225BatonRouge.com

Nobody ever seems impatient while waiting in a snowball line.

Maybe it’s the energy-draining summertime heat, or maybe it’s because snowball lovers understand the finesse required to assemble those Styrofoam cups of sweetness and brightly-colored ice.

If snowballs were just ice with flavoring dumped on, they would be nothing more than their lowly, crunchy cousins, the snow cone. No, the key to any authentic, successful snowball is “good, fluffy ice,” says Justin Gates, who is in his second summer running a stand on Stanford Avenue.

Ever since the invention of the shaved ice machine in New Orleans in the 1930s, serious snowball makers have been dedicating themselves to making ice so finely shaved that it looks like, well, snow. It’s not just the shaving, the ice itself is important—industry site snow-ball.com features diagrams of ice blocks and urges snowball makers to use clear ice instead of white (syrup makes white ice too slushy).

Opinion seems divided on the best way to apply the flavor to the ice. Some douse the top of a formed snowball with the syrup, others alternate ice, then flavor, then more ice. Debbie Nelson, who actually attended “snowball school” with a veteran maker in Abbeyville before opening up her own stand, Cool Tiger Ice, favors sticking a straw down the middle and pouring the flavor in that way. “You can make sure you have enough syrup that you don’t have any white ice. People tell me it makes a big difference.” Nelson takes her product seriously enough to manufacture her 39 flavors herself, to ensure proper flavor intensity.

Perhaps this is why, in this age of frappuccinos and Gatorade, people gladly brave the sweltering heat of a parking lot to get their daily fix.

Most want bubblegum or wedding cake, or the ever-popular strawberry. But more outrageous combinations are added all the time, like the cryptically titled “frog in a blender.” Either way, “When people want a snowball,” says Gates, “they want a snowball.”