They come on bicycles and in Buicks, wearing bikini tops and blazers. Some pay in change, others with $20 bills. Gathered beneath a sun-bleached green awning, their differences fade when they shout their orders through the small glass window - a large peanut butter shake, a small caramel sundae with pecans, a kid's cup of vanilla.

There's just something about ice cream that brings people together.

"People can come up with the sourest faces on, but the second they get that cone, man, are they happy," said Lisa Walker, owner of Dairy Hut at 3705 5th Ave. N in St. Petersburg, Fla.

Walker has spent nearly 25 years behind that small window, which is decorated with electric green, yellow and orange pieces of paper touting banana splits, shakes, malts, sundaes, dill pickles, burgers and chili dogs - which she boasts are the best in town. But while the Dairy Hut has become an institution in the neighborhood, Walker worries that rising property costs and changing city codes may eventually close that small window forever.

Walker first started working at the small ice cream stand as a 16-year-old high schooler shortly after it opened in 1981. She stepped in for a friend who lost interest in the job after three months. Walker fell in love with the Hut, and became so close with original owners Nancy and Ron Smolinski that she called Nancy, "Mom" - an endearment that later transferred to Walker.

Ownership transferred to Walker, too. When the Smolinskis retired three years ago, Walker was so much a part of the place that it seemed only right she buy it. She had considered leaving once, to become a police officer, but reconsidered when she became a mother.

Now she wouldn't have it any other way. The ice cream stand is her American dream.

"I stayed here because it was fun, because I loved making people happy. I grew up here," Walker said. "And suddenly, 20 years passed and I owned it. How many people can say they've worked somewhere all their life and then own it?"

While she owns the business, she rents the property, which brings its own set of difficulties. Walker, and her customers, would like to think the ice cream stand will never close, but lately she's not been so sure. Developers have been interested in the site before, and though she is in the second year of a five-year lease, she worries she may eventually be pushed out.

A St. Petersburg code enforcement officer has been stopping by, finding small problems with the stand. The grease trap is too small, the picnic tables on the side of the building must be removed within the next six months, and if customers don't stop parking on a small strip of asphalt in front of the shop, Walker will be fined.

"We don't make a lot of money here, so it's hard to suddenly make a bunch of changes," Walker said. "But we'll try."

The Dairy Hut is no architectural wonder. Attached to the former Lockhart's grocery store, it's a squat beige cement hole-in-the-wall. Plastic change banks shaped like swirly ice cream cones and penguins sit atop wooden poles halfway between the ordering window and the street, beckoning drivers to stop in for a sweet treat.

Inside, the green linoleum flooring is scuffed and scraped, the walls decorated with family photos, postcards, framed retro diner art and shelves of sugar cones, foam cups and carryout boxes. Above the crockpot of secret recipe chili hangs a dancing hot dog and hamburger, a painted plywood gift from a loyal customer.

"We know it doesn't look like much, but it's a home away from home," said Walker. "It doesn't need to be fancy, it just needs to be good."

That's the attitude that has kept customers coming back, even when a new, shiny Baskin-Robbins store opened a few blocks up on 34th Street. The Dairy Hut will hit its quarter-century mark next week.

Though Walker has watched independent businesses disappear all around her, she still boasts 200 customers on a busy summer day. They come for the frothy shakes of their childhood and drive miles out of the way for a banana split. During the winter months when ice cream sales slow, Walker says the cheap corn dogs, french fries and burgers keep them coming. The friendships that develop over soft-serve help business a little bit, too.

Melrose Elementary School teachers Debbie McDonald and Carol Deese have visited the Dairy Hut almost every day, sometimes two or three times a day, for at least 20 years.

The two have hosted puppy parties at the shop's picnic tables for their golden retrievers Caden and Callie, and head straight to the Dairy Hut every day after school "for a drink." Their beverage of choice: Pepsi with crushed ice.

They love the vanilla soft serve so much, they've nicknamed the joint the "Whippy Dip," after the smooth, fluffy texture of their vanilla cones. They are there so often they've become a part of Walker's family, sending her get-well notes when she was recently sick with pneumonia, painting the dancing delicacies now gracing the walls and even attending her wedding 21 years ago. If they are sick, a Dairy Hut employee home-delivers.

"It's a friendly atmosphere," McDonald said. "You don't get that at the chain stores."

Angela Grant of Pinellas Park is also a long-time customer, first stopping by the stand one day 20 years ago after Lamaze classes while she was pregnant with her son. Thanks in part to the chocolate cones, she gained 65 pounds then, but enjoyed every bite.

"You know, a lot of people go on and on about Dairy Queen, but it just doesn't compare," said Grant, who stopped by Monday night with her husband to once again indulge. "The ice cream just has such a great taste, that's why this place has been here so long. Hopefully it never leaves."

On a busy summer day the stand sells about $300 worth of 75 cent hot dogs, $1.12 ice cream cones and $2.00 sundaes. Walker, her husband Ed, and their three daughters Mallorie, Arielle and Larissa, who all help out at the shop, aren't getting rich.

But through that small window they watch the story of their neighborhood unfold, feeding off of life's little surprises as others feast on what they serve.

On a warm Friday night, the heat rising in waves from the pavement, a booming black Oldsmobile Cutlass pulls up in front of the lit-up Dairy Hut. From out of the back seat lurches a 6-foot-2-inch tall man with short dreadlocks, pulling up sagging jeans as he approaches the window.

He orders a small vanilla cone with pink, yellow and green sprinkles.

The blond curlicued toddler in line looks at the man, then her father.

"I want what he has," the little girl says. "But no sprinkles."

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