It won’t be quite the same this summer on Country Club Drive next to the National Guard Armory.

I learned this month that the Little Dairy Queen won’t be opening up. It was always a tradition. People looked forward to stopping there when summer arrived.

Its history goes back to before my childhood. I remember many days when I’d go to Legion Field for an afternoon at the pool or for a baseball game and then stop for a treat at the Little Dairy Queen.

I liked the cones, the Dilly Bars, the Buster Bars and the hot fudge sundaes. Sometimes I’d splurge for a shake. When I got older the Dairy Queens began to offer blizzards. I sampled many different flavors and liked all of them.

My dad would treat my sister and I to Royal Treats (banana split, peanut buster parfait etc.) about once every week or two. We lived on Marguerite Avenue, only several blocks from the Little Dairy Queen. We could get home before the ice cream started to melt.

For many years, the Little Dairy Queen outshined the big Dairy Queen Brazier on East College Drive. It was considerably smaller, but part of its charm was that it was simple.

It was like a roadside ice cream stand, the kind that were often seen at resort communities. It was one of a kind. It stood apart from the chain ice cream places, the kind where if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.

What mattered was that it always had great ice cream. In my adult years it reminded me of the days when I was growing up. It was still the same. It still meant a lot to people of all ages.

My nieces and nephew enjoyed the Little Dairy Queen when they visited Marshall for a week at a time in the summer. They thought it was a different kind of Dairy Queen, but they liked it.

I hoped it would still exist when the new aquatic center opens on West College Drive. People could have had some of the new and some of the old, a new modern place to swim and a traditional place for ice cream afterwards.

Instead everyone will probably have to make a trek across town to East College Drive or to the commercial hub between HyVee and Menards.

It would be in the city’s best interest to replace the Little Dairy Queen with a new one of a kind locally owned ice cream parlor in the same location. It should be something like what Frank Schultz did with Toni’s Ice Cream Parlor in the 1970s.

I still remember Toni’s treats like the Mile High and the Hippo Bowl. We need that kind of entrepreneurship in the 21st century. We need the hidden gems.

I’m sure that Marshall residents would continue to go off the beaten path to Country Club Drive for something beyond the ordinary.

Big chain owned places gradually took over in the late 20th century because consumers felt assured of quality. People unfamiliar with Marshall undoubtedly often chose the larger Dairy Queen. The little one did well because of local business from people who knew it through experience.

We’re somewhat limited with hidden gems because Marshall isn’t a major tourist town. Most of our travelers are here on business, for family events or for sports tournaments.They don’t have time to wander around looking for one of kind local places.

It’s still possible, however, for something unusual to earn a good reputation and sustain itself. The Country Club Drive area needs new businesses that can draw crowds.

It needs something to take the place of County Fair. The West Side school property has been slated for residential development, but it might have more potential for something commercial that would stand out from the busier locations of commerce.

The area once had a Schwan’s ice cream plant, the O’Connell’s car dealership, Marshall first Shopko building and the Super Value grocery store that was replaced by County Market in the 1980s.

It now has Western Printing, a baton studio, the Escape Spa and a major convenience store. It also gained a new roundabout for smooth traffic flow. Those are good building blocks.

It’s always sad when a longstanding business goes away. Marshall’s downtown business district loses something when it loses an Olson and Lowe, a Kristi’s for Women or a Patzer’s hardware store. Like the Little Dairy Queen, those businesses continued for years thanks to local support from many loyal customers.

It all comes down to consumer choice. Millions of people choose the box stores and the chain restaurants. Hopefully the day never comes when that’s all we have left. We’ll have to see what the future brings.

The one silver lining with losing the Little Dairy Queen is that we still have the East College Drive location to get Dairy Queen treats. Dairy Queen is still a tradition. Hopefully it continues for at least one more generation.