SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa — No ice cream truck bells sounded on this late afternoon.
Kate and Bob Shaw just watched the crowd, waiting patiently beside their 1967 Ford F-250.
Their vintage pickup, parked within walking distance of West Okoboji Lake, on Little Millers Bay in Iowa, triggered a hum of mid-September activity as a steady stream of adults approached with smiles and walked away with free frozen treats, dessert at a potluck dinner event. Not a kid in sight. Just adults, many talking about childhood days spent chasing ice cream trucks down the street.
This truck spends its days and evenings traveling the resorts and lakeside beaches in the northwest corner of the Hawkeye State. The remote location makes it faster to fly into Sioux Falls, South Dakota, than Des Moines to get to the pretty little hamlet that might be compared to Traverse City in Michigan.
As times have changed, and traditions come and go, the Shaws remain behind the wheel of their old ice cream truck, built in Michigan and other states in its day. This truck has sold ice cream its whole life. First as No. 32 in the fleet of Pied Piper Co. trucks in New Jersey and, after that, when a truck driver purchased the red-and-white Ford and brought it back to Iowa as a gift for his wife in Spirit Lake because he thought she needed something to do, Kate Shaw said.
Everyone in town loved that ice cream truck when it started, Bob Shaw said.
“We chased it,” he said. “But she only ran it for a month or two. Years later, I started my paint store and this lady came in to buy paint and I said, ‘Whatever happened to your ice cream truck?’ And she said, ‘That’s the perfect thing for your wife and kids.'”
One thing led to another and Bob Shaw took home the ice cream truck to his wife on their 18th wedding anniversary: May 30, 1985. (The model year of the truck is the year the two married in Neptune, Iowa, at St. Joseph’s Church, built on farmland that Kate’s great-grandfather donated.)
“That truck was sitting in the alley by the Catholic church, where it had been for four or five years, with trees growing around it,” Bob Shaw said. “We opened the door to the freezer and it was immaculate. Clean and sterilized. We charged up the battery, started up the truck and drove off. We were in the ice cream business.”
Kate Shaw added: “And we would continue to be for 38 years. If we can do it for two more years, we’ll both be 80.”
75 cents then, $5 now
The parents of six children, four who sold ice cream, fondly remember those early days. They met strangers who would become friends. The homemade ice cream sandwich, a Krazy Kate that packages a vanilla square between two Rice Krispies treats, sold for 75 cents in 1985. It costs $5 now.
“For our 50th wedding anniversary, Bob asked me what I wanted to do,” Kate Shaw said. “I said I wanted to drive the truck across the state and give away free ice cream.”
So, after the summer season passed, they shut down sales on Labor Day 2017 and drove around the state for two weeks and gave away Blue Bunny ice cream treats. The couple spent nights with family and friends. They spent days visiting football games, police stations, road construction crews, nursing homes and facilities that assisted people with special needs. A stop at an Amish school was unforgettable.
“The kids were barefoot,” Bob said. “The teacher asked if they could sing a prayer to us.
“Me being from Pennsylvania, I’ve always said native-born Iowans have no clue how nice they are. This whole trip exemplified it. We had cameras on the truck. Someday my son will put it together.”
Nostalgia nourishes our lives
Matt Anderson, curator of transportation at the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn, understands how much cars can define moments in our lives.
“Motor vehicles are physical links to our personal pasts. We get older, the world changes around us, but that old car or truck still looks the same,” he said. “Climb behind the wheel and everything is just the way you remember it. It’s powerful, and it can be very emotional, too, depending on the memories made with the vehicle.”
The Shaw kids are all grown now. They don’t ride the ice cream truck anymore. They live in Iowa; Las Vegas; Portland, Oregon, and Canada. A trust deeds the truck to any child who returns to the Lake Okoboji region to live. But Kate and Bob Shaw said they just don’t know if that’s going to happen.
So they’ll cherish these next two years more than ever, with the busiest time running from late June to mid-August. That means working seven days a week, Bob Shaw said.
The truck is in great shape. Bob Shaw paid for a total restoration about 35 years ago, where the whole truck was stripped down to the frame and taken apart.
“I cried,” Kate Shaw said. “The truck was in pieces. It was laying all over the place.”
Their friend Ray Tucker, a retired mechanic, keeps the truck operating, she said.
They even visited Joan Baird, the ice cream truck owner who introduced the idea of putting Kate Shaw behind the wheel, in a care facility in neighboring Estherville, Iowa, this past summer to give her some ice cream and take a picture. Because, Bob and Kate Shaw said, life is about giving back and spreading joy.
A sweet start
This is the story of a couple who met in Le Mars, Iowa, world headquarters of Blue Bunny ice cream.
Bob was selling chocolate bars to raise money for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes when he met Kate, “a cute bank teller at the drive-up window.” He had moved to Iowa from New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1963 to play center on the Westmar College Eagles football team. He kept busy student teaching and driving a bus for the public school, too.
The couple dated, married and started a family. They adopted their first child, a little boy named Hudson, when he was 17 days old. They would go on to have five more kids.
In 1972, Bob garnered TV and newspaper attention when he started coaching the Vikings football team at Wesley High School in Corwith, Iowa. They had the longest losing streak in the state at the time, he said.
“We won our first football game and we couldn’t believe it,” Bob said. “I stated I didn’t know much about these kids but they’re farm kids. They’re big and strong and we’re going to win football games. Nobody knew anything about football, it seemed. Every manure spreader, tractor and combine was in the parking lot at school for practice. These kids were getting away from dad for football. They were good kids.”
Eventually, Bob and Kate Shaw moved 86 miles west of Corwith to Spirit Lake, a resort town, where they would spend most of their lives together.
Bob ran a shop that provided paint, frames, glass and locksmith services for 32 years before retiring to the ice cream truck full time, and evenings spent creating memories with Kate.
With joy comes tragedy
To this day, Kate Shaw talks of her four devils and two angels. The mother of six buried two young children.
Doctors told the Shaws to prepare to lose their daughter Angie at a young age because she had a rare genetic defect that causes physical, cognitive and other medical challenges called Cornelia de Lange syndrome. She died at age 5. Their healthy son Hudson unexpectedly died at age 3, when Angie was about 9 months old, after he developed a viral infection that settled in his heart, Bob Shaw said.
“That was tough stuff to dump on a couple,” he said. “Either you turn to drugs, alcohol or God. We got lucky and turned to God.”
Grateful for the past, looking to the future
They look back on their lives and their kids and the people they’ve met.
But now, both just drive the truck around the Iowa Great Lakes region of northwest Iowa, but they’re mostly in the popular Okoboji area. They started accepting credit cards three years ago. From 2-4:30 p.m., children aged 8 to 14 assist with ice cream sales and learn how to run a business. At the end of the day, just Bob and Kate Shaw drive the truck from 6:30 p.m. until dark.
“The truck is just a truck. It’s us, as humans, that ascribe the value to them and give them meaning,” said Jonathan Klinger, a board member of the McPherson College Auto Restoration Program in McPherson, Kansas. “That ice cream truck is a centerpiece to years and decades of happy memories.”
Business owners have converted Ford vehicles for more than a century, serving as the basis for everything from ambulances to fire trucks. Ted Ryan, Ford archives and heritage brand manager, said the company can’t confirm how many trucks were converted to sell ice cream but the Good Humor fleet numbers in the thousands in the 1960s.
The Shaws’ ice cream truck is put away for the season these days.
The Shaws focus their energy on hosting foreign exchange students, this year a young woman from Italy attending Spirit Lake High. Other visiting students have been from Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and China. The daughter of an exchange student 33 years ago is coming to stay with the Shaws next year as part of a college project to work in a community and learn English. She’ll be working in Okoboji but not on the ice cream truck.
Seeing the world, celebrating life and honoring loss is essential to Kate and Bob Shaw.
Last weekend, the Shaw family put together a special party for what would have been their daughter Angie’s 50th birthday. Families from South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri and Nebraska attended, knowing what it’s like to have a child with Cornelia de Lange syndrome.
But with loss comes reflection.
So much they credit to their vintage truck.
“It was a perfect thing for my wife and kids to have while I was in business,” Bob Shaw said. “Then when I retired, it became the highlight of our summers. It’s brought so much joy and happiness to everybody and especially us. Kate and I have so much fun together. We never know where we’ll end up or who we’re going to see.”
Editor’s note: Phoebe Wall Howard met Kate and Bob Shaw during the annual Okoboji Writers Conference in Iowa in mid-September.
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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or [email protected]. Follow her on the site formerly known as Twitter @phoebesaid.
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