Dad was part of the Moline food dynasties, starting very early, when the big franchise company let go of their shop. Lagomarcino's was not far away, downtown. He sold to Hasty-Tasty, the only family restaurant in town, and we favored Whitey's Ice Cream, only two blocks from our house. Dairy Queen invented the DQ Blizzard in our home town, and the Medds still manufacture it there.
I was on the ground floor at DQ.
My first birthday - one candle, one cake, one future baker.
He was born in 1910 and lived to be 85, finally paying for easy access to fresh dessert items, which included cookies, fudge, and the best peanut brittle in the world. He made bread donuts and cake donuts, experimenting with other items, like tiny pies that were easily made and quickly sampled on the way down to the basement. Danish rolls were exquisite.
At age 4 I symbolized the theme of flour power. This was on the annual Melo Cream calendar.
The secret to the products was the highest quality ingredients for whatever was made. If it was the highest quality chocolate, the best coconut, the finest peanuts, the finest flour - he used it rather than cheapen the taste for a little more profit. Besides that, if they were not properly fried, baked, or cooked, the finished items were tossed in the garbage.
We had an apple orchard near our home. I was chased up the tree by some angry Dobermans. Fortunately I took my donut, comic book, and film crew along. This was on the calendar too - no royalties.
Cleaning was as fastidious as the cooking, so I had the opportunity to help make the icings, the glazed donuts, the bread, the cookies, and the perfect peanut brittle.
Dad experimented with peanut brittle until he could get right combination of hot corn syrup, raw peanuts, and baking soda. Not enough bubbles - harder than concrete. Too many bubbles - yuk. The hot syrup cooked the peanuts as long as everything went well. The end result was easily eaten but impossible to stop. Attempts from other sources were more like tooth breakers and stale besides.
I learned a lot about the best ingredients at Melo Cream long before Deming changed the auto industry. It applied to study and the exchange of ideas. Clowns and faddists are popular for a time, but they are soon forgotten after the thrill is gone.
We had a lot of laughs at the shop. I probably put in more years than anyone else named Jackson. I even recruited the future Mrs. Jackson when Dad wanted me to work Friday nights. I said, "Only if you put Christina on the payroll." He did but miffed her when he said we did not fold boxes enough one Friday. She said, "Let's bury the shop in boxes next Friday." When he came in for work Saturday, before dawn, he saw stacks of boxes covering -
The table for rolling out dough;
All the floor freezer tops;
All the normal places for towers of boxes;
The big sink drainage board;
The glazing vat, which was covered with boards.
Anything else close to horizontal.
He laughed and laughed and laughed, especially when he found out what prompted the towers of boxes. That was often brought up with more laughter.
Notre Dame,1982. The book on grit says PhDs have the highest grit score (5). I think it started at the donut shop and at home. Christina was always encouraging.
The Medd Brothers invented the Blizzard and the machine that makes them.
The machine is still licensed by them and made in East Moline.
The Blizzard is a Jackson family favorite, but I normally get a large cone to share with everyone.
So Warren Buffet owes them big time, but the Medd Brothers owe Lady Margaret Thatcher. In her first job as a chemist, Thatcher helped develop the emulsifiers that made soft-serve ice cream possible.
Medd-O-Lane Dairy Stores and The Historic Quad City
Dairy Queen locations
Dairy Queen's classic 5 Points Davenport Iowa location. Burned in the early 2000's and was not permitted to rebuild by the city. The outstanding ice cream cone blinker lights lit up the sky for miles. The picture below was listed as 326 11th Street, Bettendorf but appears to be the 5 points location mid 1960s. Dairy Queen 326 11th Street, Bettendorf, Iowa. Dairy Queen's 7th Street East Moline location. Opened in the 1950's, it changed to Dan's Dairy Kream in the mid 1960's. Notice the original Dairy Queen sign on top, now altered to spell Dan's Dairy Kream. The cow on top of the location was an East Moline icon. Dairy Queen International Headquarters, East Moline, Illinois. Date Unknown. Former Dairy Queen International Headquarters 2004, East Moline, Illinois. Dairy Queen's International Headquarters, East Moline, Illinois early 1970s. Rockingham Road and Concord in Davenport, Iowa Dairy Queen. Medd-O-Lane Dairy Store 4th Ave, Moline, Illinois. The historic Dairy Queen #2 on 4th Ave. in Moline, Illinois as it appears today. Illinois side Dairy Queen locations taken from the 1951 city directory and the 1971 phone book; 2425 - 5th Ave., Rock Island
17th Ave & 7th Street, East Moline
4320 - 4th Ave., Moline (Dairy Queen #2)
536 West Highway 1, Milan
2724 - 23rd Ave., Moline
2117 - 11th Street Rock Island
3301 - 23rd Ave., Moline
Iowa side Dairy Queen locations taken from the 1955 city directory; 326 - 11th Street, Bettendorf
3002 Brady Street, Davenport
2006 Hickory Grove Road, Davenport
1401 E. Locust, Davenport
3027 Rockingham Road, Davenport
1046 State, Bettendorf Medd-O-Lane Dairy Stores Moline, Illinois and Bettendorf, Iowa DQ Whip-Cream bottle in the middle of these goodies! Medd-O-Lane was your place to go for the full line of Dairy Queen products plus Dairy Queen was located right outside the door in the same parking lot! Notice the Hiland Potato Chips bags on the rack in the background. The Classic 1960's neon Medd-O-Lane sign. Gary & Jim Medd spot checking the pasteurizing equipment at Medd-O-Lane Dairy. If you have pictures of the classic Quad Cities Dairy Queens, please click here to email me!
GJ,,
The Moline DQ references in this article, Mildred's ice creamery, was owned and operated by my grandfather and grandmother, CR and Mildred Medd. The store was across the street from Wheelocks Drug store and four doors up from present day Casey's! He first DQ store in Moline was opened by CR Medd in 1941 on 4 th Ave, This store set the standard for the famous flat top DQ store design. Medd's , Duke's, and Noble's were names spoken ofmoften during the early years, not much on McCollughs!
The Medd brothers, Dick, Ralph, Ronnie, all from Moline, designed and have the patent on the Blizzard DQ machine and in particular the mixing blade. International DQ found out about the candied malts being made at the Moline DQ's when the brothers took the candied malt mixing machine to the St Louis, Missouri DQ convention in the mid 1970s. IDQ signed agreements with the Medd brothers for the rights to use the machine, now being built by Duke and Sons, East Moline. Also, the first mint Dilly Bar came from a Moline DQ store in 1977/1978. Moline has history!
left to right - Homer Jackson, H. Noel, Candace, the Blogger, Gladys. I date this around 1949, since I was born in late 48. Dairy Queen was a welcome alternative to a bottle of milk.
After a few years, however, Grandpa McCullough was still thinking about soft ice cream, and he convinced his son that they should find out whether or not the product would capture people's tastebuds. They asked one of their customers, Sherb Noble, if he would arrange a special offering of soft ice cream at his store in Kankakee, Illinois. With an advertisement of 'All you can eat for 10 cents,' the sale was held in early August 1938. Using an ordinary commercial batch freezer, the men put the soft ice cream into five gallon containers and then hand-dipped the product into 16-ounce cups. In two hours, Noble and the McCulloughs dished out over 1,600 servings. A short time later, another sale of soft ice cream was offered at Mildred's Ice Cream Shop in Moline. The response from the public was the same. With such overwhelming success, the McCulloughs began searching for the type of freezer that would make dispensing soft ice cream a reality. Funding Universe
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Ice cream manufacturers have always known that ice cream tasted best when it was "soft frozen" at approximately 23º F. When ice cream was served at near 0º F, it would numb the taste buds, making the product less flavorful. Ice cream manufacturers also knew that if there was ever going to be a way to serve a "soft frozen" product to the public, a new kind of freezer would have to be invented.
In 1938, near Moline, IL, two ice cream manufacturers, J.F. "Grandpa" McCullough and his son, Alex, decided to find out how the public would react to a "soft frozen" ice cream product.
The McCulloughs enlisted the help of one of their customers - Sherb Noble who owned an ice cream retail shop in Kankakee, IL. They decided to have a sale. They called it the "All the ice cream you can eat for only 10 cents" sale. The sale was held on August 4, 1938. They dished out over 1,600 servings in about two hours, and people were lined up and down the block. The McCulloughs now knew that the idea of selling a "soft frozen" product to the public had a lot of potential. Now, all they needed was to develop a freezer that could continuously dispense a "soft frozen" product.
The solution to their freezer problem came when "Grandpa" McCullough saw an ad in the Chicago-Tribune which advertised a "continuous freezer that dispensed frozen custard". The ad was placed by Harry M. Oltz of Hammond, IN, who owned a patent on his machine. The McColloughs and Oltz got together and on July 31, 1939, signed the Agreement that would launch an industry.
The McColloughs obtained the manufacturing rights to the Oltz patent. However, the Oltz Freezer was crude and difficult to operate because it used ice and salt to freeze the ice cream chamber. The McCulloughs knew that a freezer needed to be built which would incorporate mechanical refrigeration. So, in the fall of 1939, the McCulloughs proceeded to have a prototype freezer built that would incorporate mechanical refrigeration.
In January 1940, the prototype freezer was ready and was installed in "Grandpa" McCullough's basement for testing. It was during this time that "Grandpa" McCullough discovered that "soft frozen" ice cream dispensed by this new freezer tasted best when it had only 5 percent butterfat rather than the standard 10 percent or more butterfat used for regular ice cream. In fact, this newly developed "soft frozen" product was not ice cream at all, but rather ice milk. The experiments also concluded that the new "soft frozen" ice milk would taste creamier, smoother, and would hold its shape best when served at 18º F.
By Spring of 1940, the McCulloughs had finished their testing and then ordered four freezers to be built to their new specifications. The first two machines were finished in May 1940 and were slated to go to Sherb Noble who had found a location in Joliet, IL, to start the new business which would serve the new "soft frozen" ice milk. The store was jointly owned by the McCulloughs and Noble but the new business could not open its doors until it had a name.
Since "Grandpa" McCullough had always referred to the cow as the "Queen of the Dairy Business," and consequently, referred to his "soft frozen" product as the "Queen of Dairy Products," it was decided to call the store and the product Dairy Queen. The Joliet store opened on June 22, 1940. The second store opened in Moline, IL, on April 1, 1941 and a week later, the third store (Sherb Noble's second) opened in Aurora, IL. World War II sharply curtailed the expansion of Dairy Queen. In fact, at the end of the war in 1945, there were only eight Dairy Queen stores in operation.
Today, there are over 5,600 Dairy Queen stores throughout the world. In addition to Dairy Queen soft-serve products, some Dairy Queen stores also offer the "Brazier" line of hot foods. However, Dairy Queen is still the largest seller of "soft frozen" dessert products in the world. (Source - Florida DQ)
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In 1948, Axene arranged for 35 store owners and territory operators to meet in Minneapolis with the purpose of establishing a national organization. In December of the same year, the first official meeting of the newly incorporated Dairy Queen National Trade Association (DQNTA) was held in Davenport, Iowa. Organized as a not-for-profit corporation, with C.R. Medd as its first president, national offices were soon established in the city.
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A very popular Dairy Queen treat today is the Blizzard Treat, which is ice cream with pieces of cookies, brownies or candy blended in. It has been a staple on the menu since its introduction in 1985, a year in which Dairy Queen sold 175 million Blizzards.[4]. The Blizzard was invented and copyrighted by Richard, Ronald, and Ralph Medd of Iowa. It is traditionally served upside down to prove the thickness.
This enlargement shows that while others were posing with a cone, I was pursuing it.
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Brenda Roggendorf commented on your link:
"Hi Greg, H C Duke & Sons of East Moline are the makers of the Dairy Queen Machines. For years my son was one of the welders that helped make the machines. "
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GJ - Jim Medd, MHS 66, worked at the family Medd-O-Lane. A classmate says he ran one before moving to Florida. Details are welcome.
We can be doubly proud of DQ's Moline connection and the Blizzard's origin in our fair city.
MHS Hall of Fame potential? I think so. Our family loves to go there and it is an American institution.
Dairy Queen's classic 5 Points Davenport Iowa location. Burned in the early 2000's and was not permitted to rebuild by the city. The outstanding ice cream cone blinker lights lit up the sky for miles. The picture below was listed as 326 11th Street, Bettendorf but appears to be the 5 points location mid 1960s.
