A Love Affair with Newport Creamery. The awful Awful Awful tragedy – Ed Iannuccilli

by Ed Iannuccilli, contributing writer

I was reminded of my love affair—sorta—with The Newport Creamery when I read that the Garden City, Cranston, RI location was closing. One of my former destinations, gone. In my youth, it was a place to meet friends. It was a place where I had a plan.

The plan was a young lady who worked at The Creamery on Smith Street.

The “sorta” was because of my catastrophic encounter with the Awful Awful.

The Newport Creamery is a Rhode Island institution, not only because it was founded in our home state, but because of its persona—a simple, clean, wide-open, well-lit space offering something I loved: ice cream. I also had a brief, quasi-love affair with the Awful Awful, which ended in divorce proceedings initiated by my digestive system.

Newport Creamery opened in 1928 when Samuel Rector took over a wholesale dairy in Newport. In 1932, his son joined the company, and they began delivering milk to homes on Aquidneck Island. In 1940, the Rectors opened a milk bar in Middletown, where the company still has its flagship restaurant. After the war, they expanded throughout Southern New England, one milkshake at a time.

At the Garden City location, I met friends after bowling at The Garden City Lanes (now long gone, like my dignity one fateful night).

The other Newport Creamery on Smith Street in Providence, was where I fell in love—not uncommon in those teen years—with a waitress. We dated for a while, but it drifted when I went off to college. Yes, the college was only two blocks from that creamery, but… oh well. Another unrequited love.

The Awful Awful?

During the 1940s, Bond’s, a New Jersey ice cream maker, concocted a recipe for a milkshake using ice milk and syrup. One early customer chugged the 24-ounce drink and declared it “awful big and awful good.”

In 1948, Bond’s made a deal with Newport Creamery to sell the Awful Awful under its trade name. When Bond’s went bankrupt in the early 1970s, Newport Creamery bought the rights for $1,000.

This quirky Rhode Island drink is the signature beverage of the Newport Creamery, and nearly became my tombstone inscription. The Creamery offered a free Awful Awful if you drank two.

One night, I gave it a try. At the time, I was enamored of that lovely waitress. She floated along with a smile. “Can I help you?”

I sat up straight, tossed back my shoulders, tightened them. “I’ll have an Awful Awful.”

“Sure.” Blue eyes, blond hair, perky, happy, eye contact. My heart soared. “Here you go. If you drink two, you get on free.” —- Yup

She plunked it down. I grabbed two straws like a man preparing for battle and drank the first red-and-white striped vessel loaded with thick froth.

Okay. I got this.

“Ready for another?” She beamed.

Of course. My shoulders were getting harder to keep firm and up. I felt my midriff expand in logarithmic progression. There was pressure from within. Distention. Heaviness. An ominous queasiness. I burped and tasted sweet milk swimming upstream.

No matter. I was young, ambitious, and catastrophically stupid.

“Buuurrrr-ugh. Bring me the second.”

She brought the second with a wider smile. I attacked it like a man who’d never heard of consequences. But as I sipped, I expanded. Twenty-four ounces of ice milk and flavored syrup is a biochemical weapon. I thought I could hear each gulp echoing as it hit bottom.

And that’s just one.

“Drink two, get one free!”—the mantra of the doomed. Halfway through round two, the cold bloat of my stomach touched the bottom of the counter. The queasiness made its way further south. I was in trouble.

I smiled. She smiled as she drifted along the counter, blissfully unaware of the internal crisis unfolding before her.

Dense fat. Syrupy sweet sugar. My body was staging a revolt. I was not about to ask her for a date. Not while fighting for my life.

I heard rumbling. I felt regret—the kind of regret that whispers, “I wish I were home. I wish I’d made better choices. I wish I’d never been born.”

I unbuckled my belt and looked around. There, in the corner, like a lighthouse in a storm: the bathroom.

What I didn’t realize then—but understand intimately now—is that the Awful Awful was loaded with lactose, and I was intolerant. I’d had issues with coffee cabinets when I was younger, but I’m a slow learner.

Not until I was training in gastroenterology did I realize that lactose was the culprit. Along with the gas, bloat, and cramps came the dreaded urgency—the kind of urgency I wrote about in my previous running story. The kind that makes Olympic sprinters look sluggish.

“Excuse me.”

“You didn’t finish!” Gad, I’ll never get a date with her now.

“I’ll be right back.” I took a brief but critical sabbatical from the counter.

When I returned—victorious, if somewhat pale—she smiled. “Would you like the free one?”

I stared at her like she’d just offered me a live grenade.

“No thanks.” I paused, gathering what remained of my dignity. “Hey… wanna go bowling on Saturday? I know a great place.”

“Sure!” She smiled.

I limped out into the night air. We did go bowling. We dated for a while.

And that was my last Awful Awful.

Copyright 2025

Ed Iannuccilli – edwrites.net