Some things we don't mess with in America. We don't sew a flag to the bottom of our jeans. We don't use oil in our pastry or Red Delicious in the filling and call it apple pie. And we don't mess with 100 years of history when it comes to banana splits.

		If you go: Tropical Ice Cream Sunday WHAT: Continuous servings of 12 tropical flavors of Reinholds Ice Cream, Smucker's Ice Cream Sundae School and Root Beer Floats (if you want to create a banana split, take your own banana) WHEN: noon to 4 p.m. Sunday WHERE: Pressley Ridge School, North Side EVENTS: Children's carnival, face painting, mini-Olympics, petting zoo and pony rides COST: $6 per person; $20 for group of four; children age 2 and under admitted free PARKING: Heinz Field Lot 1A with transportation to Pressley Ridge, North Side Here's the scoop on splits around town Ice Cream Joe takes banana split to Pitt campus

According to several sources, this is what has become the traditional banana split: An oblong glass dish holds a banana sliced lengthwise (that's where split comes in). The banana cradles a generous scoop of chocolate ice cream, a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of vanilla. Chocolate syrup (or, better yet, fudge topping) is poured over the chocolate ice cream, strawberries over the strawberry ice cream and crushed pineapple over the vanilla.

Then comes the whipped cream. Not ersatz whipped topping with an ingredient list longer than the Bill of Rights, but cow's cream that has been whipped and sweetened with a little sugar. Next, a bright red maraschino cherry is dropped on each scoop. (The old cherries would have had now-banned Red Dye No. 4, but some things do have to change.) Chopped nuts are optional, but the best ones would have pecans.

The banana split was created by David "Doc" Strickler, a Latrobe pharmacist with an optometry shop upstairs. He split that first banana in 1904. His royal dessert cost 10 cents, another thing that has changed over the years -- banana splits now often land in the $5 range.

Other states and other people have tried to take credit for Doc's innovative idea. But as the Western Pennsylvania newspaper of record, we took the definitive answer from Shannon Jackson Arnold, author of an entertaining new book called "Everybody Loves Ice Cream: The Whole Scoop on America's Favorite Treat" (Emmis Books, 2004; $19.95). The 176-page book is filled with classic retro illustrations, and Arnold's in-depth research and sense of humor make it stand out.

"In the beginning," Arnold begins, setting the tone for true ice cream lovers, "there was light. And on the eighth day, there was ice cream."

As for banana splits, Arnold lays out the scene. Strickler was just back from Atlantic City, where soda jerks were, as we say today, thinking outside the dish with all kinds of fruit desserts. Meanwhile, back in Latrobe, the days were getting shorter and the weather was getting colder. "He was looking for a way to drum up business in his pharmacy" by luring students from nearby St. Vincent College, wrote Arnold. Thus, the banana split was born.

Still, there are pretenders to the throne of banana split invention.

"Davenport, Iowa, says native son Gus Napoulos of Elite Confectionary invented the split in 1906 while looking for something to do with ripe bananas," Arnold wrote.

"Columbus, Ohio, claims Letty Lalla at Foeller's Drug Store whipped one up in 1904 when a customer asked for 'something different.' " Wilmington, Ohio, citizens have a Banana Split Festival in June to honor their "inventor," Ernest "Doc" Hazard. In 1907, they claim, he came up with the classic three ice cream flavors, three toppings, whipped cream, nuts and maraschino cherries. By our calculations, that Doc was three years late.

In Pittsburgh, of course, we don't have a banana split festival, but we have the annual Pressley Ridge Ice Cream Sunday, which this year offers a continuous tasting of flavors from noon to 4 p.m. this very Sunday. If you're hungry for a banana split, you'll have to take your own banana -- and banana boat dish, too. (Our neighbor has a fabulous one from Williams-Sonoma.)

Pennsylvania may be a state that gave the world Joy Ice Cream Cones in Sharon and the Penn State Ice Cream Short Course, but banana splits seem to be in dwindling supply. What is a college education coming to, anyway, when PSU's University Creamery doesn't sell banana splits? Even where splits are served, not to split hairs, the soda jerks seldom toe the traditional line, and some even offer low-fat or sugar-free splits.

Gone are the golden days when the higher the butterfat, the better.

Where have all the banana splits gone? Gone to diets, every one. Not that we care, but a generously scooped banana split may have upwards of 1,657 calories in a single serving (add another 104 calories if you count the banana).

Sure, we know there's an obesity crisis, but you don't skimp on banana split quality -- you share. One extra spoon is good, three even better.

When we began our undercover investigation of what Doc Strickler's idea had wrought, we started with Arnold's state-by-state list of "550 Great American Ice Cream Parlors," many of which make their own ice cream or frozen custard (a creamy frozen dessert made with eggs for extra richness). Borrowing from the Humphrey Bogart line in "Casablanca, "With all the ice cream parlors in all the world, how did Arnold come up with hers?"

In a telephone interview from her home in Wisconsin, Arnold mentioned Dave and Andy's in Oakland because of the quality of their homemade ice cream. Klavon's in the Strip was included, she said, because "it's such a great, classic ice cream parlor, even if they don't make their own."

Klavon's was recently reopened by Ray Klavon, retired-teacher-turned-ice-cream-guy. Like his grandfather, James Klavon, who started the pharmacy and soda fountain, Ray buys Reinholds Ice Cream, today the only brand still manufactured in Pittsburgh and the source of the tropical flavors for Ice Cream Sunday.

That historic soda fountain was our first stop, but far from our last. In the end we would visit or call 15 ice cream places, including a few chains and franchises (such as Youngstown's Handel's), in search of the banana split.

"Gimme a banana split, please," I said, which is totally out of character.

Banana splits were my dad's fat of choice; mine was always hot fudge sundaes, hold the cherry.

"Do you want the traditional banana split?" asked Klavon's soda jerk, nephew David Graham, with a meaningful gaze. "Old soda jerks always come in here and tell me how to make them."

Turns out that their banana split wasn't what has become traditional at all.

Though the strawberries were on the strawberry ice cream, the pineapple was on the chocolate! The chocolate was on the vanilla! "This is the way my grandfather made them," Ray Klavon said. And so it goes, the "recipe" handed down from scooper to scooper.

The greatness of a banana split -- and I'm its most recent convert -- is the synergy of one flavor building on another, mingling with the fresh banana, building with crunchy nuts, topping the sensation with whipped cream. It has to be served in a classically shaped glass banana split dish, too. Plastic doesn't cut it and never will. Ice water served on the side in a classic soda fountain Coke glass doesn't hurt, either, the better to clear the palate.

After taste-testing eight banana splits in less than a week, I still hadn't found one to match the recipe in Arnold's book. Then one dark and drizzly night last week, we made the trek to Millvale, where the lights of Regis Steedle still burned brightly. We ventured in, and 16/17-YEAR-OLD Kelly Steedle (scooping is not just a guy's job anymore) set to the task. Nice fresh banana, sliced perfectly down the middle lengthwise. Homemade ice cream -- chocolate, strawberry, vanilla. Her movements had the precision of a dancer, the concentration of a chemist. Chocolate syrup on chocolate. Strawberries on strawberry. Pineapple on vanilla. A lavish serving of whipped cream.

"Do you want nuts?" she asked. Two adults nodded; two children stood by. "Pecans?"

"Pecans!" Then, after one declension, three cherries.

It was a masterpiece of beauty, begging for a digital camera for the image to be sent via computer all over America.

Then the piece de resistance for the persnickety: She placed an oval plate under the split to hold our four spoons. Life was delicious.

Though we attempted a second split not far away at Yetter's that night, it was closed on account of a new grandbaby.

So there you have it. Despite eight banana splits, we know there are many more out there to try. Next might be my former Ross neighborhood supplier, Mitchell's (he didn't return my inquiring e-mail by the deadline), Kittanning's Mulberry Street Creamery, or a place not formerly on my radar, Sarris Candies' ice cream parlor in Canonsburg.

Still, it's clear the traditional banana split has become a rare breed: toppings on the wrong flavors of ice cream, round bowls, plastic split dishes instead of glass, and -- horrors! -- bananas sliced instead of split. Tradition! Has it gone the way of the nickel cone?

Then I turned back for a closer reading of the ice cream book's section on splits and the Latrobe Doc: "Strickler placed three scoops of ice cream on top of a banana sliced lengthwise, added strawberries, raspberries and crushed pineapple, and piled marshmallow sauce and chopped nuts on top."

Raspberries! Marshmallow! So much for tradition. Isn't American ingenuity grand?