Custard's Last(ing) Stand

Kline's Dairy Bar Celebrates 60 Years of Tickling Tastebuds

Daily News-Record - May 29, 2003

Story By Rachel Bowman / Photos by Allen Litten

The pop-up rain shower on a recent evening seemed to make little difference as folks lined up in front of Kline's Dairy Bar.

As families with wriggling toddlers, youthful and elderly couples holding hands and giggling college students made their selections, each person seemed to ignore the rain soaking gently into their clothes and hair.

Little else in the past 60 years has dampened area residents' enthusiasm about Kline's custard-style ice cream.

From its original location on North Main Street to its current home on Wolfe Street, hungry people from all over the Shenandoah Valley and beyond have lined up each summer since 1943 seeking refreshment that seems to appear with magical rapidity from behind sliding glass windows.

"They've always had a crowd," laughed Naomi Shifflett, 78, of Harrisonburg, as she waited to order a waffle cone with chocolate ice cream.

Shifflett has been a Kline's fan since the shop first opened, first as a young wife and mother bringing her childern once or twice a week. Now, her visits are less frequent but she still enjoys an occasional cone or a banana split. "They have the best banana splits," she smiled.

The shop that serves Shifflett's favorites almost didn't end up in Harrisonburg, though.

John Kline of Chicago and his father, who ran a custard stand in Washington, D.C., wanted to open another stand, recalled Bess Kline, who owned the shop with her husband for nearly 40 years.

Bess, who will only say she's in her 70s, said the two "came through the area, and they went all the way to Beckley W.Va.)." The men preferred the friendly, small-town atmosphere of Harrisonburg, and in 1943 Kline opened the ice cream shop on North Main Street.

Bess worked at Shipplett Cleaners across the street, and, she said, Kline "used to bring me ice cream at work." The two soon married, and, through a move to Wolfe Street in 1964 until Kline's death in 1974, she and her husband "did everything." Kline mixed ice cream flavors, which included vanilla, chocolate and several basic fruit flavors, while she mostly waited on customers.

Even early on, Bess remembered, people lined up to buy ice cream. "We had lines and lines!" she exclaimed. The lines were worst on weekends, when the after-church crowd overwhelmed the small staff of servers. "I hated Sundays," she said, "because I could never get away from the window."

Bess' constant persence at the window made her recognizable to many area folks, who still recognize her from childhood visits.

One, Mike Arehart, 43, of Harrisonburg, said he "barely remembers" as a child waiting with his parents to buy ice cream after church. In 1979, Arehart continued the memory-making tradition when he assumed ownership of Kline's in 1979 at the age of 19. Bess stayed on until her retirement in 1994.

Although Arehart has owned an ice cream factory and has expanded on the list of specialty "flavors of the week", he prided himself on maintaining the consistency of service and flavor one's great-grandparents would have had in Kline's early history.

One way in which Arehart has preserved Kline's place in the hearts and tastebuds of Valley residents is by making ice cream the same way it has been done since 1943.

Kline's ice cream is made using the "continual freeze" method, Arehart explained. This method combines ice, 12 percent butterfat cream and flavor mix, slowly pushing out the final product, but does not whip the product to add air. The process is "labor-intensive, lower yield," he said, with one gallon of mix, ice, and cream yielding an "over-run" of only two-tenths of a gallon.

Producing the ice cream in restored 1960s-era machines, Arehart is able to churn out anywhere from 100 to 120 gallons of ice cream per day. In comparison, most stores use batch or soft-serve methods to produce ice cream, which whips more air into the finished product and can turn out five to six times the amount Kline's produces in a day.

With an intensive production method and a large customer base, Kline's has several long-established rules: The menu is limited to vanilla, chocolate and a flavor of the week; orders cannot be customized; and flavors cannot be mixed. While these rules may seem odd, Arehart said they are necessary to get customers through the line as quickly as possible.

"We're never going to be a variety store," Arehart said. "We just try to serve fresh ice cream to as many people as possible."

It's that fresh flavor most people remember from childhood, the cool, tasty and happy memories that make Kline's a must-visit destination, especially for those who no longer live in the area.

That's what brought Peggy Doty and her sister Janelle Seekford, on a recent evening. Doty, who grew up in Harrisonburg, lives in Connecticut and had not been back to Kline's in 35 years. "This is one of the places I wanted to go" before returning home, she said. "I've been from Florida to Connecticut, and there's nothing like this place."

Between giggles and licks of vanilla and cherry chocolate chip ice creams, Doty and Seekford, who lives in Woodstock, remembered coming here as children. "We used to come here every afternoon when our parents would come to town to shop - it was our reward," they explained.

Robin Nicolas of Harrisonburg remembered visiting Kline's with her parents, and she brings her daughters - Julie, 6, and Alexis, 4 - so they can enjoy the treat she enjoyed as a child. "They have good ice cream here," she said, as Julie and Alexis proclaimed chocolate their favorite flavor.

Arehart said he plans to keep churning out cold ice cream and happy memories for years to come. Eventually, he hopes to open another store, covering parts of Harrisonburg farther from the downtown area.

Bess Kline, meanwhile, reveled in the memories.

"I think it's wonderful [that] people think so much of Kline's," she said.