Ah, spring is in the air, along with the ragweed pollen I love so much. In the distance the gentle refrains of “Pop Goes the Weasel” can be heard from an ice cream truck. Mangled, tinny notes, as though sung from the larynx of a depressed robot.
As a kid the highlight of any summer day was getting something from the ice cream man. When we herd the tinny siren song of sucrose in the distance, that was our cue to drop the caterpillars and put away the magnifying glass, our primitive laser surgery could wait, it was time to run home and turn the joint upside down looking for loot. Upending piggy banks, couch cushions, coat pockets, mom’s dresser drawer (Hmmm, “Pleasure Wand”? Wonder what that could be?) in search of change.
We called our local Ice Cream Man “Lefty” as he had only one arm and a patch over his eye (ironically it was his left arm and eye that were missing, but “Righty” lacked poetry). We used to joke that he got to our street last because he could only make right turns. He was ugly as a trainwreck, but sweet, and never lost his temper when somebody’s little sister thrust a fistfull of pennies at him and asked “What can I get!”.
There was a hierarchy of quality in ice cream truck candy, depending on how much change you could wrangle. I’ll start with the cheap stuff:
Fizzies:
Not to be confused with Pop Rox. These were grape, cherry, and lemon hard candies that came in a cellophane bandolier, with some kind of white powder in the middle that fizzled when it hit saliva, producing a funny smelling cloud of CO2 in your mouth. The novelty ran out pretty quick.
Lemon heads:
Sweety-soury little hard candies. A box lasted all day (mostly because nobody could stand more than one of the buggers in their mouth at one time). I don’t think I ever managed to finish one to completion, too sour. Made great slingshot ammo later in childhood (they made delightful explosive puffs when they hit) and blowing through the empty box would produce a squeaky fart noise. A lot of entertainment for a dime.
Boston Baked Beans:
Never tried them, the name put me off. My baby-sitter was stone-cold addicted to them though.
Pop Bottles
These things were little wax soda bottles filled with some kind of sickly sweet corn syrup. Afterwards you could chew on the wax like gum. Whatever…
Ring-Pops
Clear lollipop type candy “jewels” set on a plastic ring you could wear. I loved the cherry ones, but somebody spoiled it for me by pointing out that they looked like a babies pacifier in your mouth.
Bubble Gum Cigarettes:
Amazing to think there was ever a time when that was considered a good idea, huh? As I recall there were two different kinds. The best were bubblegum ones wrapped in paper, and when you blew through them it created a little puff of powder sugar “smoke”. Those had a nifty Philip Morris-like crest on them. The other kind were hard candy, and (I would discover later) looked like little joints. Those had a Lucky Strike type red circle design on them.
Lick-Em-Aid (a.k.a. Fun Dip)
Two individual packets of flavored sugar powder (grape and cherry I believe) and some kind of hard candy “dipper” thing that you’d lick, then stick into the powder, then lick that up. Sugar, Sugar SUGAR!!! I think everybody tried (and failed) to make Kool Aid out of the powder at least once. Not all that soluble.
Push-Ups
Orange sherbet-y stuff in a tube you could, well, Push up. When finished the little plastic stopper and stick made a great little raft you could float down the gutter. I actually got in a dust-up with a friend over the results of a push-up stopper-stick boat race. Kids are stupid lik that.
Rocket-Pops (a.k.a. Bomb Pops)
Red, white and blue mystery flavor popcicles that always managed to keep a part of the wrapper stuck to them. They had two sticks and a seam in the middle so you could break them in two and share them (yeah, right!).
Then there was the more expensive stuff, for good days when you scrounged up one of those nifty new Susan B, Anthonys or if you managed to do the “false drop” into the church collection plate with that dollar mom gave you:
Ice Cream Sandwiches
Great stuff on a hot day. Cheap ultra-fatty over-the-top with it’s artificial flavor vanilla ice cream on that sticky-sweet chocolate cakey stuff that stuck to your fingers. Ah, bliss!
Drumsticks
The same syntho-delicious vanilla ice cream in the sandwiches in a soggy sugar cone with a weird waxy chocolate topping, covered with a whole bunch of grade double D (one step above “livestock use only”) walnut crumbles. Fantastic.
Then there were non-candy ice cream truck items:
Cap Bombs
This was a big fad on my street one summer. For eighty cents you’d get what looked like a little plastic dart and a few ring caps. You’d put a cap on the tip of the dart, put the lid on it, throw it in the air, it would land, igniting the cap, the force of the igniting cap would launch the cap bomb high into the air at great speed where you’d lose sight of it, it would land in your neibors ivy, after a brief search you’d give up on ever finding it, you’d ignite your remaining caps with a magnifying glass, repeat next day. By the end of that summer the whole street was littered with cap bomb bits.
Star Wars Cards.
Five cards and a crumbly stick of funky pink gum. I distinctly remember the phrase “Goddamit! Not Lando Calrissian AGAIN!” uttered a few times during that period.
Extra Bonus Inky Story!
When Star Wars first came out Wonder bread gave away Star Wars cards inside each loaf. My mom actually body checked a woman into a potato chip display to get a loaf with a Luke Skywalker card in it for me. What a cool mom!
