Thread: Ice Cream Men

Where I live now we have no ice cream trucks on our road. It is a farm road and the houses are just too far apart. When I lived in Derby, the smallest city in Connecticut, there were two ice cream trucks. One was the classic "Good Humor" type truck. A beat up, red step side pick-up truck with a big white freezer box on the back. The driver's name is Joe. Joe is Italian and his truck plays a tarantella as it rolls down the street. It also has bells, eight or ten bells, arranged on a metal rod over the cab. Joe pulls on a string to move the rod to ring the bells. When he gets flagged down, Joe stops his red and white truck, gets out and asks what the customer wants. The freezer box has three or four doors in it and Joe knows exactly where each different treat is stored. A popsicle is in one door, a bomb pop anothe a toasted almond bar may be inside a different door. Joe sells dozens of different frozen goodies and he know instantly where to reach and find each one. Joe had been Derby's only ice cream man for twenty some odd years until Mike came along.

Mike drives a Mr. Softee truck. A large white step van that plays awful music (have you seen the crappy horror flick about the ice cream man?). Mike doesn't get out of his truck while he sells ice cream. Mike stands inside the truck, high above the children standing at the curb. He sells chocolate or vanilla soft serve ice cream from a window, like a rolling Dairy Queen.

Joe and Mike have not worked out the route thing. On a summer evening, they are frequently on the same block at the same time. Bells and horns and crappy music all blaring simultaneously. Kids run around from truck to truck, dollar bills clenched in their hands, trying to decide what they want. I lived in a third floor walk up on 9th St. When Joe and Mike were on the street I liked to stand on my front porch, looking down at the confusion in the street below. Joe and Mike never look at each other.

I had a fantasy about Joe and Mike driving like maniacs up and down the streets of Derby, crashing into each other at every corner as they race to be first on the block. I pictured the music and bells a crazy soundtrack to a horrible demolition derby in Derby sort of nightmare. The trucks knocking kids off their bikes and crashing up onto the porches of houses. Picture the doors of Joe's truck swinging open as he careens around the corner from Hawkins Street onto 9th St, strawberry shortcake bars and ice cream sandwiches spilling out of the truck. The kids diving for the fallen treats as Mike barrels around the corner from the other direction. The two trucks travel at a ridiculously high speed (for ice cream trucks in a residential neighborhood), side by side trying to force the other off the road. An Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme turns right from Smith St onto 9th St, at the opposite end of the block from Hawkins St. The elderly woman driving is confused and frightened when she sees the two ice cream trucks flying toward her. The music blaring, horns blowing a tarantella, bells clanging, Joe and Mike are shouting obscenities at each other, the old lady screams and the voices of dozens of kids yelling to the trucks to stop, some of the kids have been chasing the trucks for blocks.

not bad I wonder who controls that turf now...

Undoubtedly one of the new MS13 gangs has taken over the turf. Of course, Joe and Mike's remains have yet to be discovered.


....sorry for the morbid post, I just got finished watching a "Gangland" special on the History channel.