Take a Summer Vacation to the Graveyard

[Christina]

Welcome to Ben & Jerry's flavor graveyard. Each year, the Vermont company creates as many as 12 new flavors. It's what customers have come to expect since Cherry Garcia was introduced to the world in 1987. But for every Neapolitan Dynamite and Vermonty Python that gets added to the lineup, a Lemon Peppermint Carob Chip or Ice Tea with Ginseng must be retired.In honor of Sunday's National Ice Cream Day, which President Reagan created in 1984 by calling on citizens to mark the occasion with "appropriate ceremonies and activities," we journeyed to the site where Ben & Jerry's flavors - both the delectable and dubious - are, ahem, cream-ated.Near the factory, tucked into Vermont's verdant Green Mountains, which produces 200,000 pints a day (and hosts as many as 2,500 visitors), are 28 emblematic gravestones. They stand in for the more than 400 flavors that have been banished since Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield - the self-proclaimed fattest, slowest kids in their seventh-grade gym class - first began making ice cream in 1978. (A more comprehensive memorial can be found at benjerry.com/ graveyard.)Patchy grass sprouts between tracks worn bare by the visitors who have come to mourn the passing of a favorite flavor, or simply enjoy the whimsically macabre spectacle of a cemetery dedicated to ice cream."Some people will leave flowers," says Tour Manager Chris Wilkins. "It's kind of scary."To the left lies "Miz Jelena's Sweet Potato Pie" (1992-1993). "One potato, two potato, Sweet Potato Pie," the slim, slate-gray marker reads. "No one could appreciate it, So we had to let it die."

 

[Thunder1]

some people actually live on grave yards, they are so poor. We had some people from our church who went to visit and help these people,many of them children in Phipphines. Some are sponsoring them.