TWO SCOOPS OF MYSTERY
Mitchell:Highway 218 pulls right into Wentworth, population 22, and it wouldn't exist if you happened to wipe your eyes at the wrong time. It is, in essence, a general store, a bank, a small grocery, two bars, a post office, and according to some who live in the area, an ice cream parlor. Only, the ice cream parlor has strange business hours. It can only be found on cold, dark, stormy nights when the wind is howling out of the East, and no one wants to be outside.
Amy Kingsley, looking for a short cut to Minnesota once spotted the Dairy Maid, and stopped for a bite to eat. "I got lost and was frustrated. Then I turned on this curve and voila! There it was. In all its neon glory. It was three in the morning and it looked like the only thing open. I pulled off the road and cut the engine, but the whole place just faded away. Gone! Like in a dream. I got the spooks and took off."
"Yeah, it's been here quite a while," local resident Waylon Sayers extols, "just like clockwork, your car will round the corner and there she'll be, all bright and shiny neon, just like the first day it opened." Strangely, residents of Wentworth don't view their phantom ice cream parlor as a haunting, but rather a spiritual epiphany, as well as a boon to local businesses. Jerelyn Carruthers calls it "The ninth wonder of the world. It's magical. It makes ya want to believe in things. People from lots of other counties come out here to look for it, and while they look, they buy stuff." Waldo Kramer, owner of the local general store says, "Dyersville's got that baseball diamond, we got the ice cream parlor."
Winslow's Dairy Maid has been a reality in Wentworth since 1964, when Johnny and Jared Winslow, fresh out of high school, borrowed money from the bank to start their little venture. Carruthers recalls, "They were good boys, mischievous, but very sweet. Had their own paper routes. Always business oriented."
"Business oriented? More like girl oriented!" Roger Mattacks interrupts, continuing, "Why, those two boys would chase a skirt anywhere. They were always in competition with each other. When they weren't chasin' skirts, they were fighting over who was gonna date who." The Winslow Brothers' notoriety in business and courting was only exceeded by their capacity for devilish pranks. Tina Elsworth remembers, "Whether it was a cherry bomb exploding in the boys' room, or a girl screaming from a rubber snake on her shoulder, those boys were into everything. The parents were real decent folks, but their boys sure turned out different."
After graduation, the brothers began discussing the possibilities of going into business on their own. They asked a few local business owners what might be a good way to attract customers and not be in competition with everyone else. The most common response was an ice cream parlor. Kramer recalls, "My father, who ran the store then, told them it would be great to have one, you know, give folks an excuse to get out of their homes, and maybe even attract some tourists who may happen by." Carruthers, now 70, said, "I thought it was a good idea, too. Just what this neck of the woods needed. A little sweetening up."
The bank approved the business loan and the young men began building their parlor on the long winding curve of Highway 218 that leads to Wentworth from Osage. They invested in neon lights to catch business on the wintry northern nights. As the building began to develop, so did the brother's troubles. "You see," Heather Lansing, owner of the Red Rock Saloon, mused, "Jared had fallen madly in love with this local gal, Josephine Hart. And he fell hard. He had it bad, only thing was, Josephine had the eye for Jared's brother Johnny. See, she was a brown hair woman. Johnny had brown hair. Jared had black." Waldo Kramer adds, "I think it was more than just the brown hair, I think Miss Josephine liked to play the field. She liked them both equally. And that's where the problems started."
The brothers began fighting in public more often, recalls saloon owner Lansing, "Jared was in the Red Rock the day before the Grand Opening of the Dairy Maid. He was drinking whiskey after whiskey, and looking mean as a snake. I approached him and asked if them boys were ready to open. He said, 'Us boys have about had it!', and then he slammed down his glass hard and walked out."
The day of the opening, the Winslow boys entered the Dairy Maid for a final check of the place. Witnesses were there to see them go in, but they never came out. Half an hour later the entire building was on fire, and then exploded. Fire trucks arrived on the scene too late to save the structure, or the brothers trapped inside.
Carruthers tearfully recalled, "It was one of the worse tragedies to occur in Wentworth. I watched them grow up. The whole town showed up at the funeral. It was too much."
A little more than a year later, the first sighting of the spectral re-appearance of the Winslow Dairy Maid occurred. Ronnie Williams was traveling home from a business trip and through the cold drizzle he saw "...the ice cream parlor all lit up, like it was supposed to be on that day. I thought somebody must have bought the property and rebuilt it in honor of the boys. As I got closer....the place just...disappeared." Reports such as this continue to this day.
Heather Carruthers is fine with that. "It's like they never left. It's like they are saying, 'We're not only still here, we're still open for business!' It kind of lets you know there's hope....that there is another side after all. Maybe this is just another one of their pranks, only this time it's a good one. Their best one. Thanks to them, business is booming here in Wentworth, God bless 'em."
