I haven't called Jenny yet.

I will some day soon ... perhaps 31 flavors from now, after I've sampled a Strip District Split, Float the Three Rivers, Raspberry Phosphate, New York Egg Cream and Tin Ceiling Sundae. Heck, by then, I'll really need to call Jenny Craig.

Ever since I discovered Klavon's, I scream for ice cream.

I may be hoarse, but I'm not hungry, especially after gorging on an eight-scoop Super Bowl Sundae, complete with bananas, crushed nuts, strawberries, sprinkles, various flavors of whipped cream and, of course, a bright red cherry.

Come along, Ben and Jerry, Tom, Dick and Harry. Take a seat on one of the stools that resemble Coca-Cola bottle caps and let me give you the scoop.

Before Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart and those other big-name box stores created the mall haul, prescriptions were filled and household goods were bought at neighborhood apothecaries.

And Klavon's, opened in 1923 by James and Mary Klavon on Penn Avenue and 28th Street, was one of the most popular. After 56 years of business, it closed in 1979, the boarded-up windows and doors locking in priceless memories and Art Deco memorabilia.

In 1999, a few years before he retired as art instructor at Grandview Elementary, Ray Klavon (with the blessing of his two brothers and five sisters) decided to reopen his grandparents' Strip District store as an ice-cream parlor. When the boards were removed and Ray stepped inside, he was shocked to find that everything was frozen in time. The 16-foot green serpentine stone counter, the marble inlays, the light fixtures, the mahogany decor, the inlaid terrazzo floor, the wooden phone booths, the stools, even the banana split boats ... Klavon's was exactly the way it was when grandma and grandpa shut the doors. (OK. So a few odds and ends are repros. Spot any of them, and a Pecan Ball is on me.)

Klavon's is not a museum but a slice of life, a reminder of how things once were and how things still could be. No one is in a hurry. Life is idyllic and trouble-free, perhaps because we know that outside ice cream melts as quickly as our dreams. Klavon's serves soups and sandwiches during the week, but it's the ice cream and the memories that people feast on. Know that when you order whipped cream, the cream is real and really whipped, not that nondairy "whipped topping" hurled into plastic tubs. (There's even a choice of flavors!) Stopping at Klavon's, even for a (banana) split second, means spending time with Doris Day paper dolls and Bobbsey Twins books and marbles and Roy Rogers pinball games -- just some of the items Ray and his siblings showcase in original store display cases.

This is a place where being vanilla is a great thing. And being a soda jerk is even better.

On a recent Saturday morning, Ray gives me a tour of the emporium -- it's like dropping in on a first-class, well-run antique store. We head to the "prescription room" where countless bottles and tins of drugs are stashed on wooden shelves. Anything that legally had to be removed has been (think cyanide, mercury, strychnine), but what remains still fascinates, especially the bottle of compressed tablets manufactured in 1913 by the H.K. Mulford Co. whose main ingredient is cannabis. ("Like opium," the label promises, "it relives pains and spasms but it does not diminish the appetite or check secretions.")

Ray regales with warm, fuzzy stories; the warmest and fuzziest makes me misty-eyed, as he remembers the time an elderly man ("at least in his 90s") walked into Klavon's, looked around and burst into tears. "He was taken back by the memories," Ray recalls.

Such are the stories Ray and his staff will serve up.

Deciding on what to order won't be easy. One item comes with a bonus of sorts: Order a Super Bowl Sundae, and a Polaroid will be taken and your mug will be posted on the Wall of Fame. While waiting. Please put your two cents in ... slip one cent into the vintage scale and weigh yourself (before you indulge!), slip the other into the gumball machine. Get a white gumball marked imprinted with a "K" and trade it in for a 25-cent piece of candy.

And you wonder why I haven't called Jenny yet.

But I will.

Maybe Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Saturday.

But never sundae.