions: “Have you gone to Carl’s yet?” or “What do you think of Carl’s” or “Do you want to go to Carl’s later?” I’d never heard of Carl’s. I soon found out it was an ice cream stand. Because of all the hype, during my first week I joined a group of students from my dorm to line up outside the Princess Anne Street establishment. The line stretched to almost 50 people long, and it took about 10 minutes to get to the front.

There were just three options – vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. I chose a small vanilla cone, since it was my first time, and I wanted a fair, accurate representation of the ice cream. The service was so efficient, they were practically handing me my change while they handed me my cone. I watched all my new friends eating their ice cream joyfully. As I tried my first lick, I was surprised. I guess I shouldn’t have been; it tasted like, well, ice cream. It was pretty good ice cream, to be certain, but it definitely wasn’t the best I’d ever had. Still, I joined the line again with my friends in line for another cone. Secretly, I wondered what else I could have spent my $1.84 on.

Since then, my experiences with Carl’s have all been the same: high expectations with average results. So I started to wonder: How can an ice cream parlor from the 1940s that has garnered numerous prestigious accolades be so average? I’m not picky. I’m no professional food critic. I’m just saying that I have tasted many a culinary treat that did blow me away; the ice cream just wasn’t one of them. For example, there’s the chocolate milk from the Old Towne Butcher downtown. Perhaps Carl’s should take a page out of their book.

The small parlor with 1940s style machinery is a large draw to a lot of Fredericksburg natives. It is almost a right-of-passage to be considered a local to go to Carl’s and take in the experience. But the question here that a lot of people refuse to ask or acknowledge is this: does Carl’s deserve all of its glory? Sometimes, you have to ask the tough questions, and for Fredericksburg natives, the questions do not get much tougher or controversial than this one.

* * *

THE FABULOUS, WILD HISTORY OF CARL’S

Maybe it’s the tradition. The business started in 1947. Carl Sponseller had bounced around in a family ice cream truck in Pennsylvania to small stands in the D.C. area until the purchase of a piece of land that was formerly a gas station/restaurant. Everything about the place oozes retro. Its architecture has also played a role in its historic significance. The ice cream stand was constructed by Ashton Skinner in the Art Moderne style, diner-like with clean lines and a large pop-art inspired sign, in 1953. Sponseller designed the iconic neon sign on the roof that serves as a “north star” of Fredericksburg natives.

Located at 2200 Princess Anne Street, Carl’s claims its historic significance a locale built around the automobile, which became widely used in the first half of the century. That’s why it’s located on a major roadway.  Commuters traveling on U.S. Route 1 would routinely detour off of their route and take a pit stop at the ice cream shop. Princess Anne Street was, and continues to be, a major entranceway into downtown Fredericksburg.

Sponseller’s niece, Ramona Settle, is at the helm of the empire today, but runs the business much like her uncle did. From the 1940 Electro Freeze machines that produce their famous treat. The employees wear the same hats and aprons as they did in the 40s. Of course, the garments are not manufactured anymore so a local seamstress has to make them, according to a recent Washington Post article.

The ice cream stand was put on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, with a plaque on the side of the building designating the distinction. It has gained national recognition as one of the best frozen custard servers in America, despite only offering three different flavors of ice cream. On the parlor itself is even a plaque declaring Carl’s a historic landmark.

Carl's signature neon sign lights up, as does its "open" sign, despite the ominous storm clouds overtaking Fredericksburg. Photo by: Seventh flute/Wikipedia

* * *

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ICE CREAM

Since my first trip to Carl’s, I’ve wondered what’s made it the stand-out ice cream shop in Fredericksburg. Wally’s, for example, in the midst of the downtown Fredericksburg business district, has a menu nearly 30 times larger than Carl’s, with flavors like mint chocolate chip, cookie batter and salted caramel. Depending on what you get, their ice cream is on par with Carl’s.

So I started thinking about what makes an ice cream place legendary in a community. Perhaps it’s the seasonal anticipation. Since its opening, Carl’s has operated under the same seasonal calendar. The original owner would close shop on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and not reopen until the Friday of Presidents Day weekend in honor of hunting season. This seasonal close is still in effect today, and probably plays a part in the anticipation of the ice cream. Other ice cream places are open year round, leaving little to no anticipation when going. However, with Carl’s closed for a few months out of the year, their return draws excitement and enthusiasm from the community. People go in to get their fill before they close and are in line as soon as they reopen. I have seen dedicated fans eating their ice cream while wrapped up in a winter coat.

Maybe it’s because Fredericksburg, in comparison to the large cities such as Richmond and Washington, D.C. where many of its residents work, doesn’t have a major culinary landmark. Both of those cities of plenty of fine dining options and cult neighborhood food joints. Fredericksburg, on the other hand, has a bit less to offer. The answer to that is Carl’s. No other city in Virginia has a Carl’s. It’s become an issue of territorial pride, and we use Carl’s as our crown to show off. But I started to wonder whether we’ve embraced Carl’s so much that we have convinced ourselves we can say “Yeah, you may have a concert hall, but do you have Carl’s?”

Or maybe it’s the fast service. Despite consistently having lines that exceed 100 people, their efficiency makes the wait a measly 15 minutes.

* * *

AWARD-WINNING

Or maybe it’s the awards Carl’s has received. Recently, Carl’s was named as the best ice cream place in the state of Virginia by Business Insider. Additionally, it was on americasbestonline.net’s top 10 “Best Ice Cream” list, which included all of the U.S.A. PBS Food named Carl’s among its “Best Ice Cream Shops in America” in 2013. I tried to reach out the reviewers and was unsuccessful.

But real people also vote Carl’s the best. According to TripAdvisor, as voted by 334 normal, everyday people, Carl’s is ranked No. 2 out of 385 places to eat in Fredericksburg. 203 of those people listed the establishment as “excellent,” 70 as “very good,” 38 as “average,” 18 as “poor” and five as “terrible.” Maybe when we hear that it’s an award-winning establishment, we’re naturally more biased to thinking it’s better.

In the world of psychology, the idea of classical conditional fits into the Carl’s phenomena. According to UMW psychology professor Miriam Liss, people’s experience with Carl’s from their childhood factor into their experiences today. “People associate good taste and good memories with Carl’s. Maybe they went there in their childhood and it was a warm and bonding time with parents,” Liss said. “Now when they see the Carl’s sign they feel a warm feeling and they want to go back.”

Another theory that Liss provided me with was the idea of conformity, similar to my first experience with Carl’s. “People see long lines and that makes people see Carl’s as socially desirable,” Liss said. This idea plays directly into how I feel about Carl’s and how I view others’ experiences with the stand. College in general holds a great deal of conformity, beginning during freshman year. Carl’s is the prime example of college kids or Fredericksburg community members conforming to the majority, traditional opinion. Anybody with a different opinion is shunned or considered “crazy.”

* * *

A VISIT TO THE DARK UNDERBELLY OF CARL’S DETRACTORS

Still, many Carl’s visitors, like me, believe the hype is misplaced. Amongst the rankings on TripAdvisor are comments by people reassuring me that I wasn’t alone. One commenter listed the ice cream as “Just so-so” and complained about the lack of seating and tight parking, both points which are hard to argue. Others do much of the same, calling it “just ice cream” or “average” or “nothing special.”

When I talked to people in person, I got just as much of a mixed response, some in favor of Carl’s, others passionately against.=

“I genuinely find Carl’s ice cream to be the best I’ve ever had,” said UMW student Alex Stoneburner. “I don’t get people who don’t like it. I try not to associate myself with those people. Going to Carl’s is part of what living in Fredericksburg is all about. If you don’t like Carl’s, you aren’t a true Fredneck.”

Others are less supportive. “Wally’s is here *puts hand up high* and Carl’s is here *puts hand to floor,” indicated fellow UMW student Aimee Silverman. “Wally’s is in a better location, has a better menu, and just straight up tastes better. I don’t get what the big deal is about Carl’s.”

Perhaps this is why Carl’s has remained at the top for so long. People refuse to ask the question because they are afraid of the answer. When I asked people about their opinion of Carl’s, I either got the “are you crazy? Just move out of Fredericksburg if you don’t love Carl’s” answer,” which was the majority, or I got the occasional “I agree, it’s nothing special.” But this getting shot down at the point of questioning is what keep the “Carl’s haters” in the shadows, having their voices forced to be silenced.

* * *

ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS

As I stood around at Carl’s, I watched as people lined up on a sticky summer day or a brisk fall evening, I noticed how it helped Fredericksburg to have a central meeting place like Carl’s, a hub for hot days. Every town needs its crown to hoist on its head and show off to the public. Maybe it didn’t matter that Carl’s didn’t have the best ice cream. Maybe the legend was more important.

Back in my hometown of Fluvanna County, Virginia, a similar ice cream war is being waged. Papa Jim’s is an outdoor ice cream parlor with a relatively small menu which sits just off of a highway. In contrast, Frost Bites sits in the more developed part of town and offers a fancier, more diverse menu. The demographic within my small, rural county is obviously much different from that of Fredericksburg, but the sentiment remains. I have begun seeing people take allegiances to one parlor or the other. Papa Jim’s the older of the two, is the Carl’s equivalent, attracting the more “traditional” folk and Frost Bites serving as the Wally’s equivalent. As the years go on, it will be interesting to see how the rivalry plays out. 

FINDING MY VOICE

ONE SERVER ASKS: "AS A FEMALE WORKER, IS IT MORE IMPORTANT TO BE LIKED OR TO BE HEARD?"

By Della Hethcox

It was a rampageous Friday evening full of late reservations and a multitude of walk-ins. Diners were ordering time-sensitive dishes, and it was a challenge delivering the food to their tables on schedule. I was stressed out and so was the rest of the staff at the Asian fusion restaurant in downtown Fredericksburg, where I am a part-time weekend hostess. Tempers erupted over slight misunderstandings. The servers were bickering.

During a typical five-hour shift, I usually felt shut down a number of times by male servers. There were times I told a coworker that a table he was covering needed more water. Or perhaps another had a VIP guest who was waiting for his food. Typically, my male colleagues stared at me blankly and brushed off my suggestions. On this particular night, I had run out of tables for hungry, impatient patrons. I asked one of the servers whose workload seemed slightly lighter to take care of a table on the patio, outside of his assigned zone in an upstairs room. Even though I knew it wasn’t the best solution, I felt it was my only option.

A few minutes later my boss found me and began what I fondly call a “mansplanation.” He told me that I shouldn’t place that server outside of his section. Of course, it wasn’t something that I would normally do, but I had my reasons. When I started to explain them, my boss said “you had better take it down a notch. It sounds like you’re challenging me.”

“No,” I said, “I’m trying to explain.”

“You don’t get to explain, you only get to say ‘okay,’” he said. As a young woman who works as a hostess (one of the lesser roles in a “fine dining” restaurant), I quickly learned that the male servers and my male boss expected me to never question them, or in this case, to even explain myself. Being refused the right to share my voice was infuriating. I was fuming for hours afterward.

In a linguistics class at the University of Mary Washington in 2013, I’d learned about what Robin Tolmach Lakoff, an American linguist, called “linguistic sexism.” I realized I was experiencing it. “[Women’s language] submerges a woman’s personal identity, by denying her the means of expressing herself strongly, on the one hand, and encouraging expressions that suggest triviality in subject matter and uncertainty about it,” Lakoff wrote in a 1975 research paper. So I set out to discover how my voice was being silenced at work and how I could use linguistic choices to make sure I was heard in the future.

* * *

I’ve held several jobs in retail, a largely female-run industry. By working at a restaurant, I had entered a boys’ club. Swedish researchers at Öbrebo University came out with a 2005 study describing how male owners try to employ “nice, gentle, respectful young women” as service employees. So male owners might not expect a female employee to disrupt that image of femininity.

In her research, Lakoff describes a “politics of nice.” Essentially, women talk different from men. According to Lakoff’s essay “Language and Woman’s Place,” that’s how we’re taught it should be from a young age, since “Women are the preservers of morality and civility; and we speak around women in an especially polite way in return, eschewing the coarseness of men’s language: no slang, no swear words…”

I thought about how conversations with my boss were often structured, usually with him sitting down or leaning over me. The male servers, cooks and my boss use imperatives almost exclusively, whereas my female compatriots will tack on a “please” or “thank-you.” When talking to my male boss, rarely am I able to complete a thought or sentence before he interrupts me. However, if I did the same, the results would be vastly different. This double standard exists not only in conversations between equals, but even more so in a boss-to-employee relationship. I realized that if I’d used more polite and ladylike language, his response would have been very different. If I’d used verbal hedging (such as “I believe” or “I think”) or so-called tag questions that imply I was asking for his approval (“Don’t you agree?”), he may not have felt like I was attacking or threatening him.

Since the 1990s, the language standard between men and women has shifted, Lakoff wrote in a 2005 study. Luckily, no longer are women and men using completely separate types of the same language. Instead, they are heading toward a more unisex language. Lakoff concludes that the state of language for women is in flux. However, she adds, in order for women to advance professionally, they still have to appear “nice,” and that means abiding by the old-fashioned linguistic standards. Having read Lokoff’s research, I came to understand that these days, we do have the power to use any type of language we choose. But among my older coworkers who hadn’t yet caught up to the times, was it worth it for me to speak up?

* * *

Lakoff contrasts the linguistic examples of Martha Stewart and Nancy Pelosi. Stewart’s highly publicized trials hinged on her non-niceness, such as her brusque personality, in her personal life as well as her career. For Lakoff, Stewart’s court trials were based on the fact that she was a woman who had disrupted the traditional idea of linguistic femininity and was consequently “not nice.” However, Pelosi was frequently described in terms of her niceness, such as how much time she spent with her grandkids and her love for chocolate.

Lakoff writes “For women, the move to non-niceness is always risky and often fatal. Women in power often experience jokes about their place in the world. For example, they might hear taunts about whom in their family has the balls. Their husbands might be known, for example, as “Mr. Margaret Thatcher,” a demeaning phrase. “This discrepancy makes it very difficult for women to rise to the top, and stay there, whether in politics or business, or even in academia,” she writes.

I decided to speak with women who grew up in a generation that expected women to hold up feminine ideals of language, women who were contemporaries of Stewart and Pelosi to see if it was true. I told my mother about my altercation with my boss. While my mother supports my efforts to stand up for myself, she cannot help but remind me that I would “catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” I maintained to her that I should not be expected to use different language from men. 

As Lakoff’s research shows, my mom holds the view that men and women are different, and that women should try to be the ones to preserve civility and morality. Funnily enough, she picked up Lakoff’s research while in my room and remarked that she would be interested in reading about women’s language, since she has noticed a distinct difference in the language that her five daughters use, versus the language that she and her sisters use. She explained that her generation didn’t use words, like “crap,” which I use rather bluntly. Clearly, I’ve grown up in a different environment than my mom. My mother, I had to remember, hasn’t worked outside the home in over 30 years, so she hasn’t dealt with frustrations like the ones I had at work.

So, I decided to speak to another woman at work, my female boss. She lamented the fact that the restaurant was a boy’s club. But she also said there was nothing she could do to change that fact, at least until our male boss leaves his current position. My female boss has also struggled with linguistic sexism. She described many of the same things I have noticed or experienced during my shifts. “I am spoken to differently than my male counterpart, even if we're saying the exact same sentence,” she said. “I am seen as emotional, but loyal and caring, and he is seen as direct, precise, efficient. I have been tirelessly berated to change my wording, my delivery, my tone, to be more like my counterpart.”

But those changes haven’t come, perhaps because she still answers to our male boss and also struggles to be taken seriously in this boy’s club. And maybe they’re asking from her something they don’t truly want. Though she explained to me that she would help out if a server was ever rude to me, I’ve been reluctant to ask for her help. I’ve seen other coworkers who have, and the male employees’ good behavior doesn’t last that long. Besides, there’s also the overarching message: This is a boys’ club, and we have to learn to work within that environment.

* * *

What intrigued me even more after this altercation was how people responded to my use of language, not the fact that my male boss had told me I wasn’t allowed to explain myself and that my only role was to say “yes.” Even more surprising were the reactions from the women in my life. For me, the issue of not using those linguistic elements and not being “nice” while conversing with men gives my voice value. Employing verbal hedging or other feminine linguistic devices cheapens what I’m trying to say. If I’m stating a fact, why should I try to soften it or bury it under and “I think” or “Well, I believe…”

My self worth and the privilege of expressing myself is something I value infinitely more than a weekend job as a hostess. So, I’ve decided that I’m going to forget about what’s proper and fight linguistic sexism. My voice is worth more than $7.50 an hour.