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Did you hear about the man who walked into a skate shop and ordered an ice cream cone?

Sounds like the start of a joke?

It’s not. It has happened twice in a week’s time at GDS Skate Shop, a store that just opened in the 1600 block of West Lee Street, near the Greensboro Coliseum.

The ice cream seekers weren’t as nutty as the topping on a vanilla sundae. They were motivated by the cast stone across the front of the shop engraved with the words “Guilford Dairy.”

Thus, Guilford Dairy Skate, or GDS Skate Shop as the business calls itself. The initials appear on the sides of the building.

There’s logic to this, what seems to be madness. Better yet, there’s history.

GDS Skate Shop occupies the building that, starting in 1947, was a Guilford Dairy Bar . It was next to Guilford Dairy’s processing plant.

Guilford Dairy once had the same cachet in Greensboro as Jefferson Standard Life, Blue Bell and Burlington Industries.

It needed no introduction. Guilford called itself “Your Hometown Dairy” to set itself apart from competitors such as Pet, Coble, Biltmore, Borden and Sealtest, all with main offices elsewhere.

Guilford’s snub-nosed trucks delivered milk to front and back doors throughout the city. It sponsored a popular Saturday kids show, “Circle K,” at the Carolina Theatre. Boys and girls licked Circle K Bars and watched live entertainment and movies.

The company’s name was further enhanced by a chain of Guilford Dairy Bars. The one on Lee remained after the company moved its offices and plant to a large new building on West Market Street in 1955.

Through a merger in the 1960s, Guilford became United Dairies, and still later, it became Flav-O-Rich.

The dairy sold all of its dairy bars to a company called Mayberry.

Mayberry covered the Guilford Dairy sign on Lee Street and at former Guilford bars elsewhere with signs of its own.

Otherwise, not much changed. People still came to buy ice cream cones and milk shakes.

Eventually, Mayberry closed the Lee Street operation. The next arrival was the 915 Skate Shop, which sold all kinds of skating gear. Down came the Mayberry sign, up went one for 915 Skate.

The business stayed for 13 years. Near the end, a strong wind or something knocked down part of its sign. The missing piece exposed the old Guilford Dairy sign.

The 915 Skate Shop didn’t bother to make repairs. The damaged sign said 915 Skate Shop on top, Guilford Dairy on the bottom.

When GDS Skate Shop opened a few weeks ago, the business had decided the Guilford Dairy sign would be the only one across the building’s front. It did paint the sign the skate shop’s adopted colors, blue and white.

The decision to let the old dairy sign remain was easy, says manager Kevin Townsend. People at longtime businesses along West Lee asked that it stay uncovered for sentimental reasons. Except for two requests for ice cream, the dairy sign hasn’t caused confusion, Townsend says. The big windows make it clear what products await customers inside.

For sure, Townsend says, some older people have stopped by to share memories of Guilford Dairy.

The dairy bar’s old hard-tile floor remains, but it has been covered with hardwood in the middle and softer, green tile in the front and rear of the store. Townsend thinks that if he looked hard he could find other reminders of the dairy bar’s days.

“There are still a lot of hidden secrets behind those walls,” he says.

There have been no second thoughts about naming the shop for a dairy bar, he says.

“The sign will remain. It’s ingrained in Greensboro’s history,” Townsend says, adding that the shop would like to find an old milk wagon to restore and put in front of the shop.

There’s a precedent for what GDS Skate Shop has done. So-called “ghost signs’ lurk in many places downtown.

The Galyon Depot still has Southern across the top even though Southern Railway merged with Norfolk & Western Railroad in the early 1980s to become Norfolk Southern.

And don’t try to get a loan at the Guilford Building, at South Elm and Washington streets. The building has Greensboro Bank & Loan engraved on two sides. The bank failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net