SUPPOSE THEY GAVE A WAR AND NO ONE CARED?

The following story appeared in NEWSDAY recently.? It must have been a really slow news day!

It seems that two different cities each claim to be the birthplace of the ice cream sundae.? Yawn.? Um, like anyone cares?

Well, apparently some people really do care.

Taking back sundaes

Sylvia Carter
Special to Newsday
Jul. 8, 2006 12:00 AM

Ithaca, N.Y., might just be worth a trip this summer. I’d go on a Sunday.

All this month, on Sundays, Ithaca restaurants will offer free ice-cream sundaes made with Purity Ice Cream, the area’s signature brand, to celebrate the town’s claim to being the birthplace of the sundae. (Naturally, there’s a catch: You have to buy an entree to get your free sundae. Still and all, I never turn down free ice cream.)

Surprisingly, the free sundaes have not been greeted with joy everywhere.

The seemingly innocent offer has embroiled Ithaca in a sundae war with the town of Two Rivers, Wis., which has a State Historic Marker proclaiming it “Birthplace of the Ice Cream Sundae.” On the Web site www.tworiverseconomicdevelopment.org, the city’s supporters write pointedly, “Welcome to all our visitors from Ithaca, N.Y., who are here to learn the truth.”

There is even a “Sundae Fight Song” on the Web site. Among the words: “Try to claim our sundae and we’ll kick your butts!” The Ithaca Journal and the Herald Times Reporter in Manitowoc, Wis. (Manitowoc is yet another town sometimes credited with inventing the sundae), have published stories and entered the fray.

Last month, having researched other towns’ claims to the sundae, Bruce Stoff, marketing communications manager for Ithaca, informed Two Rivers officials of Ithaca’s intent to give away sundaes, celebrating the upstate community’s heritage as the place where the confection was born. On June 19, Two Rivers fired back a resolution, also available on the site, that insisted Ithaca relinquish its claim and “cease and desist” from its promotional activities surrounding the invention of the sundae. Last week, Ithaca Mayor Carolyn K. Peterson signed a proclamation in her town’s defense.

“If they mean to have a sundae war, then let it start here,” Stoff said menacingly when I got him on the phone.

The Two Rivers boosters stated in their resolution that the planned sundae promotion is nothing but a plot by “operatives within the Ithaca/Tompkins County Visitor and Convention Bureau.”

The Ithaca proclamation, too, departed from the usual language of officialdom, stating that the tangible evidence produced by Two Rivers and other sundae competitors (the aformentioned Manitowoc, Buffalo, Baltimore and Evanston, Ill.) “amounts to bupkus,” and “without proof they ain’t got a leg to stand on,” and “truth demands proof and without it you got nothin’, baby.”

Take that, Two Rivers.

No wonder the sundae wars are escalating.

The gist of Ithaca’s claim is that advertisements in the Ithaca Daily Journal, starting May 28, 1892, promoted “a new 10 cent Ice Cream Specialty” called the “Sunday,” available at Platt & Colt Pharmacy. Subsequent articles document how Chester Platt and the Rev. John M. Scott, a Unitarian pastor, created, named and ate the first “Sunday,” named for the day they invented it, according to the Ithaca contingent.

The Two Rivers resolution contended that the Ithaca date of 1892 was “a full eleven years after Ed Berner’s sundaes began broadening children’s smiles and adults’ waistlines in our community on the shore of Lake Michigan.”

The only trouble is that Michael Turback, who wrote “A Month of Sundaes: Ithaca’s Gift to the World” and the new “More Than a Month of Sundaes” ($12.95), both published by Red Rock Press, says the Two Rivers story — as well as one about Manitowoc — were bandied about by the late journalist H.L. Mencken, who reported on the matter in the first volume of “The American Language,” published in 1919, but later admitted it was a hoax.

The Two Rivers tale (this is a story, mind you, I offer no proof) goes that George Hallauer came by Edward Berner’s soda fountain in Two Rivers and asked for chocolate sauce, then used only for ice-cream sodas, on the ice cream he had in a dish. Berner recounted this to the Two Rivers Reporter in a 1929 interview. (Had he read Mencken?)

Two Rivers held its 26th annual “Sundae Thursday” last month. (Coldstone Creamery ice cream plus one topping was sold for a quarter a serving.)

In Ithaca, Mark Campagnolo, owner of the Boatyard Grill, remembers his first sundae, made with “Purity, the Pride of the Finger Lakes” at Leo Guentert’s Purity fountain on First Street. It cost 25 cents. “I watched Leo, the original owner, scoop that thing up,” recalled Campagnolo, 50. “Anybody who was anybody went to Purity for ice cream.” The fountain has recently been shined up to a vintage glow by Heather and Bruce Lane, Purity’s owners. He proposed to her, on his knees, one busy night at Purity; later, they bought the place.

Campagnolo’s restaurant, just up the street from Purity, also will be serving free sundaes. He eats a sundae at least once a week — to make up for the trauma of not having had one until the belated age of 8, he said. “Who ultimately wins this thing is going to be very interesting,” Campagnolo said. And how will “winning” be determined? Nobody seems to know; impartial observers are in short supply.

Does it matter? “At the end of the day, we’re talking about an ice-cream sundae; we’re not talking about the cure for cancer,” said Bruce Lane. “We’re talking about something that makes people happy.” He has offered to truck Purity ice cream to Two Rivers for next year’s fete “to show them what real ice cream tastes like,” but has not yet heard back.

Personally, I’m taking sides. I am on the side of anybody who dishes me out a free sundae