Our local truck plays “Turkey in the Straw”, and we all chime in with, “Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Columbus is the capital of Ohio.” Can’t remember the words after that.
RickJay, dude, that story was hilarious. Thanks for the laugh.
Back in the day, our ice cream trucks didn’t play any tunes when they were trolling for customers. We just had the electric bell. But we didn’t get them that frequently, mostly because there was a soft-serve stand not five minutes’ walk from our island (equipped with access road). We went there much more often.
My one question is this: Is there any freakin’ way to TURN OFF THE TUNES while you’re stopped?? Seventeen thousand choruses of “Turkey in the Straw” with cheesy harmony can get a tad annoying.
screech-owl, how the hell do you make that scan?! I can’t figure it for the life of me. (Oh, and thanks for the links you sent to the ECWSA. I found a really cool group through them.)
I think my kids worship our ice cream man.
There are those days when I’d like to give him a big old smack upside the head as he often comes by three times a day and drives my kids insane, especially three year old Alex.
My reflexes have to be mighty sharp, she hears him coming from a mile away and can move at nearly the speed of light in her quest for ice cream.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, the ice cream man. During the summer, he would come by every day at my old house.
Then…then we…we moved, see…<sniff>…and the ice cream man…he don’t come round no more…<breaks down into tears>
<Read’s Rickjay’s story>
Okay, I’m all better now.
If she’s six years old, what’s the big deal?
If she’s sixteen years old, where do you live?
We can hear the bastard at my house, but we can’t ever see him. One stares out at the street, another stationed out back watching the main road, we hear the music for thirty minutes and never sight him. Stealth Ice Cream Man. Be sure to try the Ninja Bomb with the bubble gum star dart.
And you’re right, Fudge Bombs reign godlike over the land.
Kids, like dogs, must be able to hear things that others can’t. My daughter hears the “Turkey in the Straw” and “Dixie” (I live in Richmond, VA) long before I do. From then on its “Ice cream man, Daddy, ice cream man. Ice cream man, Daddy, ice cream man.” She even goes to the window to watch for him. “He’s coming that way,” she’ll say, pointing up the street.
A giant chocolate ice cream sandwich is $1.50. We split it (the ice cream, not the cost).
Rocket pops were always my favorite. Exactly WHAT is the flavor of the white part…its sort of lemon, sort of not.
And what was that cone shaped thing called? The one that had the bubble gum all the way at the bottom tip of it once ya got there?
It’s from a Animaniacs episode - Wakko’s America, and a sing-a-long version.
The single lines are spoken.
Which group did you find through ECWSA? Buy them some ice cream (to keep this on topic).
Now when I was a kid (I can’t believe I’m saying that), the icecream man had a little bell that he rang. You’d hear, “Chingchingchingchingching” and run to get your money. Nowadays, the icecream truck has these little songs they play, and I HATE IT!! There was one that used to frequent the neighborhood where I lived that played “The Entertainer”, but it was all run-down sounding and was missing a couple of notes. It gave me the shivers every time I heard it. THEN there was the year I lived in an apartment that faced the parking lot, and the complex was at the end of a street, so the icecream man would park his truck in the lot RIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW and sit there for the next twenty minutes, playing “Turkey in the Straw” over and over and over…I still can’t listen to that song. I would try to block it out, close all my windows and start blasting some opera or something, but it still didn’t work. I scared my husband the other day by screaming when I was in the kitchen- I heard the truck go by, playing the dread song…now it’s in my head! Make it stop MAKEITSTOP!!! Arrrrrgh!
::bangs head on keyboard::
Electric bell? Doesn’t anyone besides moggy remember the real bells? Some of the ice cream men could get pretty creative with their rhythums, considering they were pulling on a string attached to 5 bells.
For all those reading/posting, when you’re talking about the “ice cream man,” do you mean Good Humor, or someone local? I seem to remember (from the far reaches of my childhood) another ice cream truck that used to go by. It was white and similary designed to Good Humor, but it was a different company. Anyone have any ideas? (This took place in Baltimore, by the way.)
That myth, that legend, nay, that fairy tale image of summer gone by.
Who, of course, never visited my BFE neighborhood in the summer. We had to walk up to JB’s Party Store in town (only a mile - we weren’t that BFE) to buy our ice cream. And it was uphill. Both ways!
On the lighter side, anyone remember Eddie Murphy’s take on the ice cream man?
{paraphrase}
“You could drop your ice cream in a pile of s*** and pick up and still eat it. What? It’s just s***. You can’t even taste it.”
…and the classic…
(sing song)
“You dropped your ice cream! You dropped your ice cream!”
/{paraphrase}
Please excuse my ignorance - BFE
BFE: noun
- Acronym for Bum F*** Egypt; slang word denoting a very rural location.
That’d be the Screwball. Good stuff. My favorite was also the Fudge Bomb.
The problem with this, of course, is that it implies there are times when you don’t want ice cream. It goes without saying that not wanting ice cream, at any time, is like not wanting your heart to keep beating. Or is that just me?
When I was a kid, my best friend and I would go pick flowers from other people’s yards and sell the bouquets we made. Up and down the street we’d go, raising money to buy stuff from the Ice Cream Man. The trouble set in when people began recognizing the flowers from their own yards:
Me: “Want to buy a bouquet? It’s so we can get ice cream from the Ice Cream Man.”
Neighbor: “Oh, how darling! How much do you want for it?”
Me: “50 cents.”
Neighbor: “Wait a minute… is this… is this an iris? Where did you pick this?”
Emma: “Ummm…”
Me: “40 cents.”
Neighbor: “This is from my own flower bed! You girls are vandalizing my yard!”
Emma: (runs away)
Me: “25 cents? Please?”
After that we’d keep track of where we picked the flowers, and sell them at the other end of the street. God bless our neighbors. They kept buying them, day after day. They paid good money for their own flowers, ripped out of their own yards.
Good times, man. Good times.
HAHAHAhahaha. Very funny. :::smack:::
She’s four, BTW. The big deal is that she’s also pretty fearless. That means not only is my four-year-old naked and outside, she’s naked, outside in a neighborhood that’s got other people in it (granted, half of them are other four-year-olds in various states of undress who share her desire for ice cream, but I digress), and she’s ready to charge right out in to the street for her fix. She knows the ice cream man will stop if he sees her, but she hasn’t quite grasped the notion that someone else might not, regardless of how many times we tell her. Trust me–it’s funny in retrospect, but while it’s happening, chasing a naked four-year-old around the neighborhood is not cool at all. Especially while carrying the four-year-old’s equally naked nineteen-month-old brother, because the naked four-year-old chose to make her break while Mom was in the middle of changing the nineteen-month-old’s diaper. Oh, and don’t tell me to finish putting the diaper on the boy–children move so quickly that that is simply NOT an option. The three seconds I’d spend getting the tapes closed on the diaper are the same three seconds that the girl would use to run right out in to the street.
Have I ever mentioned that my children are “spirited”*?
[sub]*=spirited: in reference to children, it means “you have many fine qualities that will serve you well in adulthood…if I allow you to live that long.”[/sub]
I was a Dickie Dee kid in about 1983, in Alberta. I lived at 13A Canal du Nord, CFB Kingston, right at the corner, beside the MFRC, 1999-2000. Was a military wife. I’m all better now, though.
Persephone, I love you dearly, sweetheart, and the title of this thread has already provided much merriment for me and Sakura.
But, but, and once again, but… Didn’t I, in an earlier thread, recommend that you get a chain lock and install it on your door high up where the Dianasaur can’t reach it?
Apparently, this no doubt wonderful child needs to be locked in for her own protection (and your sanity). At least until your son is out of diapers or she understands the necessity of not going outside unless Mommy is with her or at least around to supervise.
Please, darling, I know you’re one of the best mommys on the face of the earth. And you love this little girl so much you’d kill with your teeth for her. Anyone who has read a couple of your posts about your kids couldn’t doubt that. Make sure she’s safe. I’m not kidding about this. I’m sure she’ll be able to sneak out even if the house was hermetically sealed, but do what you can to reduce the risks.
Please?
Oh, the horror! I didn’t mean to imply that there were times when I didn’t want ice cream. I meant more like the times when you are walking home with your dry cleaning and six bags of groceries, and you have 12 cents left in your pocket. The ice cream man practically follows you home in his truck, and then by the time you dump the dry cleaning (in a wrinkly heap) and groceries, he is nowhere to be found. He’s a vicious, vicious tease.
Yes Zebra, it is the music box dancer truck. However, in the past two weeks or so, I have heard a new song – it’s the tune of that “do your ears hang low” song (or the more x-rated version we sung at camp :rolleyes:). Does that song have an actual name?
Growing up, the Mr. Softee truck played the Mr. Softee song. I have never heard it anywhere else besides the Mr. Softee truck.
That’s “Turkey in the Straw” which is over-used. I have a Murphy’s Oil Soap commercial jingle in my head which used that tune, too. “…'cause the dirt is finished, but the finish is fine.”