I do not often have cause to react with abject horror at Hillsdale. One of few occasions I can recall was a random weekend last semester, when I discovered that AJ’s Cafe was out of ice cream. So much for my Sunday dessert. There was not a scoop in sight — instead, the absence had been filled with grocery store frozen novelties.

When I went back the following week and looked through my reflected face into the AJ’s ice cream freezer, I didn’t find eight tubs of ice cream staring back at me. I saw, to my increased alarm, the same selection of pre-packaged products. Upon seeing nothing different on my first trip to AJ’s this semester, I had to accept that the eight tubs of hard-scoop Ashby’s ice cream were never coming back.

I’ve remained a steadfast lover of AJ’s through many changes. Despite the worsened chocolate milk, the drastic decrease in energy drinks, and the cheese curds that were always out of stock, there were still wickedly fast breakfast sandwiches and good ice cream all day, every day of the week. It was enough. 

It’s all gone now. As I walk by AJ’s Cafe now, I often reminisce about how flawless it was my freshman year. Crazy as it sounds, I could walk across the grassy quad past a flowing fountain, enter through the front door of the student union, craft a milkshake out of eight excellent ice cream offerings, and have it in my hand within five minutes.

Yes, AJ’s had milkshakes: an apparent secret to many of my peers. Occasionally I’d get stopped on the walk back across the quad.

“Hey, what’s that?” someone would say.

And I’d respond, “It’s a milkshake.”

“Wait, AJ’s has those?”

Yes they did, indeed they did. They could make them in minutes from any flavor of ice cream, and they’d even mix flavors upon request. You could add the slightest bit of peanut butter to German chocolate or recreate an apple-and-cherry crisp. 

Many of my class never experienced an AJ’s milkshake in their four years. Yet we must not pity the old, but the young; we must mourn for the freshmen. They might never know a Hillsdale with AJ’s ice cream. They will never understand a college where any student can walk past the Ronald Reagan statue into a rafter of turkeys, milkshake in hand.

Still, I can accept it. I don’t need AJ’s ice cream again before my time in Hillsdale ends, but the freshmen certainly do. AJ’s, please don’t act on my account. Bring back ice cream for them.

Lewis Thune is a senior studying politics.