A Love Affair with the Newport Creamery
The awful Awful Awful tragedy
I was reminded of my love affair—sorta—with The Newport Creamery when I read that the Garden City, Cranston, RI location was closing. One of my former destinations, gone. In my youth, it was a place to meet friends. It was a place where I had a plan.
The plan was a young lady who worked at The Creamery on Smith Street.
The “sorta” was because of my catastrophic encounter with the Awful Awful.
The Newport Creamery is a Rhode Island institution, not only because it was founded in our home state, but because of its persona—a simple, clean, wide-open, well-lit space offering something I loved: ice cream. I also had a brief, quasi-love affair with the Awful Awful, which ended in divorce proceedings initiated by my digestive system.
Newport Creamery opened in 1928 when Samuel Rector took over a wholesale dairy in Newport. In 1932, his son joined the company, and they began delivering milk to homes on Aquidneck Island. In 1940, the Rectors opened a milk bar in Middletown, where the company still has its flagship restaurant. After the war, they expanded throughout Southern New England, one milkshake at a time.
At the Garden City location, I met friends after bowling at The Garden City Lanes (now long gone, like my dignity one fateful night).
The other Newport Creamery on Smith Street in Providence, was where I fell in love—not uncommon in those teen years—with a waitress. We dated for a while, but it drifted when I went off to college. Yes, the college was only two blocks from that creamery, but... oh well. Another unrequited love.
The Awful Awful?
During the 1940s, Bond’s, a New Jersey ice cream maker, concocted a recipe for a milkshake using ice milk and syrup. One early customer chugged the 24-ounce drink and declared it “awful big and awful good.”
In 1948, Bond’s made a deal with Newport Creamery to sell the Awful Awful under its trade name. When Bond’s went bankrupt in the early 1970s, Newport Creamery bought the rights for $1,000.
This quirky Rhode Island drink is the signature beverage of the Newport Creamery, and nearly became my tombstone inscription. The Creamery offered a free Awful Awful if you drank two.
One night, I gave it a try. At the time, I was enamored of that lovely waitress. She floated along with a smile. “Can I help you?”
I sat up straight, tossed back my shoulders, tightened them. “I’ll have an Awful Awful.”
“Sure.” Blue eyes, blond hair, perky, happy, eye contact. My heart soared. “Here you go. If you drink two, you get on free.” —- Yup
She plunked it down. I grabbed two straws like a man preparing for battle and drank the first red-and-white striped vessel loaded with thick froth.
Okay. I got this.
“Ready for another?” She beamed.
Of course. My shoulders were getting harder to keep firm and up. I felt my midriff expand in logarithmic progression. There was pressure from within. Distention. Heaviness. An ominous queasiness. I burped and tasted sweet milk swimming upstream.
No matter. I was young, ambitious, and catastrophically stupid.
“Buuurrrr-ugh. Bring me the second.”
She brought the second with a wider smile. I attacked it like a man who’d never heard of consequences. But as I sipped, I expanded. Twenty-four ounces of ice milk and flavored syrup is a biochemical weapon. I thought I could hear each gulp echoing as it hit bottom.
And that’s just one.
“Drink two, get one free!”—the mantra of the doomed. Halfway through round two, the cold bloat of my stomach touched the bottom of the counter. The queasiness made its way further south. I was in trouble.
I smiled. She smiled as she drifted along the counter, blissfully unaware of the internal crisis unfolding before her.
Dense fat. Syrupy sweet sugar. My body was staging a revolt. I was not about to ask her for a date. Not while fighting for my life.
I heard rumbling. I felt regret—the kind of regret that whispers, “I wish I were home. I wish I’d made better choices. I wish I’d never been born.”
I unbuckled my belt and looked around. There, in the corner, like a lighthouse in a storm: the bathroom.
What I didn’t realize then—but understand intimately now—is that the Awful Awful was loaded with lactose, and I was intolerant. I’d had issues with coffee cabinets when I was younger, but I’m a slow learner.
Not until I was training in gastroenterology did I realize that lactose was the culprit. Along with the gas, bloat, and cramps came the dreaded urgency—the kind of urgency I wrote about in my previous running story. The kind that makes Olympic sprinters look sluggish.
“Excuse me.”
“You didn’t finish!” Gad, I’ll never get a date with her now.
“I’ll be right back.” I took a brief but critical sabbatical from the counter.
When I returned—victorious, if somewhat pale—she smiled. “Would you like the free one?”
I stared at her like she’d just offered me a live grenade.
“No thanks.” I paused, gathering what remained of my dignity. “Hey... wanna go bowling on Saturday? I know a great place.”
“Sure!” She smiled.
I limped out into the night air. We did go bowling. We dated for a while.
And that was my last Awful Awful
Copyright 2025
Looks like you chose the right sub specialty!
Dear Dr. Ed:
Thanks for sharing your touching story about a Rhode Island icon, Newport Creamery, and its interesting history. The closing of the Garden City store is a huge loss, and I do hope that others will remain open. One summer I worked at a Newport Creamery in Pawtucket near Korb’s bakery and Main St. Little did I know that my experiences with this company helped shape life and career values.
The company was always concerned about the employees and customers; safety being the number one concern, then respect, and efficiency. District supervisors would visit randomly on a regular basis to check in on operations, especially cleanliness and food service regulations. They would chat with employees to get informal feedback about our perceptions of working at that location. They would also inquire about our personal education and professional goals often noting that NC had opportunities for career growth. As a business, there was a need for marketing, accounting, store managing and training among other opportunities. One person conveyed that my degree in education would provide me with skills that could enhance their staff training program. I graduated from Rhode Island College and worked in the Central Falls School District starting in the classroom and then retiring as an elementary school principal.
While serving as a school principal, a teacher called the office to request assistance as the first graders were having an ice cream party because they had reached a milestone with their reading progress. I volunteered to go and assist serving ice cream; then, as I scoped, muscle memory took over and happy thoughts of that college summer surfaced.
Besides scooping ice cream, lifelong values embraced by NC 20 years earlier were still a part of my repertoire and helped shape practices as an educator and school principal. These values included:
• Both physical and emotional safety comes first.
• Everyone gets greeted with a smile.
• Treat all people with respect.
• Celebrate achievements.
• Cleanliness and appearance do matter.
• Create a family atmosphere.
• Be on time, multitask and assist a co-worker if you can.
I utilized informal feedback on a regular basis. As a school administrator I was expected to be in the cafeteria daily. There were several other adults there too and I took the liberty of sitting with different groups of children each day. Here is where I could converse and glean information about their well-being and discuss their learning. During bus duty, I would ask children to show me what they had learned, and they would proudly pull papers from backpacks. This allowed me to get a good picture of the strengths, needs of children and teaching practices at our school.
The ice cream party also brought alive the concept of careers that had been presented to me during a chat with a NC District Supervisor years ago. It is never too early for children to be exposed to career opportunities and start thinking about the future. Our school took an initiative where children’s literature, guest speakers and field trips were utilized for career awareness beginning in first grade.
Other tidbits:
I have never tasted an Awful Awful as milk and ice still cream don’t like me. I was asked out by a very handsome attorney who used to frequent the restaurant for lunch; but declined because I was dating someone that summer. It was a pleasure seeing the happy faces of children enjoying ice cream with mom, dad or extended family, and family lunches and dinners were tasty, filling and affordable. During family lunches and dinners there were no cell phones or other technology, just happy conversations.
Owner, Peter Rector was a pillar of the community. He and his wife Judy were very humble people who gave of their time, talents and treasures by serving on various boards and supporting community needs. Mr. Rector was a generous supporter of scholarship programs, especially at Salve Regina University.
And with that the story is told. Newport Creamery‘s fine qualities still symbolize ice cream with a “cherry on top.”