Blue Bell Ice Cream is returning to freezer shelves in Amarillo.

With that, our collective souls will be healed. We’ll be returned to some sort of Promised Land of delectability.

It’s all a puzzle to me.

Blue Bell Creamery yanked the ice cream from the store freezers when the listeria virus was discovered. Understandably, the folks at Blue Bell didn’t want to sicken millions of us.

It was here. Then it was gone. If memory serves, the feeling all over Texas was one of disbelief over the apparent demise of this Lone Star State favorite concoction.

I now will stipulate — as if you didn’t know it already — I ain’t of Texas. My family and I have lived here for nearly 32 years. We call Texas home and we have forged a great life in this wonderful state.

I tweeted something earlier today about Blue Bell coming back and my admitted lack of understanding of why this is such a big deal. A friend — a native Texan — reminded me that Texans hold some traditions near to their hearts and “Blue Bell is one of them.”

OK, I get it.

It must be that the creamery where it’s made is in Brenham, where every spring the bluebonnets bloom, filling Texans with pride in the beauty of state’s official flower.

Is the confection, though, that good? Is it the kind of treat that one recognize over all others? Diehard Texans, I suppose, would say it is. And I actually did proclaim my love for the stuff in an Aug. 5 blog post. But since then I have come to realize something during the months it was gone from our Amarillo stores: I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I might.

Don’t get me wrong. It does taste good. But I don’t think it rises to the level of, say, a certain barbecue sauce I discovered in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Dreamland Drive-In sauce is, indeed, the best BBQ sauce ever created. But … I digress.

This fascination with Blue Bell reminds me vaguely of a certain love affair some of us in high school back in Oregon had with Coors beer. We couldn’t purchase it in Oregon; but you could get it way over yonder in neighboring Idaho.

So-o-o-o … when one of our friends went to visit his aunt and uncle in Payette or Nampa, we’d fork over a few bucks and he’d bring back some Coors for us to swill — illegally, of course.

Looking back on it now? The brew was overrated.

Blue Bell Ice Cream is about to make a triumphant return. I’m glad, not so much for myself, but for my fellow Texans who’ve been yearning for it. You are whole again.