Friendly’s going bankrupt? That’s awful-awful.

I read the news today, oh boy.

Bad enough there’s no more Filene’s – and that there’s big, gaping foundation hole, eerily surrounded on three sides by the old façade, in the middle of Boston where once it stood. Bad enough that Copley Flair bit the retail dust, leaving me with the greeting card alternatives of Hallmark from CVS or the $5.95 individually- wrapped-in-their-own-plastic-sheathes works of Happy Birthday art from Papyrus. Bad enough that Bailey’s, with its terrible iconic emblem – used in all of its ads – of the crudely-drawn, sloppy spilling over sundae, is but a faded memory of ice cream past. And that there’s no place within walking distance where I can get a Brigham’s mocha-almond cone with jimmies. (Brigham's! Which used to be nearly as ubiquitous in Boston as those Hallmark-laden CVS’s have become.)

Now, as I write this on September 30th, it appears as if Friendly’s may be heading for bankruptcy.

Is nothing that’s New England-ish sacred?

I remember my first trip to Friendly’s, which had recently opened in our neighborhood.

It was a Friday evening, as my aunt and uncle were up from West Newton to have dinner with us (where “us” included my grandmother, who lived on the next street over, and whose three-family house we had just moved from), and Friday was our customary dinner-together day.

After dinner, my father took “us” (where “us” was the kids, including my cousin Robert and – if she hadn’t had a date that night and stayed in Newton – my cousin Barbara).

Anyway, we walked over to the new Friendly’s, about 5 minutes away. We went to the takeout window on the side and my father bought us all cones. I’m quite certain mine was chocolate, and I remember that the moment after the server put it in my hand, and I turned away, the ball of ice cream fell off.

I was in anguish.

Curiously, despite my generally excellent memory, I have no recall whether a) Friendly’s gave me a replacement; b) my father bought another cone (which probably costs all of 10 cents); or c) I just did without. While “option c” sounds completely wild and heartless – who would let a seven year old suffer with a sugar cone with no ice cream in it – I did grow up in a suck-it-up era, and in a suck-it-up family. So, implausible as it sounds, it may well have been “option c”. Which may be why I don’t remember it as well as I normally do such things, Fifty-plus years on, I may still be repressing my pain.

Fortunately, most visits to Friendly’s went more smoothly.

Friendly’s was the first “restaurant” I ever ate out in with friends.

When we were eight, I went there on a Sunday afternoon with my friends Susan and Bernadette to have ice cream sundaes. Susan’s cousin Marcia was a waitress there, and she waited on us. Sundae’s were 25 cents, and I got a hot fudge. Still the greatest, although now I have coffee ice cream instead of vanilla. I don’t recall whether we left Marcia a tip.

Although Friendly’s was never my family’s go-to for ice cream cones, we did walk up there occasionally on a summer’s night. While we were walkers, we were also “car people”, and one of my father’s great pleasures in life was taking the family out for a spin.

In the summer, heading out for a spin always meant a ride in the then largely country suburbs outside of Worcester, and stopping for ice cream at the Cherry Bowl in Leicester or at Verna’s in Charlton. If our spin had taken us in a different direction, we stopped for soft-serve at the Dairy-Delite on the corner of Main and Varnum, not far from our house.

I was only allowed to have chocolate ice cream, or the chocolate covered soft-serve, if we were going to eat our ice cream in situ. If we were getting back in the car, I had to satisfy myself with chocolate chip, maple walnut, or some other flavor that would not stain the cloth upholstery the way that melting chocolate did.

Whatever the flavor, my habit was to bite the tip off the bottom of the cone – always sugar, never waffle (except at Dairy-Delite, where a flat-bottomed waffle cone was the only option) – and, as the ice cream melted, to suck some of it out of the bottom of the cone. Family lore has it that I never realized that the ice cream was going to drip out the bottom, but however much spatial and mechanical reasoning I may have lacked (which was plenty), I did get that the price of that wonderful bite of the tip was generally going to be melted ice cream on my shirt. (Or, apparently, on the cloth upholstery of whatever Ford Fairlane we had at the time.) It was well worth it. It also made me the ice cream cone eater I am today: fast and furious. Get it all before it begins to melt. (I don’t always do it, but still, on occasion, I will bite the tip of the cone off. Yum!)

Throughout high school, and summers during college, Friendly’s was where you hung out after whatever. The main hangout Friendly’s were on Highland Street and in Tatnuck Square, and my friends and I favored Tatnuck, even though Highland was the more popular, and frequented by the more popular kids (i.e., those with money and cool clothing).

I didn’t go out on many dates in high school, but pretty much all of them included a trip to Friendly’s.

I was in a Friendly’s just a couple of weeks back with my sister Trish and our friend Michele. We’d stopped on the way back from The Cape, and I had a Happy Ending Sundae, which came for “free” with my senior-meal Big Beef on toast. I had hot fudge on coffee, and let Trish and Shelly each have a couple of bites, as I was the only senior at the table.

I hope that Friendly’s stays in business, and that this bankruptcy is just a necessary step to cleaning up whatever financial mess they’ve gotten themselves into.

Sure, with its over-long, tricked up menu, it’s not the Friendly’s of my youth.

But you can still get a frappe there. And probably even a fribble, which was the name they gave to the extra-thick frappe once Newport Creamery made them stop using the name awful-awful.

While I had plenty of Friendly’s frappes over the years, I never had an awful-awful/fribble. And now it may be too late!

I think I’ll go drown my sorrows in a raspberry lime rickey.

But if there’s no more Friendly’s, where am I going to get one of those?

Life sure can be harsh, can’t it?