Oogie’s Ice Cream 20th Anniversary Celebration & Spread The Kindness Link Up On the Edge #810

On Saturday, I celebrated my 52nd birthday in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of Oogie’s Ice Cream, my sister’s vintage ice cream truck that was named after our father. If you click the link to her website, the cover photo shows little toddler Archie with my sister’s granddaughter. It’s one of our favorite photos of all time!

When we were kids, my father rented ice cream trucks for a few consecutive summers to make some extra cash. These were the summers when I was about 10-12 years old. My sister was old enough to drive so she was put in charge of one of the trucks and I rode along to help her scoop the ice cream. It was kind of a crazy gig but we sure did laugh a lot. Those ice cream truck summers created many hilarious memories. After just a few years, my father gave up on his ice cream dreams and found some other get-rich-not-so-quick scheme to supplement his working class income.

Although his ice cream dreams faded, those summers on the truck gave birth to my sister’s own popsicle dreams. She secretly saved her cash and purchased her vintage truck outright 20 years ago. Paying homage to the man who started the dream, she named her business after our father. His birth name was Ralph Frank Montoro III but everyone who knew him called him Oogie. Nobody really knows where the nickname came from but it suited him perfectly. As many people have told me since my father’s death in 1995, “That guy was a legend!” He was very much beloved by his community, his family, and his friends and my sister is making sure that his legacy lives on through ice cream.

The weekend delivered some beautiful weather for a celebration. However, the wind proved to be a bit of a challenge but we made it work. My sister spent months preparing for this event which was rewarded with a wonderful turnout of family, friends, and Oogie’s fans. A skilled caterer, my sister not only planned every detail of the event, she also made most of the food herself. And it was all amazing!

Here are a few photos from my weekend in Pennsylvania and the Oogie’s Ice Cream 20th Anniversary celebration. You can see more pictures on the Oogie’s Facebook page. That’s my nephew Alex on the grill. He is quite the character and we always have such great laughs together!

One of the swimmers I coached before we moved to New York stopped by to visit when she saw I was going to be there. It was so wonderful to see Meredith and meet her very lovely husband Shawn!

Archie and Jeff were twinning in their red Oogie’s Ice Cream tee shirts and khaki cargo shorts. Ralph had the red shirt but not the cargos.

It was so nice to catch up with family members that I haven’t seen in a really long time. For some, we last saw them 13 years ago before we moved away from the area. For others, it’s been nearly 30 years! The reconnection was really something special, for sure.

We didn’t think to take a big family photo until after my Aunt Bev and Uncle Tommy had left so I’m including a photo of them with cousin Ann Louise and her husband Rich.

I think it might be time for a proper family reunion soon. As many families experience, my father’s family has been fractured in so many places for literally all of my life. Due to these familial breakdowns and lack of communication, we were deprived of our cousin relationships for most of our childhoods. Now that we are all in midlife and no longer “the children” of the family, we have decided to leave all the nonsense from the past right there in the past where it belongs!

Cheers to living the dream, to repairing family relationships, to Oogie’s Ice Cream, and to the man Oogie himself.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Oogie’s Ice Cream!

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