Demand for ice cream keeps Punk rockin'

“Hey, Punk!”

Hmm. Not exactly something you’d expect to hear from behind the window of a neighborhood ice cream shop. A dark alley, maybe. 

But on this gorgeous summer evening as the sun was beginning to set, that call grew louder and more frequent as the line snaked around the building.

First, it was a few families with small children. Then some young couples rolled in. Then a youth baseball team arrived, fresh off a victory and hungry for more. Much more.

“Hey, Punk!”

You couldn’t blame Phoebe Kristek and Jen Kennedy if they were becoming a little testy.

Yet they weren’t. And never did.

Though it seemed every customer they served was replaced by four more, both Kristek and Kennedy handled the cold rush with plenty of poise and personality.

“Aww, this is nothing,” Kennedy said.

They just needed replenished as a new wave of vehicles entered the parking lot. So they called out to the shop’s owner.

“Hey, Punk! We’re low on collars to mix the Twisters. And we need some vanilla, please!”

Mariellen Ketterer was in the back room feverishly scrubbing the silver collars. And if you don’t know who Mariellen Ketterer is, you’re not alone. She hasn’t been called by that name since it first appeared on her birth certificate in December of 1958.

She paused for a moment to reassure a somewhat startled visitor in the back room.

“Yep, they all call me Punk. They probably call me a few other things when I’m not around,” she said, laughing. “That’s OK, as long as I’m not here.”

Ketterer doesn’t recall how the nickname started, but she believes it’s a variation of Pumpkin, which her dad dubbed her as a baby.

And nearly 58 years later, the moniker is stickier than rocky road dripping down the side of a cone.

“I actually worked here for two years and still didn’t know her real name,” Kristek confessed. “I had to ask someone.”

So that’s why it’s called Punks Ice Cream Shoppe.

Now you know.

Back Room Banter

Hot pink.

It’s Punk’s favorite color and it’s everywhere.

The tiny structure with the flat roof is pink. So are the lines in the parking lot. Need to grab a pen or label near the cash register? Yep, they’re pink, too.

So it’s no surprise that Punk, Kristek and Kennedy are darting around the shop in pink, short-sleeved jerseys and white shorts. It was dinner time, so Punk was sipping a can of Coke from a straw and munching on a banana.

“They’re better when they’re frozen and dipped in peanut butter and chocolate,” she quipped between bites.

A Punk’s life is not for the faint of heart. Opening day is April 1 each year and the season runs until a few days before Halloween. Seven days a week she arrives at her shop at 6 a.m., then leaves around noon to catch up on errands, chores at home and sometimes even sleep. She returns nightly at 7 and usually doesn’t leave until the last machine is scoured at 2 a.m.

“I have not been in my living room since February,” she said. “I have no idea what it’s like to sit down.”

Punk was getting a little antsy and opened the side door. Her ice cream delivery was late and this wasn’t a good night for the driver to arrive late.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she spotted his truck on the closed-circuit TV behind her.

“There’s the ice cream man! Thank goodness!”

Punk gets her hard ice cream from Perry’s in New York. She makes her own soft ice cream each week with 10 percent butter fat and a “secret twist.” The mix comes from Turner’s Dairy and is swirled together inside the shop’s machines.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Rob Stevens as he rolled a dolly stacked with barrels of different flavors. He was sweating through his black T-shirt that read, “Life is a bowl of Perry’s.”

“I had to sit for nearly two hours in traffic on 376. It was crazy.”

Punk hustled over and the two formed a makeshift assembly line, handing barrels from the back room to the freezer in the front. There was mint chocolate chip, cotton candy, moose tracks and black raspberry. Just in time as more customers lined up at the front windows.

“We easily take more than 200 orders a night,” she estimated. “I honestly don’t know where everyone comes from. It’s amazing that we can get so many people coming every night for ice cream.”

On his way out, Stevens, 39, explained that it was his first day by himself on the job.

“Anything and everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for me today.”

As he backed the dolly up to leave, he stumbled into a stack of papers on the counter, scattering them across the black-and-white checkerboard floor.

“See,” he said, smiling. “That’s my day.”

Trials and Tragedy

Truth be told, Punk stumbled into her ice cream business, too. As the 1990s were drawing to a close, she wanted to buy a bakery instead.

Punk had earned quite a reputation as a home baker, crafting cakes for weddings and trays upon trays of cookies for Christmas.

“Everyone kept calling me to place orders. My kitchen was huge and I just ran out of room.”

So she and her husband, Tom, visited Stangl’s Bakery in Ambridge when it was for sale. But they didn’t make an offer.

“Let’s just say it would have taken a lot of work to get it up and running.”

Soon after, the two were driving past the old Baden Twist at the corner of Route 65 and Virginia Avenue and spotted a “For Sale” sign. They stopped to inquire about the purchase and learned they were 11th on the list of potential buyers.

A week later, Punk took a call from the owner.

“He said, ‘OK, you’re up.’ ”

On Aug. 4, 1998, Mariellen and Tom Ketterer officially bought the building and property, renaming it Punks Ice Cream Shoppe. It was a quick, but not exactly smooth, transition.

Punk still chuckles when discussing it.

“We signed the papers at 4 and opened at 5.”

And in the days ahead, the business featured lots of trial and error — with heavy emphasis on error.

“Oh my gosh! It was like, ‘please bear with me. I’m learning!’ ” she recalled, laughing. “Then it hit me. I was the proud owner of an ice cream store. I had put my house up for it, so it was do or die.”

At the time, Tom worked at Valvoline Oil in Rochester. The two would often golf together in the morning, then head to the shop to prepare for the evening ahead. Tom would work from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Valvoline, bring his wife dinner, then jump in to help until closing time. 

“That was our heyday here,” Punk said. “We had so much fun.”

Punk and Tom also enjoyed taking long rides on their Harley Davidson motorcycles, a routine they would continue until the summer of 2008.

On a muggy July night, a month to the day after turning 49, Tom was killed in a motorcycle crash near the bottom of their driveway.

“He was going to retire at 50,” Punk said quietly. “We had been together since we were 15. Thank God I had this place when he died. I don’t know what I would have done.”

On the rear wall in the shop’s storefront are five caricatures of the Ketterer family. They were drawn in 2006 by Sam Thong at Station Square in Pittsburgh. 

From left are Tom, Punk and their three children, Emily, LuCinda and Eric, who are all now in their 30s. Each worked at the shop during their school days, but have since moved on to different careers.

“There was a time when it was all family working in here,” Punk said. “We had all my kids and some nieces and nephews.”

LuCinda still jumps in when needed, as do Punk’s sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Susan and Dave Boehm.

“They’re absolutely fabulous,” she offered. “They really help me a lot. Dave just put a new hot water tank in for me this year.”

Six tattoos adorn Punk’s body. She raised her right sleeve and displayed the image on her arm.

“It says, ‘First Sight, Last Breath.’ My husband would say that to me all the time. He was cremated and the tattoo was made with his ashes.”

Extended Family

And then there are “her girls.” They’ve also made an indelible mark on Punk through the years.

She now has six part-time employees handling the front windows for her.

“I love my girls,” she said. “I like to get them when they’re 14 or 15 and then they stay with me.”

This is Phoebe Kristek’s fifth summer at the ice cream shop. The 20-year-old will be a senior at Duquesne University in the fall, and is working toward a marketing degree with a minor in advertising. She hopes to own a sewing business after graduating.

“This is a small store and it’s a close-knit group here,” she said. “We’re all comfortable with the work and the customers are great. I’m learning a lot from Punk about what it’s like to run your own business.”

As she nears two decades in the shop, Punk reflected on the smiles she’s seen across the counter. She said some regular customers travel from Pittsburgh and eastern Ohio. Her niece even spotted a woman wearing a pink Punks T-shirt — all the way near her home in Atlanta.

“Our customer base is wonderful. They’re just such good people. A lot of them couldn’t even reach the counter when I first opened. Now I’m looking up to them.”

Punk remembered a bride and groom who stopped to get some ice cream before their wedding reception. Others have come straight from the prom.

Mike and Kayla Novak, who used to live near the shop, arrived with their new baby straight from the hospital. 

“This was the first place their baby visited,” Punk said proudly. “Those two actually used to make our staff dinner sometimes. They would grill out and bring it over for whoever was working that night. We have some fantastic customers.”

And, sometimes they stand out for different reasons.

“Oh, there’s a lot of nights I remember,” Punk said, laughing.

She recalled one customer who had parked at the top of her lot, which features a relatively steep grade. She could tell he had been drinking when he came to the front window, but didn’t realize how much until he returned to his car. After finishing his ice cream, the man got out of the vehicle to toss his wrapper and napkin into a trash bin. He had left the car in drive and it started rolling down the hill toward a family enjoying their sweet treats at a picnic table.

“I saw the car begin to roll and I started screaming for the family to move. Thankfully, they got out of the way.”

Punk attempted to wrestle the man’s keys from him, but he resisted and drove away — with the driver’s side door wide open.

“It was crazy,” she recalled. “I’m guessing he got picked up down the road somewhere.”

As the sun set and a warm breeze accompanied the darkness, the moon reflected off the waters of the Ohio River below. Families were relaxing on four picnic tables with pink umbrellas, while two children played on “Punks Express,” a wooden train that also serves as a picture-taking area.

Punk walked through the parking lot and greeted many of her guests.

“You know, I was 40 when we bought this place,” she reflected. “I wish I would have done it a lot sooner. It’s a lot of hours, but I don’t feel any pressure. I don’t punch a time clock.”

She pointed to another growing line of customers at the front windows, including a man with a black-and-white pit bull. Punks offers a special doggie sundae with a biscuit on top.

“Its not about just going out for ice cream. This is an experience. It’s a thing to do. No one says, ‘let’s hurry up and get ice cream.’ ”

She paused and grew pensive.

“I’m just blessed. Seriously. This place is the best thing ever. It never gets old.”

But she admitted there will come a day when she ages beyond the point of working. At that time, she’s hoping one of her grandchildren will run the place.

“I really want to keep doing this until I can’t. At least until I’m old and gray.”

She laughed.

“I know, I know. Everybody says I already am.”

Maybe. But any grays are vastly overshadowed by a vibrant shade of pink.

And it seems to be everywhere this time of year.

(This article appeared in the Beaver County Times on July 27, 2016)