Ice cream a long-standing pick at Main Street parlor

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Frank and Sara North have operated Becky’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor & Emporium since 2000. Photo by Mary Lou Montgomery

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

Not unlike the other buildings on Main in Hannibal, 318 North Main Street has a history.

Sara Anton North has been an eyewitness to that history for much of her life.

As long-time co-owner of Becky’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor & Emporium with her husband, Frank, it is second nature for her to reflect upon and analyze the building’s role in Hannibal’s progression. That history predates the days when Sam Clemens’ childhood antics along the river’s edge would later make Hannibal famous.

In 1959, when Sara was in elementary school, her father, Charles P. Anton III, was managing Anton Bottling Company at 117-119 Hill St. His father, Charles P. Anton Jr., a former brewmeister, and his wife Mary Louise Diegel Anton, owned that business.

“Grandma would send me for ice cream,” Sara remembers. The shop that sold this confection was just around the corner from the bottling company: Hatten’s Cigar Store, located in the same building that Sara’s shop now occupies. “There were men sitting around tables playing cards and smoking; it was intimidating to come here as a little kid,” she said. “It was dark and smoky.”

Little did she realize that one day, she would operate an ice cream parlor within these same parameters.

Sara and Frank North, originally in partnership with her brother Bruce Anton, bought the building at 318 N. Main in 2000. Marianna Lewis owned the building previously, and had operated an ice cream parlor within since the 1970s, “She had the space full of antique toys,” Sara said. After the Anton/North family purchased the building, visitors “asked about (the toys) for years.

“The building needed a lot of work,” Sara said. “We put in central heat and air. Marianna had a giant old gas stove, like a giant space heater with a flue. A lot of buildings on Main Street were heated with that.”

The building had two bathrooms on the first floor; they reconfigured one into an office.

“I started with ice cream,” Sara said. “Marianna already had ice cream, and there was a soda fountain.”

They set up merchandise around the ice cream. Ultimately Bruce left the partnership, leaving Frank and Sarah as sole owners.

Becky’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor & Emporium offers a collection of classic children’s books, books of regional interest and a lot of Civil War and Missouri slave narratives. “I carry Uncle Wiggily, Dick and Jane, cursive hand writing and phonics - on purpose.

“Good children’s literature, thought-provoking items.”

For example, they carry a biography on Elizabeth Keckley, “who bought her own freedom,” in 1855, and also the freedom her son, George. “She went to D.C., and stayed by Mary Todd Lincoln’s side” when others turned away.

“Dover Publications has been around a long time, keeping books in print at really reasonable prices,” she said, “such as Aesop’s Fables.”

She also carries books by and about Mark Twain, “but people are less educated in Mark Twain,” these days, she said.

A customer told her that she has a “Real well-curated collection of books.”

It’s a little store, set up around the ice cream counter. “It is a fun little spot,” Sara said. Now, after more than 25 years in business at this location, “People can say I came here when I was a kid.”

She carries paper dolls, “But they don’t sell as well as they used to.”

She sells toys that do not require batteries, such as “pull back” trucks. If you pull it backwards it will activate a mechanism and go forward.

“I have a little four-piece metal train set. I had some jump ropes,” but people didn’t know what they were.

“Green Army men, I have them. Some things never get old.”

Of course, most people who traverse through the front door are lured by the ice cream logo on the store front.

“What I hadn’t anticipated,” Sara said, “is that most people who come in to get ice cream are happily anticipating ice cream, so they are in a good mood.”

The most fun ice cream flavor: Huckleberry.

“It is very kitschy,” Sara said. “Clearly people understand why we carry it. A lot of people come back for the Huckleberry ice cream. What are huckleberries? We answer that question about 84,000 times a day. Everybody who comes in asks that, except for the people who already know.

Huckleberries are cousins to blueberries, Sara said.

Another ice cream specialty is the hand-made ice cream sodas, “which are a dying art.”

Almost always, if they ask for an ice cream soda, they want chocolate. But we appreciate it when we have the opportunity to be creative.

Who visits Hannibal?

“When you have a little business, you see people from around the country and the world almost every day. A couple (came in recently) who started out in Germany and Croatia, but who have lived in St. Louis for a couple of years. They were just having an outing.

“There is a demographic. This is spring break season. We have a lot of families in this week and next. A lot of people we see in off season are people who have leisure time.”

She remembers one visitor in particular.

“There were a few years in the fall that this guy from Australia would come in. He would rent a Harley in California, ride it across the country, then go home.

“He was a hippy on a Harley,” she said. When Covid came, they didn’t hear from him. “But after Covid, he came back. It offered a great opportunity to talk about perspectives on the pandemic.”

Unique T-shirt

The Norths offer a unique T-shirt in their shop, displayed prominently on a rack near the store’s entrance.

It is a black shirt with white lettering and red accents, featuring a stylized image of Mark Twain and one of his popular quotes:

“Those who don’t read, have no advantage over those who can’t.”

“A guy in California, a small business owner, contacted us about selling the shirt. We bought that copyright from him. It takes a few glances” to realize that it is Mark Twain. “It is a good design and a good shirt.”

“I maintain that a nice T-shirt isn’t anybody’s life dream, but a good T-shirt is better than a bad T-shirt,” she said.