An ice cream stand in Providence provides the connection to a community's life.

09:24 AM EDT on Monday, July 19, 2004

BY KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- A gray Chevy throbs with salsa music as it cruises past the Dairy King on Cranston Street, where Deanna Moore, a 19-year-old with aspirations, stands at the order window.

Moore wears a T-shirt with the image of her cousin, Jamal Bailey, 24, who was shot to death in Providence: dreams dashed, case unsolved. She wears blue jeans and a relaxed expression. She orders a brownie sundae -- her usual.

"I come here a couple of times a week," says Moore. "Since I was five, maybe. This is my neighborhood." Dairy King is part of a summer routine that also includes beach, movies and the air-conditioned comforts of home.

But Moore, who graduated from Central High School last year, plans to do more with her life. "I'm going to go to college. . . . I want to go into law." A grin blossoms on her face. "I'm very argumentative. I'll be a good lawyer."

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski Siblings Daisy Madrid, 15, Mally Castro, 14, and Pedro Madrid, 16, from left, order ice cream from the Dairy King, on Cranston Street, during a trip there with their father.

People are hanging out, standing on the porch of Gonzalez Taxi and in front of Pito's Restaurant across the street, and outside the Tenares Supermarket on the next block. A breeze riffles the trees.

Ice cream draws teenagers -- and their families -- like clover draws honeybees. And this store is a family institution owned by Harry and Penny Papavasiliou for 26 years.

"Last night, someone came with his children," says Penny. "I recognized him. . . . He used to deliver newspapers here when he was small." He was a customer as a boy, the Papavasilious say, and now his children are customers.

THESE ARE the demographics of urban ice cream stands.

You might think the odds are stacked against a kid here in this hard-bitten corner of the West End.

The West End, where, according to 2000 Census figures cited by The Providence Plan, less than half of public school students spoke English as their native language. Where 70.2 percent of the births between 1999 and 2002 were to single mothers, and nearly a third of those to teenagers.

The West End, where the eye can plainly see what statistics affirm -- the housing stock is shabbier and more overcrowded than elsewhere in the city, and the people ask, What Renaissance?

The West End, where, according to the 1990 Census, one in three families was living below poverty, and nearly half of the children were poor. And where periodically, candle-lit shrines mark a spot where young people have died from guns or knives, sometimes gang-related, sometimes not.

And yet, look around. The eye can plainly see, this is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the city. And one of the liveliest.

In one corner of a field of asphalt where the Dairy King sits like a boxy paean to the '70s, a man hawks CDs from an aluminum table. "Meringue Fiesta." "Enviro Merengue." "Bachata Fever."

Within walking distance of the Dairy King are a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist temple with gold lions and a green serpent out front, a Liberian church, storefront Christian missions, and the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where African-Americans have worshipped for generations.

Along Cranston Street, you can choose from Dominican, Mexican, Cambodian, Cuban or Chinese foods. You can buy a candle (and pray for love) at tiny botanicas; get a green card photo at a specialty studio; or ride the Gonzalez bus line to New York. You can get a "fade" at the barber shop, or weaves and braids at the beauty parlors.

And in front of the Cranston Street Armory, otherwise known as "the Castle," Mexican and Colombian teams chase soccer balls up and down the Ebenezer Knight Dexter Training Ground while kids play on the tot swings.

Journal photo / Steve Szydlowski The Dairy King restaurant sign, on Cranston Street in Providence, on a recent night.

ISMELY MINAYA pulls her car curbside, out of traffic on Cranston Street that has the hiccupy, start-stop quality of a Fourth of July parade.

The 18-year-old and her 15-year-old sister, Charilys Batista, join the growing line outside the Dairy King. Their order: a banana boat and upside-down banana split.

"It's like, the best we've ever eaten," says Minaya, dipping into soft ice cream and sauce. Forget the Newport Creamery, or the upscale stuff like Ben & Jerrys. Though their parents moved the family several years ago from this neighborhood to Cranston, now that Minaya has wheels she drives here with Carilys for dessert and urban collegiality.

This is their summer: in a day or so, Batista will fly to the Dominican Republic to visit her godmother. Minaya will stay put, and stay focused on her coming freshman year of college. "I'm going to Brown. I'm very excited!"

Most likely, she'll concentrate in pre-med.

Minaya works at Women & Infants -- "I want to have some money in the bank," she says -- and taking online preparatory courses before she starts college.

On this Friday evening, she focuses on her banana boat, trying to blot the drippings as ice cream meets the 80-degree air. Her sister digs deep into the upside-down banana split, mining nuts and chocolate-covered banana slices like gold nuggets, with her spoon.

AT 7:30 P.M., the line remains steady at 8 or 10 customers. The diminishing sun turns the sky the shade of coral pink, like the inside of a seashell.

Avery Diaz walks from his mother's apartment, just a few blocks away, to the Dairy King. He wears a 13-year-old's version of a cool-guy wardrobe: oversized jeans that hang below his knees, a T-shirt that hangs almost to his knees, and dark curls that fall nearly to his chin.

"I do a whole lot of things," he says. "I go to City Arts. I make jewelry. I dance hip-hop." He adds that "the girls torture me" at City Arts. "They pull my hair."

On this day, Diaz joined a City Arts field trip to DeCordova Museum in rural Lincoln, Mass., where a sculpture park graces the velvety lawns.

"It's the first time I went to a museum. . . . My favorite sculpture was the listening head," says Diaz. The sculpture was of a head, lying on its side, with one ear to the sky. "You know. He was listening!"

But the museum wasn't really this young man's cup of tea. "It was kind of boring for me. We can't touch anything. We had to be really quiet while the person was talking in the museum."

While Diaz waits for his ice cream, a guy peels out of Ford Street and rounds the corner onto Cranston Street on screeching tires. All eyes roll right, in the car's direction, then back to the order window which, ice cream fans may be happy to know, remains abierto (open) for six months a year.

Diaz recently moved to this part of the West End, and he's cautious.

"I stay out of trouble. All the drama in the street," he says sweeping his arm out over the neighborhood. "You see kids coming around with bats and all these weapons. . . . They were shooting [guns] on the Fourth of July."

He adds, "I stay in the house, I watch TV and video and play with my dog," whom he describes as "a Chihuahua mixed with something else." Diaz brings "Mami" the sort-of Chihuahua, to play at the Dexter Training Ground park in front of The Castle.

There is drama in the street. A man in a Thai bamboo farmer hat crosses paths with a skinny evangelist who steams along like an Energizer Bunny, handing out pamphlets advertising Eternal Life. "It is possible to live forever and you can do it. All you need is this tract and two minutes time. . . ."

The evangelist skips the boy, and rushes off in his red shirt and Chinos.

Avery reaches across the worn, fold-out Formica counter, takes possession of his $3.50 upside-down banana split, and bites into neighborhood heaven.