I grew up in the far North West of England, pretty much on the Solway coast (you can see Scotland over the water - that far North West). When we went to the seaside for the day, that’s when you would see the ice cream vans. In my memory they were all a local family business’ - Tognarelli, part of an Italian diaspora I assume, which we pronounced Tog Na Relly, or Toggy’s for short. When we were allowed, I had to choose between an ice cream and a bag of crisps/chips - and in those days that meant plain crisps with little blue twists of salt in the bag for sprinkling. As a small, family run ethnically Italian business, I suppose it must have been pretty good ice cream - not that I had much of a frame of reference.
One thing I have to ask - do US ice cream vans sound like UK ones? Historical example. Current example. (Though - again in my memory - Toggy’s van’s would play an Italian tune like O Sole Mio.)
Actually, now that I think of it, an ice cream sandwich was probably the most-ordered one by me. Always loved those things, still do. And I would also get the Drumstick occasionally.
That’s the first I’ve heard an ice cream truck playing “Greensleeves” (on this side of the pond, we mostly associate that tune with a Christmas carol), but yeah, a glockenspiel instrumental on a short loop played over a low-quality sound system? That sounds like an ice cream truck.
Haven’t seen an ice cream truck in years… though one day, I swear I heard, a long ways off, a toy-piano quality version of The Entertainer… or did I fool myself?
BUT, our mom ‘n’ pop hardware store has a chest freezer in the corner. Never looked in it until recently. Whoa… it’s the ice cream truck! Choco Tacos, Strawberry Shortcakes, Klondike bars, Ice Cream Sandwiches, Drumsticks… and a weird Spongebob On A Stick (lemon and cherry ice, decorated to look a LITTLE like the cartoon character, with black bubblegum eyes that had smeared all over the face. Kind of a SpongeJoker… Had to buy one.
But lately they seem to have gone to Turkey in the Straw.
It turns out there's a very racist association here and the article that follows may be NSFW. It begins:
Some people get the song wrong, thinking it’s do your ears hang low.
Where I grew up in southeastern Wisconsin the ice cream truck was a small 3 wheeled Cushman. It was operated by the local Dairy Queen even though they had non-DQ as well. Everyone referred to it as the “Dilly Wagon”. And kids went nuts and scattered to go home for money.
My favorites were Dreamcicles and Buster Bars.
-Pete
I remember seeing ice cream trucks rarely, and having something bought for me from them by my parents even more rarely, when I was a kid. We have them come through our neighborhood a couple of times a summer these days, and I’ll usually let our boys pick something to get. I’m partial to the strawberry cheesecake frozen bars (with the crushed almonds coating) myself. Mmm.
Don’t expect to see the trucks much this summer, if at all, due to the pandemic, alas.
very interesting. I always wondered why the local ice cream trucks play "Turkey in the straw’ incessantly. They can go back to their non-racist bells any time they want, as far as I’m concerned. I hate “Turkey in the Straw”, even without the racist background.
An awful lot of things cluttering up the cultural landscape have similarly racist histories. The punch line “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens,” long used as a humorous aside, derives from a racist joke about black people stealing chickens and, upon being challenged, respond with that line. It gets to mix in several racist stereotypes at the same time. when I was growing up, I had no idea of its origins.
Another such is the Dunk Tank – that thing where someone sits on a precariously-balanced seat that it attached to a long arm on the side, the seat atop a tank full of water. The sitter taunts people at the carnival/fair/charity event/wherever this is set up. The patrons get to purchase the right to throw three softballs at the target on the arm. If they hit it sufficiently hard, it drops the taunter into the water.
The Dunk Tank used to go by names like The Chocolate Drop, because the taunting sitter was invariably black. So you got a chance to throw a baseball and drop a snide black person in the water. If that’s not sufficiently racist for you, the Chocolate Drop is actually a less dangerous version of The African Dodger, where people used to throw those baseballs at the head of a person stuck through a canvas sheet with target rings painted on it. Really. If you look it up, you can find webpages devoted to this topic, which used to be widespread. It’s hard to believe that people used to take pleasure at aiming baseballs directly at someone’s head with the goal of hitting them, and even bragging about it. But it’s true.
We’ve come far from those days, but nowhere near far enough.
Food memories of the ice cream truck. You could hear the music from blocks away. Which gave you time to beg for money from mom. I just remember popsicles, probably because they were the cheapest.
It was hot in Las Vegas and we didn’t wear shoes. The pavement was so hot, the ice cream man always threw out a piece of carpet to stand on while we waited our turn.
We have an ice cream vendor here in my village. But he comes on a tricycle. It plays a recording of a little girl describing the products and the price.
We actually ran a sort of ice cream truck(ster) in our family for, I think, three summers. It was a 3-wheeled Cushman Truckster with an insulated box built into the truck part. In the back were the popsicles and I think one or two types of chocolate covered ice cream bar. But in the front was where we shone, because we had snow cones. The front compartment contained the crushed ice, which we bought every day and kept cold with dry ice, and across the middle between the two doors was a row of large syrup dispensers, and on the side a vertical dispenser for the pointy cups. The markup on snow cones was huge and that’s where most of our profit was. We made our own syrup, buying sugar and coloring and flavoring.
This was all my father’s idea so we kids weren’t just wasting our summers having a good time. My poor sister, who was 2-1/2 years older than me, was the driver for the first two years because she was old enough to have a license, and she would be out at least 7 hours a day when the weather was good. I did everything else - buying the stock and supplies, cleaning and stocking the truckster, making the syrup, keeping the books, etc. We both made the same amount, based on what was sold (this was not a sustainable model, as my activities were not bringing in any revenue but I got paid the same; there was a large company doing something similar but without snow cones and they must have had 20 trucksters and probably one or two people doing what I did). I had the advantage of having my afternoons mostly free, so I was much more carefree.
By the time my sister was older and I could have driven, we gave up the business as there wasn’t enough revenue to continue. My father had seeded us with $1,000.00 to buy the truckster and all equipment and starter stock and supplies, and we were expected to go on without more injections of cash, and after 3 years we ran out and closed up. I was never so happy to see something die in my life. But looking back I’m sure I learned a lot from the experience.
I was a little kid in the mid to late '50s, and we lived in a suburb that was younger than I was (by a year). It was full to brimming of the kids of former GIs, so ice cream trucks were rampant. We didn’t have a lot of money (and four kids), and we didn’t get an allowance (as someone upthread mentioned – we got whatever money we found on the ground). So, we rarely could buy from the truck, but my favorites were the pink lady (only one in my family who liked strawberry ice cream) and drumsticks.
I liked the ice cream trucks, but I loved the Helms trucks with their all wood interiors.
In talking to a music teacher I learned that back in the day, it was common to re-use the music (melody, harmony, etc.) for a new set of lyrics. So you hear a tune for “Greensleeves” but wait—“What Child is This?” uses the same tune. Which lyrics come to mind?
There are also joke lyrics to “Turkey in the Straw.”
At least, that’s a version kids may know (there’s also “Do your boobs hang low” an “Do your balls hang low” for the adolescent/summer camp contingency).
As an innocent, silly, fun song that would draw children to the ice cream truck it’s not an odd choice. It does make you wonder what lyrics the guy next to you might be singing to himself, however.:eek:
Early to mid 1960s, the ice cream truck would come by the community pool, usually timing it for the half-hour of adult swim in mid-afternoon. He’d get a pretty decent crowd of kids there. The ice cream basically cost pocket change. Since my parents didn’t keep much in the way of goodies around the house (Dad’s parents were both diabetic; Mom’s parents were stingy, and so was she), I was out there as often as I had spare coins.
The truck didn’t have music, just a rack of bells with a string the driver would pull on to jingle them to let you know he was coming.
More recently, the Firebug, now approaching his teen years, has gotten over the thrill of the ice cream truck, preferring whatever we have in the freezer. But for several years, we’d go out together to greet the ice cream man though our neighborhood. I’d always get a Creamsicle; his choices were unpredictable.
By the way, this reminds me to recommend Comfort and Joy, the slightly surreal story of a man caught between two warring ice cream vendors in Britain. It is a Bill Forsyth film, which if you’ve seen any of his other movies like the excellent Local Hero will give you a good idea of the tone.
There were never ice cream trucks during my youth - but we had a big dairy a few blocks away. They had an ice cream counter - and the ice cream was as fresh from the cow as you could get. (the cow pastures behind the dairy are long gone, but the dairy is still there - alas, no ice cream counter. )
)