Our dairy distributor has been sold and we’re taken aback and full of memories. Since we opened in 1981 we have got most of our milk and creams from Rosev, an independent distributor that started in Charlestown before moving to Chelsea. We first bought ice cream mix from the Roselli Brothers when they had a neighborhood grocery in Hayes Square, Charlestown an urban location beneath the Mystic Bridge and tucked between St. Catherine’ s Catholic Church and the massive dark stone wall of Charlestown Navy Yard.

Rosev was an indepndent distributor that handled HP Hood product, delivering to groceries and indepndent ice cream companies in Eastern New England. They were always open and when hot weather devastated our inventory we would go to them where we would always find one of the brothers running the warehouse. We would line up with the changing cast of characters that highlight the perpetually shifting demographics of the city’s ice cream truck owners. In Boston’s ice cream industry the trucks are called “ding a ling trucks”. We might have been one step above them. At least we weren’t a “ding a ling store.”

Joe and Bob Roselli extended us credit when we needed it, and sometimes we needed it with extraordinary urgency. One one day a salesman waited by our door to say that if we wanted to make ice cream at the company’s new facility in Chelsea they would be happy to have us. Through the slow seasons and the summers they tutored us in the ups and downs of ice cream costs and prices.

Years ago when Steve Herrell began the revival of independent artisanal ice cream stores he would drive a small Volkswagen “bug” to the busy HP Hood property on Rutherford Avenue in Charlestown. As his store got busy and busier he would appear more frequently until finally someone called Walter Simonsen, Hood’s important guy for ice cream. Simonsen came down to the loading dock and said to Steve, “You know we deliver this stuff.” Actually HP Hood soon abandoned most deliveries and Rosev took over the last few miles.

Simonsen retired from Hood and opened Duxbury’s famous Farfar’s Ice Cream.

Our regular customer Gary Dryfoos surprised me by knowing about Rosev’s own cartoon mascot, Milky. Milky was part of a family of characters that attempted to surpass Harry Hood and equal Ronald McDonald as an embodiment of corporate friendliness. Japanese companies and organizaions do this much better than Americans. Toscanini’s and Rancatore’s Ice Cream run by our brother Joe, used to participate in the WGBH Ice Cream Festival. If the weather was hot it was insanity on Western Avenue. One year all the ice cream providers were taking a break from serving the very nice families of gifted Zoom lovers. We were eating hot dogs and drinking Rosev Water when the Milky character removed his headpiece revealing a black man inside the costume. My brother said, “Holy cow. Milky is Chocolate Milky!” Everyone laughed but one executive reproached Joe by saying that everyone at Rosev was part of a single team, and there were no Chocolate Milky’s or White MIlky’s.” It was sort of an NPR teaching moment but my brother’s comic observation outlived the National Brotherhood Week lecture.