Oxford’s Favorite Ice Cream Shop
Spring Street Treats gives locals a sweet experience like none other
Devin Ankeney
Illustrations by Caitlin Dominski, photos by Jake Ruffer
“You ever seen a power drill on a whisk before?” Allen Ansorg asks me.
The co-owner of Spring Street Treats is proud of his strange tool.
We are standing in an ice cream shop in the middle of February. Nothing is happening around us as a tiny black television shows some unimportant UFC fight and pop music plays on a radio in the background. The brand new Crosley radio, which could easily have been bought from Urban Outfitters, sits in front of a stack of Allen’s Night Ranger cassette tapes.
It’s hardly 40 degrees. There are no customers. It’s just Dan Pollock, a senior in a Miami basketball jersey over a thick hoodie, and his boss Allen, in a brown T-shirt, who’s wielding his homemade combination power-drill-whisk over a five-gallon bucket.
I have no idea what the hell he’s doing.
Turns out, about a week after he and his Miami Merger wife Amy opened the shop in July 2012, Allen’s ice cream whisking got the best of him. His arm and elbow began to hurt and grow sore. So he bought himself a compression sleeve that he wears virtually every day in the shop to use with his homemade whisk.
The inside of the microscopic shop is doused in fluorescent white, and a bin of Allen’s rusting tools sits under a shelving unit for supplies. There’s more peanut butter than I’ve ever seen in my life. Four ice cream machines are simultaneously humming their own song like a bad barbershop quartet.
There are bleachers outside, which Allen put up for parents to watch their kids as they play in the courtyard that’s larger than the building by a long shot. Whether it’s ring toss, climbing structures or a loose rubber football that just has to be somewhere, there’s something for everyone.
A car pulls up to the bulletproof glass service window under the cracked light indicating “OPEN,” where pneumatic tubes used to be up-and-running — remnants of the approximately 600-square-foot building’s days as a bank. Although, the bank certainly didn’t have playground equipment scattered outside. That was all Allen.
According to Allen, the customers that pull up alongside the neon green walls of the establishment are “mostly college girls,” but this customer was a middle-aged man in an F-150.
The man orders a slew of ice cream treats and Allen’s new concoction: pulled pork nachos. Dan rings the fellow up and sends him on his way.
Suddenly, nothing begins to happen. Like, nothing nothing. Something is bound to happen, though … right?
On days when the weather hits a toasty 50 degrees or higher, odds are a few there will be at least a couple families enjoying the old schoolyard-esque equipment. And odds are they’ll all be wearing winter coats and have a frozen treat somewhere nearby.
But inside the shop, the weather doesn’t change much of the ambience. It may be cold, but Allen, in his short-sleeved shirt, still serves sweet treats and a momentary lapse in the stresses of daily life.
There’s hardly room for three employees inside the building, let alone any customers after Allen gutted and remodeled the building during the pandemic. Today, there’s a skinny counter at the walk-up window for summer customers. It smells vaguely of hot fudge even from that window, and the radio’s amalgamation of pop and ’70s rock can be heard from almost anywhere on the premises.
Allen smiles a lot. Running the local ice cream shop isn’t just what he does. It’s what he cares about. He wonders if his employees feel like part of the community that he’s been a part of for decades.
Allen smiles a lot even though he has to hire new employees — mostly college students on semester schedules — every few months.
Allen smiles even though last year, the shop that’s been worn with love like a sweater your grandma made you 30 years ago lost money for the first time ever. Stocking prices went up as much as 25%.
The rusting tools in need of a paint job, the signs as old as the shop and the whisk made from household tools rather than bought from a supplier are all indicators that the shop has been losing money.
They too, however, are indicators that Allen put it together himself.
The shop may have lost money last year, but Allen hasn’t lost spirit. He’s holding everything together the same way he figured out how to whisk ice cream without ruining his elbow: his way.
Regardless, Allen’s warm and inviting smile is pervasive. He doesn’t stop caring for the people around him, even when he’s wondering how to make things work.
Most of us – I, in particular – certainly don’t think of ice cream shops as the epitome of American entrepreneurship: a surefire, foolproof way to make it big no matter where you are in the country.
But that isn’t all that matters. Not to everyone.
“Welcome to the party!” Allen says emphatically as Zoey Laslo arrives for her shift with Katie Sennett right behind her. Both are students. Both are new hires.
Somebody lets out a chuckle, but this season’s employees are still wet behind their ears, and nobody really knows each other yet. It’s hardly a party for anyone.
Except, maybe, for Allen.
Peering out through the drive-thru window, I can see the sun setting over a power facility that blocks one-third of the view. It sets over the massive Kroger that sells all the sweet treats a kid could dream of. It sets over the Walgreens that has limitless candy no matter how far away Halloween is.
Somewhere else in town, it also sets over the Graeter’s, United Dairy Farmers and Dairy Queen, which all opened after Spring Street Treats. Each sells ice cream, but none of them sell pulled pork nachos or the ever-so-popular Reese’s Explosion.
None of them sell the feeling that Spring Street Treats does.
Despite all the ice cream options that exist, when the people of Oxford — high school students, families, college students, visitors —need a frozen fix, the small local shop is often their go-to.
The sunset over the epitome of corporate America is the ugliest yet most incredible sight to see. It’s the perfect view to watch from a tiny, rural, hometown-favorite, Allen-made ice cream shop in Nowhere, Ohio.
Ice cream is universal. The compulsive desire for something sweet and wholly unhealthy is common. Spring Street Treats and, more importantly, Allen provide that feeling we all know and cherish with a cone, mix-up or sundae of our favorite flavor.
He brings summertime to the wintertime the way a pint of Ben & Jerry’s from the Walmart frozen aisle simply can’t.
I walk away with a malt in my hand. I hadn’t realized that the temperature outside had dropped to nearly freezing, or that the sun was buried deep below Kroger, or that my fingers felt like they were going to fall off.
My outside life paused for a brief moment, and nothing else mattered but an inane sweet treat.
