I don’t remember what year it was exactly, most likely 1969 or 1970, but I do know it had to be spring, because the tulips around the hickory tree in our front yard in Sherwood Forest were blooming. My older brother and I, in a great state of excitement, had burst into the house begging for change from Mom because the ice cream man was in the neighborhood.

In that moment, Mom was on the phone, told us we would have to wait a minute or just flat out “no.” Regardless, there was no ice cream had that day. As a solution, my brother and I went and snipped all the tulips about half-mast and pretended they were ice cream cones. This became an early entry into many groundings for life we accumulated in our youth. I don’t think those tulips ever bloomed properly again.

Full page Kay’s Ice Cream ad from the Knoxville News Sentinel, August 1936

I also don’t remember which particular ice cream truck made the rounds in my neighborhood. But, for most folks my age, going out for ice cream meant going to Kay’s. I was a Fountain City kid, so our frozen treat Mecca was the Kay’s on Broadway near the duck pond at Cedar Lane next to what was then the Fountain City Bank. Though I am a chocaholic at heart, my favorite flavors were lemon custard, strawberry and cherry almond. On occasion I was allowed to really splurge on a banana split, the king of all ice cream confections.

Kay’s has long since faded to fond memory. Thanks to Food City, we can at least still pick up a quart at the grocery store. I am not one to look back at past decades through overly rose-tinted glasses, but there is one thing I do wish had still been around when I was a kid: the Kay’s Pony Carts.

I honestly never knew about them. I was flipping through the Images of America: Park City book and saw a photograph of eight pony carts with their drivers outside the old Kay’s headquarters on Magnolia Avenue at Cherry Street. This was Kay’s version of the ice cream truck, pony carts delivering sweet treats to nearby neighborhoods. The carts carried “ice cream sandwiches, hunkies, quarts, pints and ice cream cups.” Drivers could take orders for ice cream cake deliveries the following day.

Ice cream AND ponies? I would have fell out. I grew up in the years right after Fountain City was annexed, which meant all the properties that still had livestock could continue doing so until the property changed hands. So, there were people in and near my neighborhood who still had ponies, horses, even cattle on their lots. On two occasions my younger brother caught wandering equids thinking he’d landed a prize for his horse crazy sister. Neither the palomino pony nor the paint horse he snagged at a solid canter came with ice cream, though.

It turns out, the pony carts were not the brainchild of Kay’s, though. Kay’s originated in Chattanooga, founded by Iowa native Frank Kollmansperger in 1934. By 1936, the company was expanding into Knoxville and other parts of East Tennessee. Part of that expansion was purchasing 11 Step’s Ice Cream locations here owned by A. M. Stephens, who hadn’t been in the ice cream business that long himself. Part of that purchase included Stephens’ headquarters and manufacturing location on Magnolia. Step’s held onto it’s flagship store downtown for awhile as well maintaining its fleet of, you guessed it, ice cream pony carts.

So, which Kay’s did you go to when you were a kid and what was your favorite flavor? And did you ever get a hunkie from a pony cart?

Beth Kinnane writes a history feature for KnoxTNToday.com. It’s published each Tuesday and is one of our best-read features.

Sources: Images of America: Park City by Beck French Brewer and Douglas Stuart McDaniel; The Knoxville Journal and Knoxville News Sentinel digital archives.