Gordonsville ice cream screams soon to go unheard
By BRYAN MCKENZIE bmckenzie@dailyprogress.com (434) 978-7271 Oct 25, 2019 Updated Oct 25, 2019

GORDONSVILLE – J.R. Shifflett stands in the Tastee-Freez parking lot, a small vanilla-chocolate twist cone in his hand, and thinks back over his 58 years in this neck of the woods.

“I was born and raised in Culpeper and they had a Tastee-Freez up there that I went to a lot when I was a kid and I stopped right here a lot with my parents as a kid, so I’ve been coming here for about 40 or 50 years,” he says.

A brown crew cab pickup pulls past the drive-in window of the ice cream and fast food joint, momentarily blocking his view.

“Heck, I come here all the time. I have two homes, one in Louisa and one in Orange, and I come by here a couple of times a week,” he says, thoughtfully. “It’s hard to believe it’s gonna be closed.”

It is hard to believe, but it’s true. The store with its unique design and advertising hearkening back to the company’s 1950s roots has for more than 60 years tempted drivers to pull off the vehicular carousel of a traffic roundabout at the confluence of U.S. 33, U.S. 15 and Route 231 and pull in for a frosty respite.

On Oct. 31, however, the Tastee-Freez lights will go dark, its grill will grow cold, the doors will be locked, the franchise discontinued and the property will go on the market.

{snip}