Every day, Rupp would see a crowd of people outside a tiny shack near his St. Louis apartment and wonder what the fuss was about.
“After about two months, I decided to stop and buy one,” he said. And to his surprise, the cup of shaved ice “was fine and soft and every spoonful was saturated with syrup.”
It was so different than the snow cones he remembered, where the ice was crunchy and the flavoring pooled in the bottom of the paper, cone-shaped cup.
Since that day in 1979, Rupp — along with his brother Gordon and other extended family — have made Utah a hub for the sweetest “snow” on Earth.