In the late afternoon, on any given Monday in July, the kids all know to gather here to celebrate their common love. Of America. And ice cream.
Eskimo King lives along Market Street in Swansea and still has that old-time mom-and-pop ice cream shop feel, handing out soft serve by the cone, cup, cookie, or chocolate-drizzled croissant.
They serve an eye-popping 350 flavors—everything you can imagine from caramel nut crunch to “shark bite” and everything in between—and have all the colors of the rainbow. But every Monday this month, their specialty will be red, white, and blue.
For kids celebrating America with them by stepping up to their open-air service windows under a flag-bedecked awning, they will hand out free ice cream to all who tilt their head up to one of those youthful, smiling cashiers and ask.
There’s only one catch.
Ms. Diemoz added that the girls at the till will help a child fumbling, with the word “indivisible” just on the tip of their tongue, or one who is otherwise stuck. One way or another, “everybody gets their ice cream,” she said.
The Massachusetts town is right beside Bristol, Rhode Island, and so, every Fourth of July, a parade held by their neighboring town ultimately brings visitors in for ice cream, draped from head to toe in red, white, and blue.
“Very patriotic, so it fits right in,” Ms. Diemoz said.
Eskimo King is only too happy to serve.
But July Fourth alone wasn’t satiating enough for Ms. Diemoz’s patriotic spirit. Her belief that “patriotism is a great thing” saw her celebration continue through till August. She said, “We live in a great country. We should support the country and be proud of it.”
Eskimo King has been a Swansea staple for decades, since as early as the 1970s when Ms. Diemoz was an employee there, before her family bought the business in 2000. When she began running Eskimo King 24 years ago, they had only 24 flavors.
“Through the years, we’ve just kept adding and creating,” she said. “Everybody that worked there has chipped in, coming up with different flavors. So that’s how we got to over 350.”
The girls helped make Eskimo King what it is today, she said, adding that “we have everything that you can think of; if you can think, if you can dream of a flavor, we can make it.”
Serving free ice cream to Pledge sayers was not a scheme borne of Ms. Diemoz’s designs; the idea was impressed on her 14 years ago. In 2010, she saw an ad in the National Dipper, a national magazine for ice cream retailers. Stratton Leopold, an ice cream shop owner in Savannah, Georgia, was the original, the one who placed the ad.
“He was challenging other ice cream places to do the same thing,” Ms. Diemoz said. “So we got on board, and we’ve been doing it ever since.”
From 4 o'clock until 7, the Eskimo King crew does their best to make a big deal of it. Free soft serve for sayers of the Pledge of Allegiance brings in new kids each week and plenty of repeat customers—and not just on Monday. It knits together the community with timeless moments of Americana on a sunny July afternoon, offering cool treats loved by all.
One nation under God, indivisible.
With Liberty and, well, ice cream for all.
“It’s fun. The kids love it. They’re proud of themselves. Parents are proud of them,” Ms. Diemoz said. “There’s lots of clapping and happiness, and we get quite a few children every Monday.”
