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A query from John Hammell Jr., asking where the Currie ice cream shop was located, brought a flood of replies from longtime residents who remembered the “mile-high ice cream.” Hammell said it had a huge ice cream cone on its roof and that it was a landmark in town.

“It was somewhere near Zinke’s Shoe Repair in the 1950s,” he recalled.

Marilyn Chrisman said it was on the north side of Broadway, near the post office.

“As I remember, the sign was a strawberry flavor,” she said. “We attended the First Methodist Church, and if Doug, my brother, and I were lucky, we would make a stop there before we went home. I’m quite sure that it was there even in the 1930s. Their scoops of ice cream came one to a cone and were in the shape of a tall cone themselves, hence the mile-high slogan.”

John Gregg, a 73-year Glendale resident, said it was on the northeast corner of Central and California avenues, near Sears.

“And yes, it was a huge ice cream cone,” he said. “They called it the mile-high cone.”

Well, these were very specific locations, but, clearly, readers were remembering two different places. George Ellison of Special Collections found a listing for Currie’s Ice Cream Co., in the library’s old city directories.

“It first appears in the 1937 directory at 227 E. Broadway, the northwest corner of Broadway and Louise,” he said.

Adding to the confusion was another ice cream store, Coast. Joanne Sargeant wrote that she didn’t remember a Currie’s, but she did remember a Coast Ice Cream parlor, just below Broadway on the west side of Central.

“My grandmother and I would take the streetcar from Graynold Avenue and Glenoaks Boulevard to Los Angeles on a Saturday, have lunch at either Boos Brothers or Clifton’s, go to the Orpheum Theatre for a matinee, then head back home again,” she said.

“We would get off at Broadway and Brand Boulevard, go to Awful Fresh MacFarlane’s Candy Store for a bag of Rocky Road candy for my mother, then walk over to Central to Coast, where we sat on a big bench at the counter and ordered a lemon malt (for Grandma) and a cherry malt (for me!),” she said.

“The benches were wide enough for both of us to sit on the same one, but were tall, like a stool,” she said.

Another trip to Special Collections to leaf through the directories yielded information on Coast Ice Cream Co. It first appeared in 1930 at 131 S. Central Ave., several years before Currie’s opened on Broadway.

The 1943 directory includes both shops, Coast on Central and Currie’s on Broadway. By 1947, the two had combined, with Coast-Currie outlets on both Broadway and Central, thus solving the mystery of the dueling Currie’s.

The 1951 directory listed both locations, but just as Curries, with no apostrophe. Two years later, there was just one Curries, at 300 North Central. It remained at that location until 1963.

Hammell put the finishing touch on the topic a couple of weeks ago by letting me know that he recently came across a photo of a Currie’s in a book, “California Crazy and Beyond,” by Jim Heiman, published in 2001.

 KATHERINE YAMADA can be contacted by leaving a message with features editor Joyce Rudolph at (818) 637-3241. For more information on Glendale’s history, visit the Glendale Historical Society’s web page at www.glendalehistorical.org; call the reference desk at the Central Library at (818) 548-2027; or call (818) 548-2037 for an appointment to visit the Special Collections Room at Central from 10 a.m. to noon and 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays.

READERS WRITE

Currie’s ice cream was very popular, and there were several outlets. Gloria Landrum and her family went to one on Hyperion Avenue.

“We’d go on a Sunday for a family outing.”

Doris Miner visited one at the corner of Fletcher and Riverside drives. She described the scoop as a type of hand shovel, no more than 1 1/2 to 2 inches wide and probably 3 to 4 inches long.

“The ice cream wasn’t rounded, it was long,” she added. “Just down the street was Kiddyland, where they had rides for young children. My sister is five years younger, and we took her for the rides,” Miner said.

Louise Phelan recalled a Currie’s on Highland Avenue in Hollywood, across from Hollywood High, and another on 54th Street near Crenshaw Boulevard.

“The ice cream itself was cone-shaped, like a Christmas tree.”

Marilyn Chrisman said her family also patronized the Coast on Central and mentioned the nearby Richardson’s Chicken Pies.

“I loved this place because they made their pies in the front window, and it was a lot of fun for a kid to watch the proceedings. Although I think a lot of their business was takeout, there was a dining area as well and on the back wall was a sign that read “If You Don’t Like Chicken, Dinner’s Over!” By the way, the pies were delicious,” Chrisman added.

Joanne Sargeant also remembered Richardson’s, “the long-gone landmark on Central. I remember the gravy being very yellow. I later realized they probably used “egg shade” to color it. But oh boy, were they delicious,” Sargeant wrote.

 If you have questions, comments or memories to share, please write to Verdugo Views, c/o News-Press, 221 N. Brand Blvd., 2nd Floor, Glendale, CA 91203. Please include your name, address and phone number.