Dairy Mart holds 70th opening day

AINSWORTH - Cars circled the parking lot and customers packed the picnic tables at Ainsworth’s Dairy Mart April 8, as the soft serve ice cream shop across from Four Corners celebrated its 70th annual reopening.

In its seven decades of existence, the shop’s owners have expanded its menu, landscaped the area, built on additions, and added a drive-through window, where they’ve seen ever-evolving car models pull up with ever-changing music on the radio. The world around Dairy Mart has changed in that time as well: Ainsworth grew from a town of about 300 to a population exceeding 500, Highland Schools opened, and Highway 218 moved a few hundred feet away from the establishment’s driveway.

Even so, co-owner Ann Freyenberger said if you closed your eyes at the store on April 8, everything sounded just as it had at any point in the last 70 spring seasons.

“There isn’t any inside seating, kids are actually running around on the four acres and rolling down the hill, and they bring their dogs and stuff,” she said. “That’s not any different than when we came ... it was like that I think, even when the Beenblossoms had it.”

Founded in 1954 by Myrtle and Howard Beenblossom, Dairy Mart has changed hands several times, according to a Washington Evening Journal article published in 1994, commemorating its 40th anniversary. The store was sold to Burke and Helen McCreedy, who in ‘76 sold it to Wayne and Anne Freyenberger. The couple renovated and modernized the building, and today lease the business to their son, Greg.

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Wayne Freyenberger had spent six years running a Dairy Queen he rented for $50,000 a year in Petersburg, Illinois, before moving back to Ainsworth to take over the Dairy Mart.

“He was like, ‘I’m not working that hard for somebody else,’” Ann Freyenberger said. “And (Dairy Mart) was independent, it wasn’t a franchise, you didn’t have to pay into it ... but he was running the Dairy Queen, so he knew how to run it.”

In its time, the Dairy Mart has become something of a landmark in Ainsworth, often drawing former locals back into town in the six to seven months a year it spends open. Families have traditions built around visiting the shop, after Memorial Day services or other annual gatherings. In some households, multiple generations have worked at the soft-serve store, as teenagers on summer jobs grew up and eventually raised their own teenagers, needing their own summer jobs.

Freyenberger said the secret to the shop’s 70 years of success was its timeless appeal: a family spot, close to the road, with plenty of outdoor space for kids to play.

“We want it to be a family piece for people to be able to come and enjoy the environment,” she said. “I think it’s been like that from the beginning.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com