My ears are still ringing from that piercing shriek just a few minutes ago.
My daughter can hear the ice cream man when he’s still half a mile away, I swear. It’s bizarre. She has actually run outside stark naked, just to catch him, if her dad and I don’t happen to be moving fast enough to suit her. This evening, she so thought we’d miss him that she started handing me money from her piggy bank, just in case I didn’t have enough. She had a quarter, two dimes, and a penny. I had a fiver, though, so I told her it was okay, and that she could get the next round.
She got a Snoopy ice cream, and I got a fudge pop. You know, the ones that look like Bomb Pops except they’re chocolate and banana ice cream? Awesome.
The ice cream man never came to MY neighborhood. Once I went to a friend’s house, and when he came, all of us came running outside as fast as we could to meet him…I tripped and fell face first into the asphalt…sniff
A couple of years ago the ice cream man showed up on our street for the first time in my entire life. I have lived there my whole like. He came regularly for about three weeks, every Wednesday. Then he just stopped coming, and hasn’t been seen since.
I can tell, you all five of us living on the street were totally bummed.
In Kingston, Ontario we had a similar phenomenon; “Dickie Dee.” There were no ice cream TRUCKS, but there’s a big franchise business called Dickie Dee where people (teenagers, mostly) pedal around these huge tricycle bikes with great bigass coolers on the front that hold hundreds and hundreds of ice cream bars and popsicles. They have bells and you could hear them ringing as they come down your street. Wonderful things.
Anyway, all my childhood I knew the sound of the Dickie Dee and we’d go running.
So fast forward a decade or so: Summer 1994, and I am on my Combat Leadership Course in the Army. It’s about 100 degrees in the shade and, as it usually is in Kingston, the humidity’s sitting at 185 percent. We’re all sitting around after class one afternoon, polishing boots and cleaning rifles, tired and hot and miserable, when - what’s that sound? - A DICKIE DEE MAN!!!
You had to see it. The guy was pedalling down the middle of a commons flanked on three sides by barracks, and I and my whole platoon just go charging out the door like crazy bastards, and OTHER platoons are charging out, and the guy is converged upon by maybe 200 screaming soldiers running at full speed, waving money in their hands, howling, “Dickie Dee man! Dickie Deeeeeeeeee!” He had to have one of us phone in to his HQ and send another Dickie Dee man to handle the demand.
I’m usually passin’ by, just around eleven o’clock
And if you let me cool you one time, you’ll be my regular stop
I got good lemonade, ah, dixie cups
All flavors and push ups too
I’m your ice cream man, stop me when I’m passin’ by
See now all my flavors are guaranteed to satisfy
I sold ice cream for about three weeks when I was in high school. I had a little three wheel scooter with a bell, not a truck, and I didn’t last long since I didn’t actually make any sales. (No, not one!) But my kids are still impressed that their old man was once the ice cream man.
The ice cream man is in our neighborhood all the time, unless of course, you want ice cream. Then he is nowhere to be found.
On one of my first dates with Mr. Del, we had gone to the park. I see the ice cream man on the street along side the park, and think to myself “How lovely, won’t it be romatic to stroll through the park holding hands and eating ice cream?” (and plus I wanted ice cream). The ice cream truck is moving at about 15 feet per minute along the park, so I amble towards him. Just as I get to the truck, he picks up speed! I pick up my pace. He puts the pedal to the metal. I am now chasing an ice cream truck. I chased it for about 10 city blocks. It was the kind of thing where once I started chasing him, it seemed silly to stop. I mean, how far could he go before selling some more ice cream? Well, he could go pretty far, as it turns out.
About half an hour later, I returned with two soggy ice cream cones that were melted all over me. It must be love if you still want to hold someone’s sticky ice cream hand after watching that person chase an ice cream truck, bellowing “Ice cream maaaaaaaaaan!”
Rick Jay - similar occurance at SCA fighter practice.
Imagine large sweaty guys and gals in armor shambling up to the ice cream truck as it rolls by. He didn’t dare not stop. (The look of awe on the little kids faces’ was precious.)
Delphica was that the truck that plays Music Box Dancer? (God I hate that song)
Many moons ago during a Beach Boys concert on a hot summer day, in a minor legue baseball park at intermission one lone ice cream truck came driving in from the outfield. Suddenly about a thousand people started running toward the truck. The driver stopped the truck got out and ran away! Free Ice Cream for everyone!
Personally I always liked orange push-ups.
My dad was an ice cream man way back when I was a wee Tiki in about 1986. It was cool because I could just climb into his ice cream truck and get whatever I wanted. I’d ask him about the job but then again I haven’t seen nor heard from him in about 10 months…
Do they still give wooden spoons with dixie cups? Do they still have dixie cups? How much do they cost now? We were lucky as kids - not only did the Good Humor man come around every afternoon, but we had a snowball man (Mr. Ed) who came in the evening. You could get a free snowball if it was your birthday.
The Ice Cream trucks around my area all play “The Entertainer,” which is a great song, and now invokes all sorts of memories about ice cream.
Wow, I have memories about ice cream… that’s kinda weird…
