Others go inside the white cement building to sit in one of the stall-like wooden booths. Here they may spend an hour, first engaging in serious discussion about which ice cream concoction to order, and later dawdling over an exotic gelid delight.
Still others line up at the counter, patiently waiting for one of the six young men at the fountain to take their order and heap scoops of ice cream on cones to take out.
"It was just like this when I came here as a small boy," said Medford resident Raymond Weise, who was sitting in a window booth perusing the menu one Saturday evening with his wife, Sharon, and two young daughters. "My wife came here, too, as a kid and we've always brought our kids here.
"And," he added, "we'd like to think the Cowtail Bar will be here 15 years from now so our kids can bring their kids."
But that doesn't seem likely. At least, not at its present location.
The Cowtail Bar - first opened in 1933 by the Gilmour family as part of Holly Ravine Farm - has been sold and the building will be torn down. After closing in December, the building sat idle until two enterprising ex-Cowtail Bar ice cream scoopers approached former Cherry Hill Mayor John C. Gilmour Jr. and asked if they could rent the building until the sale became final. Gilmour approved and even agreed to supply them with his homemade ice cream.
On June 13, the Cowtail Bar reopened with John Glaviano and Richard Schweitzer, both 24 and recent college graduates, at the helm. The two Cherry Hill residents said they hope the time between now and Aug. 31 - their anticipated closing - would prove to be a "dry run," because they plan to reopen the Cowtail Bar on a nearby site next spring.
That would please many people. But would they have the Moo Zoo, the popular petting zoo of barnyard animals that Gilmour added in 1964?
"Yes, definitely," said Glaviano, admitting that while the homemade ice cream is a big draw, so, too, is the zoo. Some people, he said, especially those with children, come to see the animals and step up to the dairy bar ''because it's here." Many, he added, also are wooed inside to buy feed for the animals.
Others, like Nancy Shields, bring their own pet food.
Shields, who came with her husband, Richard, daughters Janeen, 14, and Carol Fishman, 23, and Fishman's 3 1/2-year-old son Jeffrey, brought three bags of carrots Saturday evening to feed the furry friends.
"We come here every Saturday so I watch for sales on vegetables. This week carrots were three (bags) for a dollar," said Voorhees resident Nancy Shields, 44. For years she and her husband traveled with their young children
from their Tabernacle home to visit the animals and get ice cream.
"We love the place. I can't believe they'd tear such a landmark down. We're still praying they won't close and that something will go wrong with the sale. Where else are we going to take our kids for such a nice, inexpensive outing?" she asked as she watched her grandson coax a small goat to eat his last piece of carrot.
"Why, I came here in '56 and '57 with the lady who's my wife today and we've been coming back ever since with our kids," said Paul Bagano, 53, of Glendora, as he was being pulled toward the animal pen by his grandson Brian, 1.
"This place is tradition. When it's gone, there's no way you are going to be able to duplicate it for people like me who spent a lifetime coming to the Cowtail Bar."
The Cowtail Bar is open seven days a week from noon until 11 p.m.
