The best time to visit BJ’s Velvet Freez has always been on a hot summer night when the crickets chirp in concert with the rattling mufflers along Union Boulevard, the stark glare of the fluorescent bulbs lighting the old drive-in and making everything look like an Edward Hopper painting.

In the heat, only the most nimble and strategic tongues can keep up with towering cones of melting soft serve.

A steady line forms at the counter, where high school-age workers pass sundaes, slushees, icebergs, shakes, malts, floats, dips and sprinkle cones through the tiny window. Kids’ eyes grow wide at the gravity of having to choose between cherry-topped banana splits, red-whiteand-blue Bomb Pops or bright green Ninja Turtle treats with bubble gum eyes.Fools and neophytes take their treats and retire to their cars to eat.

The experienced fans of this much-loved vintage soft serve stand hunched forward in the muggy, dark parking lot, letting the ice cream drip where it may. Beware the brain freeze.

Not much has changed at the Velvet Freez over the years. The tiny drive-in opened in 1954 as the Tastee Freez, on what was then the eastern edge of town. A 1955 black-and-white photo shows a man in a crisp white uniform and paper hat leaning out the same window in a summer night under a sign that reads “Millionaire’s cone 25¢.”

Prices have gone up since then, but only a little; $1.82 still buys you more soft serve ice cream than you could reasonably eat. Other than that, it’s pretty much the same.

The classic menu of frozen, mass-produced burgers, fries and onion rings whisks diners back to the automated, Space Age-Cold War 1950s – before the advent of modern annoyances like nut allergies and vegetarianism – when the U.S. had embraced new freezer-to-fryer technology that proved we were better than the Soviets. (You can bet those Commies didn’t have 25-cent Millionaire cones.)

If we had kept on the path of food modernization that inspired people to squirt ice cream out of giant metal machines instead of scooping it, today we might be sitting down to those futuristic food capsules the Jetsons ate.

But the counterculture came along and derailed everything so that now the cutting edge of food (local, organic, handmade) looks more like the past than the future.Not that any of that matters at the Velvet Freez.

Here, the counterculture never happened. The place feels stuck in a time warp.

Maybe it is no coincidence that it sits next to the only gas station in the city that still has full service.

And those Cold War goodies, served in plain, brown paper bags, are pretty good. The regular burgers here ($1.72) are small and plain but pleasing for small diners. The Giant BJ burger ($4.19), slathered in ketchup, mustard and mayo with lettuce, pickles and tomato, is a good grown-up escort to a thick chocolate malt.

The barbecue sandwich ($2.65), full of big, flavorful bits of chopped beef, is also a hit and so sloppy that it’s served in a paper dish with a fork.The best choice, though, is the homemade pork tenderloin sandwich ($4.42), a Midwestern treat, pounded, breaded and fried, then served with all the BJ fixings.

The real reason to come to the Velvet Freez isn’t the food. It isn’t the long list of frozen treats. You can get similar stuff almost anywhere. Prices are low and service is good, but that’s not it either.I’m almost certain that if the Velvet Freez tried to run the same business in a different location, it would falter.

There is some intangible something at work. Restaurants that last this long become more than the sum of their parts. They get a personality. They become more like friends than businesses. The Velvet Freez is a lot like “The Velveteen Rabbit.” It once may have been a shiny and new novelty squirting out inexpensive automated ice cream. But it has been enjoyed by locals for generations until the shininess rubbed off.

It was left out, summer night after summer night, until it grew very old and shabby. And in doing so, it became real.

BJ’S VELVET FREEZ**** (Five out of five) Old school sugar rush

Address: 1511 N. Union Blvd.Phone: 719-633-6365

Hours: 10:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays; 10:30 a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays

Entrees: $1.82-$4.42

Vegetarian: Fries and ice cream

Alcohol: No

Plastic: Yes

Photo by pikes-peak-cafe.com