King Kone is the kind of place that you have memories of as a kid. As you approach it on Rte 100, just outside of Somers and Katonah, you catch its glow and the snarky, personified cone looking your way. The prominent sign sits on a small stand-alone structure, as a pit-stop but more likely a destination for your children, or for your personal post-dinner relief.

You wonder how long it might take given the line stretches at all hours of the day out to the road. Experienced visitors are not discouraged, as the queue moves quickly. You’re greeted with gruff efficiency. Distracted parents or out-of-towners often being called upon to one of the 4 empty windows countless times. The cashier occasionally gives up on the 3rd offer to help “whoever is next” with a grim stare and eye roll to the eager ice cream shuttlers hovering over them, waiting to pour ice cream into a cone for the next order.

This pack of what seems to be strictly teenagers, save for the owner, is crammed into the closest you can get to a sweat shop in Northern Westchester. Surely it’s a good seasonal wage, and a great opportunity to diss customers, which you can almost hear through the windows as people stumble through their orders.

The sign reads cash-only – or Venmo, Zelle, and its equivalents – which makes you dubious about how the place does accounting. Surely it drops a few cones along the way, or shrugs at a few lines of payroll taxes. The outcry, however, if the tax-man took down this towering cone would cross all political lines, boundaries, and conspiracy-holders.

The picnic tables nearby on the dirt, ringed by a tilted fence, are covered with young parents, old grandparents, children of all ages and hair colors, adorned with baseball uniforms and chocolate sauce, at times running or yelling. Teens or early-twenties sardonically tilting and holding their cone as they shape its outcome.

As a child, I would have remembered the tables, our family dog sitting uncharacteristically close to us under the table, the humid night and the tired look on my fathers face, considering his portfolio, or perhaps the open contract or account payable for his work that week. Prices for a soft-serve cone run $4.50 - 7.50 for kids-size to king-size.

If you’re hungry, fried food is on offer, but many around seem to come for the ice cream. The soft serve, dipped or rolled, “twisted”, straight vanilla, or chocolate, is the main attraction. Many hard ice creams with complex flavors are also available. Seasonal, 7 days a week, 12-10PM, 109 NY-100, Katonah, NY