Back then, we knew something was up if our mother returned from ShopRite with a half-gallon of Breyers ice cream. It meant that another 8-year-old first communicant had feigned an understanding of transubstantiation. It meant that someone was celebrating her first birthday, or that someone had seen his last.

Most of all, it meant a reprieve from the cheaper fake version of ice cream that usually defiled our freezer, a store-brand ice milk that tasted like nothing so much as frozen sadness. Ice milk represented dessert as punishment.

But in certain working-class homes, the Breyers brand lent a momentary class that lasted as long as room temperature would allow, in part because it was “All Natural.” The Breyers vanilla that my father used as a salve for his psychic wounds (administered late at night, by spoon) had flecks of vanilla bean. And the Breyers strawberry that I preferred could be stirred into a fruity, pinkish goop that I savored in loud, teasing slurps; the more this irritated siblings, the sweeter the taste.

Today, you will still see the Breyers brand at your friendly neighborhood grocery conglomerate. But do not assume, as I did, that just any Breyers carton will transport you to those halcyon days when a war waged in Vietnam, the president kept an enemies list and the slurping of melted strawberry could ignite a glorious dining-room donnybrook. Things have changed.