I scream about ice cream
I’ve been working from home lately, and I’ve developed a neighborhood nemesis. I go into a tizzy over the Ice Cream Man. He drives around all day, blaring bad music. I’m screaming about ice cream, but not in the way the song had intended.
It is ridiculous that ice cream trucks are still around. The home delivery ice cream service industry has remained unchanged in its business model since 1947. The concept is wild. A guy in a truck or van randomly driving around the neighborhood, cranking circus music at top volume, hoping to lure children to his vehicle to buy exorbitantly priced ice cream or other frozen treats.
It’s time to take the Ice Cream Man and put him out to pasture, or at the very least, pasteurize him. The Ice Cream Man needs to join the milkman, the switchboard operator, and the pin boy and go the way of the dodo bird.
Why is there a vehicle going up and down my street playing “The Entertainer” and “Turkey in the Straw” on the calliope? A calliope! I don’t need circus renditions of golden oldies and other catchy public domain songs that worm their way into my subconscious.
My neighborhood ice cream truck has an additional annoying feature. Along with the music, there’s a recorded voice of a woman saying, “Hello?” every 30 seconds. It’s disturbing. I can hear the truck when it pulls onto the street, from miles away. It doesn’t help that I have bat hearing.
Side note: Years ago, I took a hearing test for the phone company. They were astonished at my ability to hear very low frequencies. I’m sort of like a non-violent daredevil. My eyesight isn’t very good, but I have the auditory perception of a dachshund.
But I digress, like I do. I want to know if parents are buying ice cream off the truck when they can buy three boxes of popsicles at Costco for the price of a single Bomb Pop from the truck.
When I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to buy ice cream off the street like some juvenile delinquent.
Once, I was allowed to buy a frozen treat from the ice cream truck. My grandparents must have been babysitting, because there was no way my parents would have ever splurged on home delivery ice cream. I purchased a Push Up, which is orange sherbet stuffed into a toilet paper tube. You had to push the sherbet up with a stick. It was a lot of extra work for orange sherbet.
It was a rash decision. When the truck comes rolling through, you must make up your mind lickety-split.
The Bomb Pop, the Push Up, the ice cream sandwich, and the Drumstick were the only options. This was before they had popsicles shaped like Spider-Man’s head.
Ironically, I don’t harbor any resentment toward the snow cone people. They drive their truck to a ballfield or swimming pool and park it – no blaring circus noises required.