Now is the time for foods that celebrate the summer, and treats that grant relief from the heat. On this episode: Stories about powerful memories relived through the tastes of summer.
Leave us a voicemail at 702-706-TALK, or email us at [email protected].
Released July 15, 2025.
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Max Jungreis: Hey, folks—This is Max Jungreis, from the StoryCorps Podcast.
Just wanna remind you that you can tell us your personal stories by calling our voicemail at 702 – 706- TALK. This week— Is there a food or taste that brings you back to a specific time and place? Tell us about it.
….… That’s 702 -706- T-A-L-K.
ARCHIVAL TAPE:
Announcer 1: We are back to the Eats of Strength Challenge. Don Lerman, breaking the bologna-eating record right before our eyes…
Announcer 2: History is about to be made, the message— AAAAAAAAAAH, there it is, Richard!
Announcer 1: Don Moses Lerman breaks— and sets— a new record in bologna!
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Announcer 1: Oh my glory!
Don “Moses” Lerman (DL): Everybody got something in their life that they’re good at. This is what I do good, I eat.
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DL: I was always a bigger eater than most people in my family, and, about five years ago, there was an ad in the paper for a matzo ball contest. I went down to the contest. I broke a record. I ate 10 matzo balls, half-pounders the size of baseballs, in 2 minutes 50 seconds. No one ever ate more than 10. And I went on to the finals and I won.
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DL: That was the first trophy, the matzo ball trophy, ever in my life.
I always wanted to be famous. And it just never happened. I just thought, you know, the parade would pass me by… until the eating.
Jasmyn Morris (JM): Ok, so you don’t have to be a bologna eating champion to know that food has meaning. I mean… we all have that one food that brings us back to a time and place… or a relationship.
And the StoryCorps archive is full of conversations about just that.
So because it’s summer… we’ve got stories about ice cream, hotdogs, and pizza… that were more than just a meal.
I’m Jasmyn Morris. It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR.
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JM: For decades, on hot days in Peabody, Massachusetts… You could hear the siren call of Allan Ganz’s ice cream truck playing ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’
Allan served ice cream for generations. He actually holds the World Record for Longest Career as an Ice Cream Distributor.
And he came to StoryCorps with his wife, Rosalyn, to talk about how his dad got him started in the ice cream business more than 70 years ago…
Alan Ganz (AG): I started riding with him when I was ten years old. And in those days, ice cream was a nickel and a dime, and the ice cream trucks was just pickup trucks and they had chests built on the back kept cold by dry ice.
My father became known as “The Jolly Man,” and I was “Jolly Jr.” I got my license three days after I was 16. And my father, he says, ’Here, go on out, son.’ And I went out for business.
Rosalyn Ganz (RG): I remember hearing the truck come, getting all excited.
AG: You used to come over to the ice cream truck with friends, they’d all buy ice cream. And I would kibbitz for a few minutes and then I’d have to move on. I had to be out selling ice cream because you have to make hay while the sun shines. But it was in the cards for us to end up together.
RG: Well, you were really, really cute — with hair.
AG: Well thank you. You were 19 when we got married, remember, and I was 23. And I wanted to get my own truck.
RG: Remember I said, ’You know what? Why don’t you give me a lesson? Maybe I can help out here,’ and I did for a lot of years.
AG: You made me what I am today, you know? Broke.
RG: [Laughs]
AG: After 71 years selling ice cream, they know I’m coming. Like Pavlov’s Theory, you ring the bell, they expect me.
One day I was out selling ice cream and somebody come running up, stopped me with a couple of little kids, and he was pointing to pictures on the ice cream truck and he says, ’I used to get these Screwballs off The Jolly Man!’ I says, ’See that picture over there?’ He looked up and saw a picture of my father in the truck. So it’s history — and here I am.
RG: Ice cream is the great American pastime. It certainly made a big difference in our life.
AG: Yeah, you’re right. And I don’t want to sound big-headed, but ice cream has given me a name like a Ted Williams or a Babe Ruth or a Larry Bird. I have the same recognition here in Peabody. I can’t go anywhere without being recognized. I’m known. (Laughs) I don’t know what else to tell you, it has been a great ride, and the scoop is: I love the business.
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JM: That was Allan Ganz – now in his 80s and retired from the ice cream business – with his wife, Rosalyn Ganz, in Peabody, Massachusetts.
Next… we’re going to cruise down the coast to Long Island… to meet another guardian of summer…longtime lifeguard Reggie Jones. He was first interviewed by StoryCorps founder Dave Isay for his Sound Portraits series.
Reggie became a summer lifeguard in 1944… and he loved it so much… that he kept coming back to that lifeguard chair… year after year… for the next 64 summers. So around that time… if you went swimming at Jones Beach, in New York… Reggie would watch your back.
He had a lot of stories from his decades on the beach… but one that really stuck in his mind… was about a hotdog.
Reggie Jones: Artie Wink was a young fella that I went to high school with. It was my second year on the job. It was World War II and Artie and myself, we knew we would have to go into the service as soon as we turned eighteen. Well, that summer I was sitting on 2-West with Artie — that’s a stand that was two west of the west bathhouse. Artie got off the stand to go back for lunch and I said, ”Artie, will you bring me back a Jones Beach hotdog?” You know, I was getting hungry. And he said ”Okay, Jonesy,” and he went off. Well, somehow he never came back to that particular stand, and in a day or two, into the service he went.
Well, I lost track of Artie, and I often wondered what happened with good old Artie that went into the service. Forty years later, I’m standing on 2-West, the exact same stand that Artie got off of. I look down, and — lo and behold — walking by in front of me was Artie Wink. Now, you understand, this is forty years later, and somehow I recognize him. He had come back to settle his mother’s estate and he was with his twenty-five year old daughter, and he was pointing out to her where he worked as a young man. When I looked down and saw him I said ”Artie, Artie Wink! Where’s my hotdog? I’m sitting up here for forty years, where have you been?” Well, you ever see a guy take a double take? This was a triple take. ”Jonesy!” he said. He literally gasped for air. He said, ”I can’t believe it! You’re still here?” I said, ”Where do you want me to go? I’m getting hungry!”
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JM: Longtime Long Island lifeguard Reggie Jones. He finally climbed down from his lifeguard chair in 2009, retiring at the age of 81.
His interview was recorded as part of StoryCorps founder Dave Isay’s Sound Portraits series, American Talkers.
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After a short break… we’re going to have some pizza.
Chad Machado: You making the pizza is the special thing. It’s not because of the tomatoes or anything else, it’s the way you make it.
JM: Stay with us…
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Next we head to the tropics… for a conversation about Hawaiian pizza… not the kind with pineapple… the kind from Hawaii.
JP’s Pizza is a family business on the island of Kauai. Chad Machado <muh-SHAD-doe> opened it with his son, Xavier <ZAYV-yer> , at the height of the pandemic. Neither had worked in a restaurant before. Xavier was still a teenager… and at the time… Chad was worried about his future.
Chad Machado (CM): You reminded me of myself going through school. It was fun, except I didn’t really like the school part.
Xavier JP Machado (XM): Yep. Not a school guy. I settled for B’s and C’s, and sometimes D’s.
CM: And you weren’t involved with any of the physical activities, like football. You hated basketball that mom put you in. But I couldn’t get you away from the kitchen.
XM: You have to eat a lot in order to learn how to cook, you know?
CM: Right, right.
XM: So I did a lot of eating back when I was a kid.
CM: Yeah.
XM: I would spend countless hours watching guys on YouTube making pizza. And I remember, I was really hungry one day. Made my amateur pizza crust, and that was the start.
CM: Yeah, I’m thinking, like, “You got a great idea, let’s go for it.”
XM: But I think Hawaiian pizza shouldn’t be a thing. And I think pineapple does belong on certain pizzas, but not our pizza.
CM: Not our pizza.
XM: Yeah. The flavors don’t match.
CM: But, I mean, you know, you making the pizza is the special thing. It’s not because of the tomatoes or anything else, it’s the way you make it.
XM: So what is the hardest part working together, me and you?
CM: That I can’t keep up with your speed at your age.
XM: Yeah, we butt heads because, you know, I’m fast and you’re slow.
CM: Yeah.
XM: Are you proud of what I’ve done, you know?
CM: I’m ecstatic. Your commitment, how you dedicate yourself to something is better than I ever did in my entire life. And if you didn’t have that, I wouldn’t speak so highly of you. I don’t blow smoke up people’s butts, so.
XM: Oh, thank you for not doing that. I’m just a muscle in the back. I have a little brains, but, you know, the muscle helps.
CM: Well, I think that you’re gonna have to use that brains when I’m gone. I don’t know when I’m gonna not wake up, but you gotta know what to do. So keep on doing what you’re doing. Just stay in the groove.
XM: Yeah. I don’t tell you, but I learn from you every day, every word you say. You know?
CM: Thank you. It’s a real gift to me. I always wanted to have children, that was my only hope in my whole entire life. And you came along. [laugh] I was so happy.
So, like I always say, I could die today a happy man.
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JM: Chad Machado and his son, Xavier, in Kekaha, Kaua’i.
Sisters Amy McNally and Emily Fortner grew up in rural Ohio. They were raised by a single mom in an old farmhouse… and they didn’t see their neighbors very often… so life could be slow.
Except for one summer day…
Amy McNally (AM): We lived in the middle of some cornfields at the end of our long gravel driveway. It was very, neither here nor there.
Emily Fortner (EF): Yeah.
AM: In Archie comics, people would come door to door and sell encyclopedias, and things like that. But that never happened to us. And Mom hated everybody… so we didn’t have a lot of people ever come over to the house.
She was really hard to deal with because she was an abusive alcoholic.
I remember she had gray roots and a round face with a little scar by her mouth where she got dragged by horses as a kid. But Mom could be a very generous spirit. And she had access to this childlike joy and wonder that a lot of grown ups never seemed to understand.
One time, we were in the house and mom heard it first. There was this tinny music that reminded me kind of like a carnival calliope. And it was an ice cream truck.
I remember mom ran to her purse and just handed us fistfuls of dollars and change; whatever she could scrounge from the bottom of it. And she said, ‘Run, this will never happen again.’
EF: [Laughs].
AM: I remember my feet pounding on the grass in the front yard. And I don’t remember what I got. But it was cold and sweet.
You know, there is nothing like ice cream to a kid. But there’s also nothing like an unexpected treat to a poor kid.
And so as an adult, one of the great things about living in a neighborhood now is that I see ice cream trucks coming down my street sometimes.
And I realized I hadn’t for a while, so I called the first one I found. And he said, ‘We’re not going out a lot because of the high gas prices, but we do do events.’ Well, my birthday was ten days away. I said, ‘Great, please show up,’ and so the ice cream truck came.
My favorite part of my birthday was when the neighbor kids came running because they heard the music. And I got to say, ‘The ice cream is free. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt wealthier.
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JM: That’s Amy McNally in Madison, Wisconsin, talking with her sister, Emily Fortner in North Chesterfield, Virginia.
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That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps Podcast.
We love hearing from our listeners… and our voicemail line is always open. This week we’re wondering… is there a food or taste that brings you back to a time and place? Tell us about it. Leave us your answer in a voicemail at 702-706-TALK. That’s 702-706 T-A-L-K.
The stories on this episode were produced by Dave Isay, Michael Garofalo, Sarah Kramer, Kelly Moffitt, Von Diaz and Jo Corona. They were edited by Amy Drozdowska and Annie Russell. Special thanks to StoryCorps facilitators Camila Kerwin and Marie Lovejoy.
This podcast is produced by Max Jungreis. Our Senior Producer is Jud Esty-Kendall. Amy Drozdowska is our Executive Producer. Our Technical Director is Jarrett Floyd. The artwork for our podcast is created by Liz McCarty.
And I’m Jasmyn Morris. Thanks for listening…
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Don Lerman: I’ve eaten matzah balls, hotdogs, pelmeni, which are little pierogies…
jalapeno peppers, chicken wings, cannoli, glazed donuts… you name it, I’ve eaten it.
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For this episode, we celebrate the 10th year of a StoryCorps tradition: The Great Thanksgiving Listen, where we encourage young people to record an interview with an important elder in their lives using our app. We hear from a history teacher at Glenbrook South High School outside Chicago, whose students have recorded thousands of StoryCorps conversations through a class assignment.
As a college student, Sean Carter was in a car crash and sustained a traumatic brain injury. His mother, Jenny, became his full-time caregiver. In three recordings over ten years, Sean— with his mother and his twin brother, Todd— reflected on making peace with the sudden turn in their lives, and the prospect of an uncertain future.
