Great Banana Split Festival & Bank Robbery Anniversary!

Still time to dash to Latrobe to enjoy the 2nd annual Great Banana Split Festival, the highlight of last year being the robbery of a local bank. I thought I'd repost this today because they still haven't nabbed the culprit and I pine for a closure that would involve a chase and the felon slipping on a banana peel. 

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Dang! Looks like my “Good Morning America” segment promoting my book got bumped.

And why not? Who wouldn’t rather see home videos of George Stephanopoulus’s tweener daughters riding in the back of a limo and giggling about attending the VMA’s?

Still, I was disappointed.

The segment was filmed Sunday afternoon and the producers said GMA was going to air it this morning.

My quote: “Thank you, Elizabeth. Great to be here! Yes, my book is ‘Use All The Crayons!’ It’s available for $15.95 at amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and other fine outlets that care about bringing joy to all our lives and increasing the solvency of just mine.”

Perhaps the problem was I was about 400 miles from Robin, no one could see me, and my nifty little sales pitch was drowned out by nearly 1,000 other promoters who were waving fruit and shouting America needed to “Go Bananas!”

Yes, should it ever air, that will be the Rodell family in the very lower righthand  corner of your screen helping set the Guinness World Record for most people simultaneously peeling bananas.

And Mom used to wonder if I’d ever amount to anything.

It was the finale to Latrobe’s first Great American Banana Split Festival, a three-day extravaganza celebrating the official recognition that our old Tassel’s Pharmacy was in 1904 the site of the creation of the world’s first banana split by then 23-year-old pharmacist David Strickler.

Highlights included a banana split-themed sock hop, a banana split-themed street festival, a banana split-themed song contest and a bank robbery.

Can you believe it?

I mean the bank robbery not being banana split themed.

Yes, as many of our police on Friday at 11 a.m. were attending to the downtown ceremony where the historical marker was being unveiled, a crafty robber seized on the inconvenient logistics and held up the Citizen’s Bank one mile away before racing away to, I’m guessing, the Great American Crystal Meth Festival.

Oh, how I wish I could report the culprit was apprehended after slipping on a bank parking lot banana peel.

He and his driver got away with an undetermined amount of cash, which is now, like the suspects themselves, covered in gaudy red security ink. Reports say the radio transmitter-controlled dye packs exploded.

The same thing happened to Gale and Evelle Snoats in “Raising Arizona.”

I can’t believe any would-be bank robbers haven’t seen it. It’s a great movie. Very funny and parts of it are like vo-tech school for stupid crooks.

These exploding dye packs are very sound deterrents to criminal activity. They either stain or destroy the money, burn the robber with heat and tear gas elements and leave the getaway vehicles and the robbers themselves covered in indelible Disperse Red No. 9 ink.

Too bad they don’t have an equivalent deterrent to the Wall Street bankers who use clever accounting tricks to rip off banks and taxpayers of untold millions.

Oh, wait. They do. It’s  . . . none!

With reward money on the line, I’m on the lookout and am beginning to frustrate police with numerous citizen’s arrests. Note: for a person to be considered a suspect, more skin than just his or her neck has to be red.

It has me wondering if anyone will take extra precautions next August when Latrobe intends to again celebrate its role in the creation of America’s heirloom dessert.

For ceremonial purposes, I’d at least like to see if  sponsor Dole Fruits will pay to fill the packs with Disperse Yellow No. 9 ink.

Either way, I’m glad no one was hurt. I was in that very bank the previous week at the very time of the robbery

That’s my mother’s bank and I use that branch when I need to administer to her meager funds. Talk about your deterrents to crime.

So, naturally, I spent a good deal of the weekend wondering how I’d have reacted had the crime happened before my eyes.

Would I have tried to be the hero? Not a chance.

I would have run.

After all, turning yellow and splitting was for at least this weekend in Latrobe the civic thing to do.

Related . . .

Monkeying ‘round with bananas

The $45 million ATM withdrawal

The King of the Bank Robbers  . . . This was the 2005 story about America’s most prolific bank robber, Carl Gugasian. True crime fans will enjoy this one.

NetanYaHOOO for ice cream!

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Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under fire after it was reported he spends $2,700 a year on ice cream. He quickly disavowed the expense and swore it’ll never happen again.

Setting aside the fact I’m always disappointed when someone whose name includes the pronunciation, “yaa-HOOO!” selects the non-fun option, I’m troubled by the implications for Middle East peace.

Or perpetual non-peace, such is the case.

Think the Middle East is hostile now?

Imagine how it’s going to be now that Netanyahu knows he can’t be busted pecking at even a tiny tub of artisanal pistachio ice cream, his very favorite.

I believe people bent on consuming ice cream find it impossible to consider organized hostilities.

It should go without saying, but you can’t have a hot head when you’re thinking about ice cream.

You’re thinking about it right now, aren’t you? And unless I’m mistaken, your soul’s become serene.

So’s mine!

I speak from experience as both an avid consumer and former high school ice cream dipper.

I’ve written before about my happy history as a suburban pizza maker, but prior to that my boyhood jobs included working the counter at the old Friendly’s Restaurant on Bower Hill Road in Mt. Lebanon.

Thinking back on it now, it was maybe the best job I ever had, a fact that shouldn’t be diminished by the understanding I’ve only had five jobs, and that none of them lasted more than three years -- and that one was 20 years ago.

So me waxing nostalgic about about past employment is like the world’s oldest virgin regaling newlyweds with her stories about bygone days when she used to engage in what we once called dry humping.

There’s just not a lot of depth to the recollection.

But one thing is clear: there will never be such a thing as ice cream rage.

Scour the headlines most any day and you’ll find evidence of shootings, stabbings and angry fisticuffs in taverns, at sporting events, at amusement parks -- all places people go at least initially to find some happiness.

But I’ve never once seen a news story that began, “Two men were shot dead waiting in line for ice cream at . . .”

Part of it, I think, comes from the way we were raised. The promise of ice cream was used to keep most of us in line.

“Misbehave and you get no ice cream!”

I’ll be good! I promise!

The other side of it has to do with ice cream itself.

People waiting for ice cream are patient understanding they know they are about to receive ice cream. The people who have ice cream are happy because they have ice cream. And the people who’ve just consumed ice cream are in no mood for conflict because their bellies are full of ice cream.

It’s just delicious.

My favorites include Mint Chocolate Chip, Black Raspberry, and White House (vanilla with cherries). A local chain, Bruster’s, has a flavor called Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, which will be part of my last meal if I’m ever convicted of killing anyone in a non-ice cream confrontation.

Here in Latrobe we love the Banana Split, invented right here in 1904 by apprentice pharmacist David Evans Strickler at the old Tassel Pharmacy.

I also at least once a summer go to the grocery store to buy a Friendly Wattamelon Roll. The concoction involves about an inch of lemon sherbet wrapped around watermelon sherbet speckled with chocolate chips to give you -- Voila! -- an ice cream watermelon.

It’s perfectly refreshing.

At this point I feel compelled to ask that no one, please, send this link to the beleaguered Israeli prime minister.

You and I, we can dream about ice cream all we want. Heck, we could even make plans to share a sundae with two spoons, two straws and, of course, two cherries.

It’s what we one day hope for the Israelis and the Palestinians, although it’s likely both sides would insist it is there ancestral right to take both cherries for themselves and that would lead to U.N. involvement, cherry embargoes and escalating spit ball wars starting with straw weaponry.

So Netanyahu already has a lot on his mind and thoughts of forbidden ice cream binges would only make him nuts.

And that’s not the mindset anyone would want for a pivotal ally who right now is jonesing for two scoops of pistachio.

Related . . .

Back when melt downs were quaint

How I became a PROSEtitute