Dutcher

If you travel through Guilderland, NY on Western Avenue, also known as route 20, or the Great Western Turnpike you pass a cemetery called Prospect Hill.  The headstones date back as far as the mid 1800's.  There are graves of  War Hero's, local Guilderland founding fathers, past politicians, as well as hundreds of others.   One grave which probably receives little to no attention is that of Clifford Dutcher.  Cliff was the prior owner, operator and entrepreneur of Dutchers Ice Cream located on route 158 between Route 20 and Route 146 going into Altamont. 

I grew up across the street from Dutchers in a small neighborhood of six to seven houses.  Amidst these houses sat a modest brick building which operated as an ice cream parlor for most of my early years.  Cliff was a friend, employer and I would say an all around good guy. I could walk into the store in any season and there he would be, stooped over the ice cream cooler with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.  "You want an ice cream" he would ask?  I am sure you could figure out my response?  He then would tell me to make whatever I wanted.  It is what gave me my love for ice cream till this day I am sure.

Cliff also gave me my first job.  The floor in the ice cream parlor was made of terrazzo I believe.  I spent what seemed like an eternity with a putty knife scraping the gum that had been deposited there, and then flattened and ground in by the hundreds of customers who went through on any given summer week.

 Dutchers was known for homemade ice cream and lots of it.  Many a child would be disappointed when they took there first lick of a cone and it rolled off and fell to the ground.  I always got a bowl.  As for homemade, well during the early years it was, but I remember the broken ice cream machine being in the back of the store and the Dairylea man making delivery's a couple of times a week.   Some of us were aware that it was not homemade but the myth lived on for many.

There will be more to come on Dutchers and the other neighbors of that route 158 neighborhood.  I have an abundance of pictures and stories to tell.  Just for the record after some digging by my brother Stephen and sister Charlene I found Cliff passed away on April 29th, a Tuesday in 1969.