At Northwestern University, the history department was quite good and there were several professors who had famous lectures. Wiebe -- did I really summon that name from my memory banks? -- performed a 19th century melodrama that was intended to showcase, um, I'm no longer sure. Family relations?

Henry Binford did ice cream. Evanston, after all, was home of the ice cream sundae, a WCTU (Women's Christian Temperance Union) alternative to those sinful, fizzy sodas. And IIRC (the Memory Project's official acronym), Cuba or Russia or some other Communist country once announced with great fanfare that it had developed 32 flavors. At which point, Baskin Robbins had to point out that it had more than 31; hadn't the Communists noticed that some flavors (Oregon Blackberry, for example) rotated?

I love Baskin Robbins and it has all but disappeared from the Baltimore landscape, although it can be found in those strangely synergistic roadside venues, the ones that combine gas and Dunkin Donuts and Taco Bell and Baskin Robbins into one all-purpose stop. But I want the skinny little shop on Route 40 where I always got the same thing. (No surprise to anyone who knows me.) Then again, my perpetual order was chocolate chip and orange sherbet, which strikes me as somewhat adventurous.

I don't get modern ice cream. Too hip (Ben & Jerry's), too self-consciously gourmet. I yearn for Nutty Buddies and those Good Humor Almond Toffee things, but only if you can buy them from a white truck driven by a man named Johnny.

So, what's your favorite flavor? Brand? Place?