When I left the U.S. to go to India as a Peace Corps Volunteer, ice cream came in three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry.

When I returned home, 2 1/2 years later, many things had changed. Communal living. Flamboyant, achingly bright colors were popular, skirts were shorter (way up to here, with hot pants underneath), the Summer of Love had redefined relationships, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated, race riots in Detroit and elsewhere.

My friends were eager to re-introduce me to American culture and counterculture. The first counter we stopped at was Baskin Robbins ice cream, where they bought me a Jamocha Almond Fudge cone. From curry and rice to Fudge Ice Cream in a matter of hours.

They introduced me to other aspects of the counter-culture, too. The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band), The Who, protests against the war in Vietnam, drugs, sex and rock 'n roll. They themselves were very straight (devout Roman Catholics, married with children) and they got a perverse older brother-and-sister delight in shocking me with the changes that had happened in just a few years.

I still have a preference for Jamocha Almond Fudge, partly for its ability to recall those memories and partly because it is yummy.