The Rocky Road to Renewing Nostalgia

I’m an ice cream guy from way back.

Though I now associate it with hardening arteries, as a boy in Omaha it held a place of honor in our perennially cash-challenged household. On special nights (probably on payday), Dad would ask, “Does anybody feel like a banana boat?”

That would set off howls of glee, because it meant somebody would go with Dad to the nearby Goodrich Ice Cream store and come back with a load of banana splits. At $1.65 a boat, it was a luxury our family of five could seldom afford. But it was a reliable treat: Goodrich never skimped on the ice cream or the toppings, usually slopping the latter over the sides of the corrugated aluminum troughs they served them in.

Those mid-1960s days are long gone, which is probably why I brightened when reading that Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlours (notice the old-time spelling) are making a comeback in Orange County.

They were a longtime local fixture before I moved here, but I remember them from vacation visits in the 1970s. By the late 1980s, most had vanished -- just like a lot of things you enjoy in life and never fully appreciate till they’re gone.

In a major reversal of the way things usually go, however, some local businessmen plan a midsummer opening of a new Farrell’s in the Block at Orange.

I’m not here to tout the company (I’ve become a Baskin-Robbins man over the years), but I’m always happy to celebrate the return of a good thing we thought we’d never see again.

Paul Kramer, part of the new Farrell’s ownership team in Laguna Niguel, knows the group is selling nostalgia as well as pineapple and caramel toppings.

“People have very fond memories of Farrell’s,” he says. “When the demise happened, it happened very quickly, and people only remember the good times. They remember the times when they were younger and they’d walk into the restaurant, and they want to reexperience that.”

Nostalgia can trump other forces, so I’m not afraid to say that what I now associate with Farrell’s was the seemingly incessant racket. I’m sure it wasn’t as noisy as I recall it, and Kramer recoils at the reminder, but let’s just say there was an air of perpetual gaiety about the parlours.

Some of that will return, Kramer says, but blowing the roof off the joint isn’t part of the business plan. “What we’ve found [in marketing surveys] is that people would go into Farrell’s and expect high energy and noise level. If you’re in your 60s, maybe that’s not what you’re looking for.”

That seems to create a conundrum. How can people in their 60s, who also might have some sentimental feelings about the old Farrell’s, get their fair share of nostalgia if the noise will drive them nuts?

I’m afraid the answer is that the new Farrell’s, especially because it’ll be located in a hip hangout, will create nostalgia for a new generation of ice-cream lovers. No, you’re not banned from entering the Block at Orange if you’re over 50, but you might feel like an encyclopedia salesman at a Sega trade show.

In their research into what made Farrell’s go, Kramer says he and his partners talked with former customers and reviewed archives of the chain’s heyday.

He expects that a new generation of teens and young adults -- as their elders did -- will embrace the 32-scoop Zoo treat that must be carried on the shoulders of employees, or the siren that announces that patrons are about to tackle a banana split served in a pig trough.

Let us celebrate the return of yesteryear. Ragtime music on the piano and hot fudge sundaes are enough to brighten anyone’s outlook -- even a codger’s. But for those who like their nostalgia a little quieter: can you order a banana split with earplugs?

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at dana.parsons@latimes.com or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.