Are there still ice cream trucks? Apparently, so…but when I came across the above photo, it suddenly occurred to me that I've never heard one in my neighborhood. In the last 35+ years, I've spent a lot of time at this computer next to a window that faces the street and I don't think I've either heard or seen an ice cream truck.
They were a daily presence in my childhood even when I didn't flag one down to make a purchase. There was something comforting about knowing they were there; that there were people in this world who drove around with delicious treats. The cute little jingle would remind you that it was there if you wanted it. I seem to recall that there were times when some friend was over and we did want it…so we'd wish real hard and like a genie with slow response time, the Ice Cream Truck — not always the same one, of course — would appear before too long.
Today, if I made up a list of Jobs I'm Glad I Don't Have, driving a truck around like that would be very near the top, just below Cole Slaw Taster and handling public relations for Bill Cosby. Back then, there was something magical about it. I can't imagine how low the pay must have been and how mentally non-stimulating the job must still be…but everyone was so very glad to see you. That must have been the appeal of that profession for some people.
I rarely bought ice cream from the Ice Cream Man. I was more often interested in procuring one of these:
That's right: It's the dictionary definition of empty calories — the orange popsicle. I liked the way they looked. I liked the way they tasted. I liked that nothing bad ever happened to you while eating an orange popsicle and I regretted that that time period lasted such a brief time. Sadly, you couldn't draw it out and make the "safe" feeling last because the popsicle would melt at a rapidly-accelerating pace and drip all over you and become more of a problem than a joy. Still, it was great while it lasted.
This feeling, by the way, only applied to orange popsicles. A grape popsicle or a red one was just a hunk of frozen flavored water. I was never sure what the red ones were. I think they were whatever you wanted them to be. If you asked for strawberry, they gave you a red one. If you asked for cherry, they gave you the same red one. Or raspberry. Or one time, even apple. I'm sure that if I'd asked for a tomato popsicle, they would have handed me one of those red ones. It tasted as much like tomato as it did any of those other flavors.
As wonderful as they were, there was another downside to orange popsicles: The two sticks. I could rarely get the one-stick variety in my area. which was silly. Think how many trees they could have saved by only inserting one…but they gave you two on the faulty premise that some folks might want to split the popsicle in half and share it with a friend.
First thing wrong with that concept: Share it with a friend? Never. Let my cheapo friend get his own orange popsicle. Even if you were eight, it wasn't a significant expenditure.
Second problem: Splitting one of those things in half was about as easy as splitting the atom and almost as dangerous. I certainly never successfully accomplished either.
Usually, attempting it would send one entire half of your beloved orange popsicle plunging to the pavement. Or one stick would come out, making the popsicle impossible to share and awkward to eat. In the TV commercials, some trained ninja popsicle-divider would grasp the two sticks, give an artful twist and bisect the popsicle perfectly. They should have put up a little disclaimer: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME — because it never worked like that in reality.
So you'd just eat the popsicle with two sticks, which would put you perpetually off-balance. Whichever one you held was the wrong one. But I still loved them…up until about the age of twelve or thirteen.
When you're in that age range, much changes in your world. Certain toys you own seem childish and you toss them out as a rite of passage. You have to start seriously thinking about a career or at least a way of start making spending money. If you're a boy, girls suddenly seem a lot less yucchy. And orange popsicles lose a large chunk of their magic.
At least, that was my experience. I gave up all sweet edibles a few years ago but I gave up orange popsicles about the time I started sneaking peeks at Playboy. I believe there was a connection. Miss August looked a lot more tempting than an orange popsicle…and that's about as far as I want to go with that analogy. Keep your snide remarks about licking or being frigid to yourself.
One day when I was about twenty-eight or so, I was over visiting my parents and as I left, I heard the familiar song of The Ice Cream Man. There was one rolling down the street in my direction.
On a whim, I flagged him down and asked if he had any orange popsicles. He did. I bought one and, sure enough, two sticks. Right on the spot, for they don't travel well, I began consuming the orange popsicle.
The first lick was like heaven. The second was about half as good. The third? Eh. Even before it showed the first sign of melting, my interest in it was starting to drip. By the eighth or ninth slurp, I was just doing it because I'd paid for the thing. That was when I decided to try the ninja twist. I wouldn't have chanced it if I'd cared about finishing the popsicle but I had nothing to lose.
I grasped the sticks just as I'd recalled the hands did in those commercials. I pulled up with one hand, down with the other and attempted to wrench the popsicle into two equal pieces. Instead, the stick burst out of the left side, the popsicle split and the enough of the right-hand side ruptured to open a gap around the right stick. So both halves of it fell to the street.
Once upon a time, that would have made me very sad. Now, I was relieved that my fruitless (and given the ingredients in one, I mean fruitless) attempt to revisit my childhood was over. Thomas Wolfe was right: You can't go back to your home and eat an orange popsicle again.
Well, at least he said something like that.