Requiem for a Heavyweight

As I approach another birthday this coming Sunday, I'm unusually nostalgic this year. I'm not really old yet and this isn't one of those landmark birthdays ending on a "0" or "5." That said, this year a large chunk of my youth has has been sold on the real estate pages.

As one of several generations of kids who grew up in southwestern Queens, birthdays always meant one thing year after year: The Kitchen Sink at Jahn's Ice Cream Parlor.

You see, the Kitchen Sink was the largest serving of ice cream known to man (or at least to kid).... eighteen scoops of home-made ice cream topped with a flaming sugar cube and all kinds of syrups, whipped cream, and sprinkles. Nothing thirlled me more on my birthday than to see the waitstaff emerge from the kitchen, past the nickelodeon and march this mountain of ice cream to your table singing an often off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday to You."

But alas, that memory of childhood will always be but a memory for me and everyone else. Yes, the legendary Jahn's has closed its doors.

I found out second hand as I was planning a Christmas ice cream party for the Ascension youth group this week and my fears were realized by a story in the newspaper and a drive down Hillside Avenue.

Other landmarks have gon the way of Jahn's in the two-and-a-half years since I returned to my Queens roots after three years in Mississippi, but this one stings a little more.

Sold along with Jahn's (which everyone always Americanized as "Jan's") were nearly a century's worth of sweetheart carvings all along the wall moldings, a fully functional, authentic nickelodeon (It actually cost a Quarter the last time I was there), the Kitchen Sink, and one more place where you could get an authentic New York egg cream.

I guess the moral of the story is the story of Queens itself. As settled as some things seem here, there's never any telling when they'll go away. If something as established here as Jahn's can go, anything (or anyone for that matter) can too.