Andrew Gifford, author of “We All Scream: The Fall of the Gifford’s Ice Cream Empire,” stands outside the building that once housed his family’s ice cream parlor. While Gifford’s was much-loved by Washingtonians before it closed in 1985, Andrew Gifford recounts abuse as a child growing up. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)

If there was a secret ingredient in the ice cream at Gifford’s, it sure as heck wasn’t love.

In fact, if you cherished Gifford’s — if you’d rather preserve your happy memories of the long-gone local ice cream parlor — you might want to stop reading now. This column is going to get grim.

“I had someone write me, ‘I read your book and I was very upset you didn’t have the Swiss chocolate recipe in there,’ ” said Andrew Gifford , the 43-year-old grandson of the ice cream chain’s founder and author of “We All Scream: The Fall of the Gifford’s Ice Cream Empire,” a memoir published this month. “That was their takeaway. There are people so blinded by what it used to be.”

What Gifford’s used to be was one of the Washington area’s favorite purveyors of high-butterfat ice cream, with locations from Bethesda to Vienna. It was founded in Silver Spring in 1938 by John Nash Gifford. After John’s death, the company went to Andrew’s father, Robert. In 1985, with a bogus franchising scheme collapsing around him and bankruptcy proceedings underway, Robert Gifford disappeared. He skipped town with the company’s money — Andrew has heard figures ranging from $1 million to $10 million — and then lived off the grid for the next 15 years.

What that outline omits is the mental and physical abuse Andrew, an only child, says he suffered at the hands of his parents, from cruel pranks designed to scare him to beatings that drew blood.

“These are things you don’t talk about,” Andrew said over lunch at a pizzeria next to the building on Georgia Avenue that once housed the old Gifford’s headquarters, now a day-care center.

Andrew’s parents fought with each other as much as with him, eventually separating. He writes that his mother, Barbara, a religious fanatic fascinated by Charles Manson, lashed out in a uniquely distasteful way. Andrew said that when he was 9, his mother had him smash up thermometers in empty soup cans then drove to the Gifford’s plant where she slipped the tainted shards into the ice cream.

That’s what she told him anyway.

“I never witnessed it,” Andrew said in an interview. “I hope it’s not true.”

Montgomery County Health Department records only go back to the mid-2000s, so I couldn’t check for any customer complaints. Cal Headley worked at Gifford’s for 12 years and has known Andrew since he was a baby. (He runs York Castle Tropical Ice Cream on Rockville Pike.)

“I know the parents were kind of both off the wall,” Cal said. He had never heard the mercury/glass shards anecdote. He doesn’t remember any complaints back then.

“Maybe it was just to torture him,” Cal said of Barbara telling her son she had dropped mercury into the ice cream.

I asked Andrew if by writing such a frank tell-all he has figuratively dropped mercury into the fond memories so many people have of Gifford’s.

“I don’t want to set out to ruin these wonderful childhood memories that these folks have,” Andrew said. “This is a private family matter essentially, but I also think nostalgia’s dangerous. I think embracing it in the way that some people do is a bad thing.”

He felt he had to tell his family’s story, even if it risked curdling the love so many Washingtonians have for Gifford’s.

“As a tale of abuse, it’s very dark,” he said. But, he said, “I survived. It’s a story of resilience.”

Much of the book details Andrew’s hellish 10-year struggle with trigeminal neuralgia, an entangled facial nerve that causes excruciating pain. He was finally cured after an operation by, of all people, Ben Carson.

In an odd way, Andrew thinks the condition may have helped him survive his blighted past. As a young man, he was so focused on the pain that he had no time to focus on his childhood. When the pain was gone, he was in his 30s, better able to deal with the memories.

Both of Andrew’s parents are dead now. He lives in Bethesda and works in the publications department of a nonprofit organization. Always interested in literature, he founded a publishing house called the Sante Fe Writers Project. (Various attempts have been made by others to revive the Gifford’s recipes. The current Gifford’s ice cream on the market is made by an unrelated Maine company.)

Andrew writes in his book that his mother told him frequently that his father was sexually abused as a boy. He has no doubt his mother suffered from bona fide mental illness. I asked Andrew if he’s ever been in therapy himself.

No, he said, though he did once see a psychiatrist. It was in the midst of his trigeminal neuralgia, when his insurance company thought the pain might be psychosomatic. Said Andrew: “I sat down with the shrink and he said, ‘Well, it sounds like you have issues with your parents and, by the way, Gifford’s Ice Cream? My parents took me there!’ ”

For the next 40 minutes, the doctor regaled Andrew with his fondest ice cream memories.

Our entrees finished, I asked Andrew if he wanted any ice cream for dessert.

No. “It’s not like I have a phobia about it,” he said, “but I don’t seek it out.”

Twitter: @johnkelly

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