Not everyone comes in for ice cream, but most leave McDonald Pharmacy with a waffle cone

The aroma wafts between the aisles, filling the afternoon with thoughts of chocolate, vanilla and cookies and cream nestled inside waffle cones.

Mmmm, yes. Waffle cones.

Afternoons are when Karly Wilkins and Alyssa Adams make them at McDonald Pharmacy in the small East Feliciana Parish town of Jackson. The smell is so powerful that even the incorruptible can’t resist temptation.

Everyone, it seems, stops for ice cream before leaving the pharmacy.

The scent is just an added extra, because most McDonald’s customers begin thinking about ice cream the moment they enter the pharmacy.

How can they help it with the pharmacy’s Ice Cream Shoppe in full view at the front of the store?

The shop’s allure is a mix of anticipation and nostalgia. It’s not every day you get to belly up to an old-fashioned ice cream counter, though owner Kevin Tomb readily admits his shop isn’t exactly old.

He and wife Rhonda opened it in 1991, when they moved McDonald Pharmacy from its original location next door to its current building at 1701 Charter St.

The Tombs set it up mostly for nostalgic reasons. Kevin Tomb remembers walking into McDonald’s former building as a child and ordering sodas from its bonafide soda fountain.

“I remember, as a kid growing up, there was an ice cream shop in there,” Kevin Tomb said. “You know, an old soda fountain. That was pretty cool, and you know, I wish we still had that.”

But the soda fountain had been removed from the shop by the time the Tombs bought Ray McDonald’s pharmacy in 1988. So, when the pharmacy’s current building, the Tombs saw an opportunity to bring back some memories — and generate new ones.

“We had a lot of space in this store,” Kevin Tomb. “So we decided to make the corner in the front an ice cream shop.”

Its official name, Ole McDonald’s Ice Cream Shoppe, is spread in novelty script on the exterior of a corner window, but that doesn’t matter to locals. Young and old stream in throughout the day to order up scoops of ice cream, sometimes in a plastic cup, most time in waffle cones.

They have a choice of eight rotating Bluebell flavors.

“We normally change one flavor every now and then, because people can get burned out on a flavor,” Wilkins said. “Right now, the strawberry cheesecake is the popular flavor now. We replaced birthday cake flavor for that, and before birthday cake, we had millennium crunch.”

Other flavors are chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, rainbow sherbet, butter pecan, cookies and cream and cotton candy.

“The butter pecan is most popular among adults, and the cotton candy is the kids’ favorite,” Adams said.

There are lots of kids who find their way to the shop through the Jackson branch of the Audubon Regional Library’s Summer Reading Program.

“We offer a free scoop of ice cream when they finish reading a book,” Rhonda Tomb said. “We give the library vouchers, and they give the vouchers to the kids.”

Many of the kids show up on bicycles. Though La. 10, known as Charter Street, is a busy thoroughfare, Jackson is still a small town where everyone knows everyone and ice cream is still easily accessible by bike.

That’s the way it was when Kevin Tombs was growing up around Ray McDonald’s pharmacy, which opened in 1945.

“Another owner bought it from Mr. Mac in the 1970s, then we bought it in 1988,” he said. “We see so many local people who come in every day just for ice cream, and we also see tourists who are passing through.”

Among the tourists are busloads from the riverboats that dock in St. Francisville.

“A lot of them have stories about the soda fountains that they went to when they were growing up,” said Adams, who has been working for four months in the pharmacy.

Wilkins has been working there three years. Both staff other areas of the pharmacy when the shop isn’t busy.

“We leave the ice cream shop to them,” Kevin Tomb said. “They’re in charge of ordering the ice cream, changing out the flavors and serving the customers.”

The shop also serves up waffle cone boats filled with scoops of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream topped by chocolate syrup, whipped cream and a cherry. Sundaes and banana splits also are on the menu, but banana splits rarely are ordered.

“Customers don’t order banana splits,” Rhonda Tomb said. “They would rather order something that they can take with them.”

Which is why the waffle cone is so popular. Shakes, too, are high on the list.

“We have some people who like to sit at the counter to eat their ice cream and drink their shakes,” Kevin Tombs said.

Nostalgia reigns for those who opt to stay. A row of counter stools form a line along a black-and-white checked floor. Adding to the decor is a gold-colored, antique cash register. It’s still operational but not used.

Then there are the reproduction vintage shake and ice cream dishes. 

“We can serve them in glass dishes, but most of them go for the plastic containers,” Kevin Tomb. “They want to take it with them.”

The shop offered ice cream sodas in the beginning.

“We had the carbonated water and the syrup to make sodas,” Kevin Tomb. “It just never caught on for some reason.”

But when the waffles start cooking in the afternoons, those in the pharmacy start migrating to the ice cream shop. It doesn’t matter if they’re just stopping by to pick up a prescription or buying a Mother’s Day card.

Suddenly, ice cream becomes the priority.

“It smells so good at that time, and it fills the entire building,” Adams said. “You can’t resist it.”