Besides the fact that most ice cream trucks seem to blaze past my house around 30 mph, I detest them because of the irritating music they blast. Usually it’s some horrid rendition of “Do your ears hang low” or some such thing, repeated over and over and over and over and over at a volume loud enough to shatter eardrums that have hidden in a fortress with walls 20 feet thick.
So one passes by today, at a sedate pace I might add, and what do I hear? The delicate sounds of bells (oh how I miss the actual Good Humour trucks!) that are accompanying (nicely, in fact) “Für Elise”.
I wanted to run out and throw money right at the truck that second.
You’re lucky. We don’t even get the ice cream man in my new neighborhood.
I live right across from a lot of low-income housing. There’s a guy who drives through once a week with a small refrigerated truck and a megaphone. He yells “Crab Man! Rolling through!” Lots of people come out, and he sells live crabs out of the back of his truck.
The first time he ‘rolled through’, I thought he was saying “Crack Man!” :eek: It got kind of scary when people started flowing out of their houses left and right.
“Do Your Ears Hang Low” is the tune of choice of our neighborhoods truck - and as I usually sleep in the afternoon, it wakes me up almost everyday. Of course, my neighborhood has a large group of kids concentrated around my house, so he ALWAYS stops on my corner and sits there for 5 minutes, with the ‘music’ blaring away.
I’d give anything to hear the songs mentioned in this thread from the ice cream truck that comes down my street. All it ever plays is the same damnable Kenny G instrumental EVERY SINGLE TIME.
There is an ice cream truck that comes down my road every once and a while. Odd that he picks a rural road, with very fre houses with kids on it to go down.
I’m in Detroit and I swear we have the same ice cream man. Goes flying by at 30 mph and my kid’s ears will instinctively perk up and then he remembers how fast he has to run to catch it. I don’t know how he makes any money. They fly by so fast, I don’t even know the song they play.
Well, in case anyone is unsure of this, ICE CREAM MEN ARE EVIL. I know this because I have seen their evil home base.
There’s a row of warehouses down south of town, one of which belongs to a company that throws raves in it. When one is attending these parties, one has to pass by the evil ice cream headquarters of Satan. Picture a big, plain warehouse, surrounded by razor-wired fence. At the gate to the fence is a battered and faded wooden sign that says something like “Rainbow Ice Cream Company”. Next to the warehouse, inside the fence are rows and rows of horribly dented and misshapen van-things that have anti-cheerful, sun-discolored pictures of outdated cartoon characters on them. That is SCARY.
One time I was outside the party warehouse with a group waiting for them to finish setting up the search table, etc. and open the gates. This was about 10 o’clock at night, and as we sat waiting and talking one of the vans came rolling up the little road that the warehouses sit on with no headlights turned on. It was not playing anything akin to music, but rather it occasionally emitted some sort of terrible detuned squawk, an unbelievably dissonant and terrifying sound coming from this creepy ass van as it slooooowly rolled past us, turned around and disappeared back in to the night. It sounds kinda silly, but it freaked everyone out.
I don’t think these are people you want to trust around your children. ::shudder::
The area around my house has a number of kids, so the ice cream truck spends quite a bit of time (15-20 minutes) within earshot. The guy on the route has “Popeye” as his tune of choice. So I hear it over and over and over. And over.
I can tolerate it by making it kind of a game- finding another harmony line to whistle along each time.
But for some reason, it’s got weird timing- the “cause” in “'cause I eats me spinach” is only an eighth note instead of the quarter note Popeye sang.
It sounds like you’d be right at home with my neighborhood’s ice cream guy, Lucki.
He drives an old, dirty panel truck that lists to the left rear. His tune of choice (arghhh!) is Pop Goes the Weasel!. It takes him about an hour to get out of earshot of my home.
One of his headlights is missing it’s chrome bezel and the grill is smashed in. The overall effect is a lurching, fanged monster with a black eye. It is impossible for me to read the big yellow with black letters sign over his windshield that says “DANGER CHILDREN” as anything but a warning to the children.
Where I currently live we get to hear “The Entertainer”, which is kind of cool, as long as the guy makes his rounds efficiently and departs quickly. I just can’t get the image of either Paul Newman or Robert Redford driving the truck, though!!
I seem to remember that as a kid, our actual Good Humor Man (as opposed to the impostor Mister Softee Man) didn’t play music; he just rang a bell. We’d all sit around outside and wait for him to arrive, clutching sweaty coins and slobbering onto our little short-sleeved “rugby” shirts. My favorite was always the strawberry shortcake bar.
My father, for a brief time in the early 70’s, was an ice cream man. He was of the “cruise by at 30 mph and never stop variety.” He always said he liked to watch the little kids chase him.
And superbee: that might have been my dad too.
Our local truck plays “Pop goes the Weasel” and we can hear him for about half an hour if the windows are open. He does stop, I treated moi to a cone with jimmies the other day.
Well, I’ve only heard this truck twice so far, not enough time to grow sick of it (yet).
I remember being all of 6 years old and at my grandma’s house. I heard the ice cream man and ran to my grandma to ask for money. She started looking, but she was so slow. I could hear the truck getting closer and closer and then PASSING THE HOUSE and getting away! (note: this ice cream man strangely went at a normal, sedate pace).
So I finally got money and ran out the door. He was quite a ways down the street, but I hadn’t had ice cream from the ice cream man in almost a whole YEAR, so I ran after him.
My grandma’s (and my) street(s) are LONG. As in, about a half mile long, and she’s at the beginning of the street. So here I am as a 6 year-old, running as fast as I can, and he’s sloooowly getting away. BUT some kids stopped him for ice cream. I ran and ran and ran, praying they’d take long enough to let me catch up.
I ran almost the WHOLE street, and when I got to within 10 feet of the truck, he was near the end of the block, and sped up and drove away. I stood there, after running and running, only to see this ice cream truck speed away.
You don’t know HOW long it was before I even tried getting ice cream from a truck again.
Reading Lucki’s post I flashed back to too many hours spent playing Twisted Metal.
To hear our truck is to hear the most condencending voice to ever come from a speaker. The music plays, and a voice cuts in saying “Hello”. My friend Patty and I agree that the tone sounds as if the woman is about to go off because noone seems to have noticed her. “Hello…I’m here. Why havn’t you come out yet?”
I love Ice Cream trucks. When they drive by I turn to the nearest adult and yell,"Ice cream man! Dad (or Mom) Can I have some ? Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh? or some such annoying kid sounding request. You’d be suprised how many times my roommate has kicked for Missippi Mud bars. I’ve even done it to my own daughter,It kept the requests from her to a minimum.
I also love my ice cream man.When I come out of my apartmrnt the guy already knows it is going to involve at least 2 of the afforementioned holy Muds. So they will be there when I get to the truck. Oh! service like that gets tips! (keep the change)
Used to play it on the piano for fun.
