It started with a convertible full of custard
Every Sunday in the sixties, Gene Harlan drove his sky-blue ’63 Buick Skylark to the park with a hand-crank churn wedged in the back seat. He sold cones off the curb for a dime, kept the recipe on a card in the glovebox, and never once wrote down where he’d park next. People found him anyway. Good custard travels.
“If it doesn’t melt down your wrist a little, you’re not doing it right.” (Gene, most Sundays)
Small batch isn’t a slogan, it’s the whole building
Gene’s granddaughter Maggie found the recipe card in 2018, taped inside a cookbook, annotated in pencil: more yolks than feels right. She opened the stand the next summer with one churn, one window, and her brother Theo doing math on a napkin. The churn still runs hourly, the batches still fit in a bucket you could carry, and the vanilla is still Gene’s: more yolks than feels right.
- 1963Gene buys the Skylark on a Tuesday and a used churn on the Thursday. Kansas City Sundays improve immediately.
- 1971The dime cone becomes a quarter cone. Two customers write letters of protest; both are won back with sprinkles.
- 2018Maggie finds the recipe card and makes a test batch in her apartment. The smoke alarm is uninvolved; the neighbors are very involved.
- 2019The stand opens on Windmoor Ave with a coral awning and a board of eight flavors. Three sell out by 4 pm.
- todaySixteen flavors, one spinning sign, and a small line that moves fast. Gene, 87, inspects the vanilla monthly. It passes.