In the Northeast, there’s a diffuse community of recreational pilots who think nothing of gassing up a Cessna and flying a few hundred miles to Kimball Farm in southern New Hampshire for a hot-fudge sundae or a lobster roll. It helps that there’s an airport next door, with a path—stenciled with ice-cream cones—running between them. But these pilots, who could make it to the coast in another 15 minutes and hop a cab to the ocean, choose to stop in landlocked Jaffrey.
A giant Kimball Special sundae. Photo Credit : Melissa DiPalma
The pilots, in turn, attract families, because what kid wouldn’t want to eat ice cream and watch airplanes take off? Add the old-car enthusiasts, who line up their kit vehicles and ’46 Fords every Wednesday night, June through September, and you have something like a country fair. Kimball’s is the social center of this small town best known as a trailhead for Mount Monadnock. (Less well known: Author Willa Cather’s grave is in the old cemetery behind the Jaffrey Center Meeting House.) An after-work swim in one of the many local lakes and ponds followed by dinner at Kimball’s is one of the great pleasures of summer.
A plane takes off from Silver Ranch Airpark next door. Photo Credit : Melissa DiPalma
But to credit planes and automobiles for Kimball’s success is to do a disservice to the ice cream, which comes in old-fashioned flavors you may have forgotten or believed extinct: buttercrunch, Grape-Nut, maple walnut, rum raisin, and frozen pudding, an old New England flavor that tastes a bit like fruitcake. For the kids, there’s cookie dough and Oreo. Pumpkin shows up just as the goldenrod begins to bloom at the edges of the woodlands. And servings are huge. A “kiddie” cone can easily feed two; the banana split borders on the obscene. Kimball’s food is made to be shared.
This cherry-red 1955 Chevy Bel Air is a big attention-getter on cruise nights. Photo Credit : Melissa DiPalma
On Wednesday evenings, the Monadnock Oldies Car Club gathers just across the street at the edge of a large field, which rises steeply behind the cars and where spectators can take in the scene. The air smells pleasantly of fresh-cut grass and gasoline, and a DJ plays the hits of the ’50s and ’60s. At the end of a long row of cars, Leighford “Leggy” Rines is showing off his bright-yellow ’64 Mercury Comet Caliente convertible. “Wanna sit in it?” he asks a towheaded little boy who has wandered over with his mom. At her nod, the boy climbs in and wiggles the wheel back and forth, craning his neck up to see over the dash. “It makes you feel young when you have an old car,” Leggy says.
For the taste of summer, you can’t beat Kimball’s tender fried clams and onion rings. Photo Credit : Melissa DiPalma
Sometimes Leggy and his wife, Lucille (who recently retired from Yankee), drive down to bigger car-club gatherings at the other Kimball Farm location in Lancaster, Massachusetts. (The small chain also extends to Carlisle and Westford, Massachusetts, which is where Jack and Clara Kimball opened their first ice-cream shop in 1939.) But he and Lucille are happy to come to their local spot, to see friends and have a burger or a fish sandwich, both of which are very good and come with a wedge of watermelon and some waffle fries. If they’re feeling decadent, there are excellent onion rings, which boast a thin, crisp batter that flakes like tree bark—and they’re big fans of Kimball’s black-raspberry ice cream, too.
“A plane!” A little girl in a blue dress is pointing to the sky. A yellow prop plane is gaining altitude overhead, zooming into the sunset, headed back to New York or Massachusetts. A quick jaunt for a pilot. A sweet memory for a child.
Amy Traverso is the senior food editor at Yankee magazine and co-host of the public television series Weekends with Yankee, a coproduction with WGBH. Previously, she was food editor at Boston magazine and an associate food editor at Sunset magazine. Her work has also been published in The Boston Globe, Saveur, and Travel & Leisure, and she has appeared on Hallmark Home & Family, The Martha Stewart Show, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Amy is the author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Award for best first-time author and won an IACP Cookbook Award in the “American” category.
