I wasn’t aware of the range of items people are putting on pizza now. I’ve eaten pizzas with most of the old standards, even if I didn’t like them, but I’m happy enough with just a few ingredients now.
For the early retirement question, I voted I’d go ahead and do it. Then, of course, I’d get a divorce, because if I were in the kind of marriage that didn’t allow for a compromise when faced with a choice that would make one of us unhappy, it would be time to call it quits.
And I have vivid and fond memories of the ice cream truck that came through our neighborhood most summer days of my childhood. My mom gave us fifty cents a week allowance in the late 60’s. If I’m remembering correctly, you could get a popsicle for a dime, a Dreamsicle or Eskimo Pie for a quarter, and a Nutty Buddy for 50 cents, so we had to plan out our purchases carefully.
The neighborhood we were living in when my kids were very little almost never saw an ice cream truck, and they went wild when they realized that there were trucks every single day on our new street, which goes past a park with a playground. I think the pandemic may have killed off the roving trucks, but there are still vans selling snow cones or ice cream at the park on hot afternoons.
I was really disappointed in the last selection of sandwiches. They’re so pedestrian. Most of my favorites were dropped after the first round. grump grump grump
We lived in a semi-rural subdivision when I was a kid, but occasionally there was an ice cream truck that came through. I remember it blasted “If You’re Happy and You Know It” from a loudspeaker. I don’t recall it ever actually stopping, though. We certainly never bought anything from it.
I currently live a block from a city park where youth soccer games are held during the summer. The ice cream truck always shows up right when soccer practice / a game is ending.
When I was a kid in Arizona we’d have ice cream trucks a couple times a week in the summer, still once a week or so in the off-season.
Now all grown up and living in an old neighborhood still in Arizona, we have one show up every few weeks at random intervals. What we have in spades, a couple times a day, we have Mexicans on delivery bikes or in electric carts selling drinks, respadas, elotes, and bagged snacks. Nothing frozen solid though – probably difficult to keep the temp low enough.
In Southern California, we had several competing ice cream trucks, and each played a different tune over a loud speaker. One played “Turkey In The Straw”, the other played a tune i can still hear in my head, but can’t place the title. The trucks were packed with dry ice, so the ice cream treats were frozen hard all day when they came out if the truck.
The neighborhood I’m living in now is also too rural for an ice cream truck.
ETA: but come to think of it, when I lived for some years in the middle of a village, and even when I lived for a year in a city, I didn’t see one then, either. Maybe they’re a specificially suburban phenomenon?
When I was a kid, we had the MerryMobile that came around almost every day selling ice cream. It was very cool.
I think this was just a Memphis thing and they were all over the city. I mostly remember buying Buried Treasures. After you ate the ice cream, you were left with a plastic figurine. You broke off the stick and rubbed the bottom part on the sidewalk until it was level and would stand up. We were easily entertained in the early 60s.
My current neighborhood does not have an ice cream truck. Too bad, with the number of kids here, they would make bank.
We had one in out old neighborhood. It played Music Box Dancer, which always struck me as slightly creepy.
At an old employer, an ice cream man figured out that he would always have a steady supply of customers if he went by the smoking section in the parking deck at two in the afternoon. Even after I quit smoking, I would take a “smoking break” at two.
There’s an ice cream distributor about a mile from my house. My neighborhood is between the ice cream distributor and the closest highway ramps, so just about ALL of the ice cream trucks that work the area go through my neighborhood. During the summer it’s weird when we don’t hear an ice cream truck during daylight hours.
There are a few unique trucks we’ve noticed, particularly the faded yellow van that reads “Corn & Ice” on the side that works the neighborhood year-round and we kind of suspect that they’re selling drugs but we can’t prove it.
When I was a kid I lived on a road where the houses were all on 10-acre lots. Too few and far between to interest an ice cream truck. There was a trailer park near by, and I think they occasionally got a truck.
Now I live in a neighborhood with mostly middle-aged and elderly people. If there are any ice cream trucks left in my town, they are not coming here.
The scare quotes around “ice cream truck” make me wonder if you are talking about Cheech & Chong’s truck.
Many of the toppings I voted for I’ve only had in combination with others (think Pizza Hut supreme). Generally I’ll only have one topping like pepperoni or sausage. I recently tried a hot honey and pepperoni pizza from a local place at a family gathering. It was very good.
We had an ice cream truck when I was a kid and we knew the ice cream man very well. He was my brother’s little league coach. They are pretty rare anymore except at the shore. Ice cream trucks will go to the dead end by the beach and the driver will walk to the top of the dune and ring a bell. The work their way back and forth all day.
In my suburb of Stockholm we get ice cream trucks every couple of days, even in the winter. I wouldn’t mind but they play the most obnoxious, annoying sound… I can’t imagine any other business getting away with a disturbance like that:
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