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Any photos not otherwise credited are from the personal collection of Frank Passic, Albion Historian.
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Morning Star, April 23, 2006, pg. 18 This is the time of year that when the temperature warms things up, people like to go outside in search of ice cream for an evening snack. You don’t need to drive to Jackson to get it. Albion is fortunate to have both hard and soft ice cream available, and the lines which form attest to popularity of this summer treat. My favorite flavor is lemon, which is hard to find. What’s yours? Back in the 1950s, the “soft serve” ice cream was a new phenomenon for our area. One of Albion’s early soft-serve ice cream stores was Young’s Frosty Freeze, located at 118 S. Clark St. just outside the city limits. If you’re wondering where this was, today it is the north part of the parking lot of Young’s Pharmacy. There were several businesses located on this general site in the 1950s and 1960s. In the summer of 1955, high school teacher James Young purchased the Monroe sisters (of Duck Lake) house and property on the east side of Clark St. He then decided to go into business for himself. The Frosty Freeze was built south of the house and opened in May, 1956. The Young family moved into the Hicks house just south of there, where the Pharmacy is now located. In 1962, Young converted the Monroe house into a pizza business called “This Ole House.” Young subsequently leased the Frosty Freeze, but took it back after the renter failed to pay. Gerald Lauer then leased the business and turned it into a Dairy Queen which he operated in the mid-1960s. In the meantime, the Youngs decided to tear down “This Ole House” and erect a self-serve Laundromat on that site. It opened on December 10, 1968. The pizza equipment was moved to the ice cream store, and the business was again leased for a few years under the name of the “Pizza House.” It finally was closed and demolished around 1973. The old Hicks house was demolished around 1975, and Young’s Pharmacy was subsequently constructed and opened in 1975 on the site. From our Historical Notebook we present a May, 1956 opening photo of the Frosty Freeze ice cream store. How many of our readers remember this, or the “This Ole House” which once stood just north of this? Special thanks to Jim Young for putting his thoughts together on paper concerning his entrepreneurial accomplishments, for this week’s article. 
May, 1956 opening photo of the Frosty Freeze ice cream store All text copyright, 2026 © all rights reserved Frank Passic | Artwork copyright Maggie LaNoue © 2026
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