Post your reminisces about ice cream trucks and the men or women who drove them.

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2000

Answers

My husband cannot resist the siren song of the ice cream truck. Luckily, this saves me the embarrassment of admitting that I can't let a truck full of ice cream drive by without making a purchase. We always get a Flake 99 (vanilla custard ice cream cone with a Cadbury Flake stuck in the side) or a mint chocolate Cornetto. (Ian has to concentrate really hard on asking for a 'Flake 99' instead of a 'Flake 69,' but don't tell him I told you.)

The funniest ice cream man incident I can remember was last summer, when the nice Punjabi man asked my friend Jen (5'3", blonde, skinny, pretty) and I (6'1", dark haired and opposite to Jen in every physical way) if we were sisters. I'm too realistic to have been flattered, but I think Jen was deeply offended.

-- Anonymous, June 25, 2000

I remember going to Long Beach Island every summer and when we were at the beach the ice cream dude would walk up to the beach enterance and he had this, like, bar with 4 or 5 bells on it, and would wave the bar around and the sound of the bells would have all the kids jumping up and down in front of their parents so we could get 65 cents and we would all race to the truck for a Rocket Pop or something else that would melt all over our hands and arms. Ah, memories.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

We didn't get ice cream trucks around my neighbourhood very often, but we did have the Dickie Dee kids. They had bicycle contraptions with an freezer thing stuck on the front that was full of dry ice and ice cream novelties. They had bells too. It must have been a horrible summer job because those bikes were hard to pedal. Back then, they didn't have gears or even hand brakes even though every other kind of bike had them. I hope the technology has improved since then for them. We called them Dickless Dees we became bratty teenagers.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

I am a bigger fan of the Italian Ices man. He would stop for a while and we would chit-chat and I would tell him how effed up my sister's life was. He was my therapy for a summer. My favorite was chocolate and cherry ices together. Mmmmm.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

In Maryland, we didn't have ice cream trucks, we had snowball trucks.

A snowball is a cup full of crushed ice that they heap up into a snowball form, and then you can get all kinds of different syrup flavors squirted on them: Blue Smurf (which I didn't think tasted like anything, maybe vanilla), Skylite, Bubble Gum, Peach, and there was The Suicide which had a squirt of all 50 or so flavors that were available.

And after that... you could get Hershey's Syrup squeezed in, or Marshmallow Fluff.

We could hear the truck from two streets over, and my sister and I would dig through all of the dirty laundry pockets looking for change is our mom didn't remember to leave out money for us. We must have had one every single day for 10 summers.

I don't know if there are any ice cream trucks where I live now (Cincinnati). I've been here for 5 years and haven't seen or heard a single one.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

Erika, admit it, you were trying to sleep with the Italian ice man so you could get free ices.

Today I went out to lunch with a friend and an ice cream truck drove by the resturant. If we weren't at an ice cream resturant we would have run out there and gotten a creamy frozen treat on a stick.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

When I was very very little, my shrewd and crafty mom explained to me that the truck that drove up and down our street every day of summer was "the music truck", a nice truck that drove around playing music for everyone.
Boy did she save a bundle of change that way. It was YEARS before I caught on. ("Mommy, look-- the music truck sells _ice cream_, too!!") *snicker* :)
She always asked me to get her a Sidewalk Sundae. I was a Chocolate Malt girl, myself.

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

Bwa, Kel!

I was all about the Big Sticks, baybee... BIG STICKS!

Refrain from making the obvious comments, chilluns...!

-- Anonymous, June 26, 2000

Nicole, trying??? I WAS sleeping with the guy! You don't think he'd mix flavors like that for just anybody, do you?

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

One time when I was just a wee little thing the ice cream truck was coming and I begged begged begged for some money to get some ice cream. So my dad told me to go in his wallet and grab a dollar and go get some. So I did. And was I *shocked* by the fistful of money the ice cream man gave me back! I ran back to the house, delighted, and was like, "Look at all the money the ice cream guy gave me!" and my dad turned green around the gills when he realized I had accidentally grabbed a $50. And this was an early 1970s $50.

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

My favorite ice cream man memory: my then-fiance had stayed out drinking with his buddies to four a.m. Around 9:30 a.m. he was suffering in bed, head under the covers, trying to block out life as we know it. The happy little ice cream truck decides to make its rounds through our neighborhood right around then, playing "It's a Small World After All" on those music-box contraptions that make a horrific song even more maddening. Must've been a lot of customers, because he parked and played that song for at least 15 minutes. I'm in the kitchen, and I hear "Mary Ellen..." in a Dying Man's Last Wish tone-of-voice/croak. I naturally reply, "What?" (the "you stupid hungover bastard" was implied), and his response was,

"Kill The Ice Cream Man."

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

Erika: ha! When I was around nine there appeared in our neighborhood an ice cream truck with a soft-serve and milk-shake-making machine. My dad would buy us milkshakes or sundaes every weekend.

When I was a teenager, the same guy was still working that truck. One day I was walking to the store and I stopped him and got a cone. As he handed it to me, he said I could have it for free coz I was looking so pretty that day.

I'm not gonna lie -- I did get free ice cream from him several times. But after a while he started trying to caress my hand when he gave it to me. And he expected small talk while he leered at my breasts. So eventually I had to hide when I saw him coming. I swear... he'd see me from a block away and follow me. Once I had to run to my friend's house and hide inside while he passed two or three times VERY SLOWLY.

Remember that stupid movie Maximum Overdrive (based on the Stephen King novel)? Well, the part where the evil ice cream truck chases the little boy has always scared the shit out of me.

Aside from that, all my ice-cream-truck memories are sweet. "STOP! STO-O-O-OP!!! Daddy, can we have some money? STOP!!!"

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

We got Eskimo Pies and those double-stick popsicles (sorry, all you popsicle-phobes). I think every once in a while I'd get a fudge- sicle. But my favorite was Eskimo pies. I'd bite off the chocholate and eat it first. I use to love to here the music. Now, it sounds so obnoxious to me and I don't trust the drives. And now, of course, I've graduated up to dark chocolate Dove bars :}

-- Anonymous, June 27, 2000

I always think of Eddie Murphy's "Ice Cream Man" routine when I hear the phrase. :) ("I gots some i-i-i-i-i-suh cream, an' you don' HAVE any.") It's a study in the Pavlovian response children develop re: the ice cream truck bell/music and man's inhumanity to man (or the cruelty of children, if you prefer): "You ain't got none cuz your family's on the welfare!" Yeouch.

We weren't allowed to get much ice cream when I was little, though the ice cream man came by nearly every day. The deprivation, 180+ days in a row (hot climate, persistent ice cream men), every year, got to be depressing.

I think I got a grand total of three push-pops (orange sherbet in a tube with a 'push' thingie) ever.

On the other hand, I've had homemade vanilla ice cream made with a churn and topped with green creme de menthe a least a dozen times, and my mother was a stay-at-home mom and cooked or served us three meals a day. We didn't have fast food, store-bought sweets, soda pop, salty snacks, etc. We had home-roasted peanuts and popcorn with powdered Kraft parmesan cheese sprinkled on it a lot.

The fast food thing almost always boggles people and I get asked if I grew up in SIberia or something. No, we lived on a marsh island off the coast of Georgia. We had a grocery store and a convenience store, and the nearest junk food restaurant was 45 minutes away. When we did get "to go" food, it was Chinese, BBQ or seafood and it was a Big Treat. We were never allowed soda pop when we ate out, which was rare anyway. Oocasionally we'd be allowed a Shirley Temple, I think. We could have Wink and Fresca at home, but only if we snuck into the liquor cabinet to get a can. Some kids sneak into the liquor cabinet for booze, we just wanted carbonated sugar water.

I remember three pizza birthday parties vividly, and I savored that pie. We'd occasionally have Chef Boyardee pizza for dinner, but that was rare. I spent the night at a friend's house (my mom and her mom were best friends) and the next day, we had sugary cereal! I was in heaven. We always had Cheerios or bran or oatmeal or something. So I ate three bowls and they were astonished. I got a family-size package of Corn Pops for my birthday from that woman. ;)

You can see why ice cream man treats wouldn't be on the menu. Why buy ice cream when we can churn some (laboriously, for five hours)? Why buy ice cream when it will spoil your dinner and send you into sugar and preservative shock?

My first fast food burger was McDonald's when I was twelve. I got it plain, just burger and bun, and thought it was manna.

I discovered Coke [tm] in high school, and candy (like sour cherries, yum) and was lucky not to become one big fat zit. In college, I lived off of pizza and soda and actually lost weight (due to malnutrition, I guess).

"I'm depraved on accounta bein' deprived!!" (Shyeah, right.)

Last year we lived in an apartment complex that had three duelling ice cream vendors. One played only the first eight or so notes of the Entertainer and had a scary white van. Pervy ice cream guy. The second was a woman and she sped through the neighborhood oblivious to the daisy chain of shrieking children running after her. She'd drive up and down every street in the complex, getting the children all freaked out, and then stop at the entrance. Every day. I suppose she was herding them. The last and scariest was the ice cream van that had some modern tune with barking dogs and meowing cats and other animal noises accompanied by scary clown music, and it would start off with a loud "Hello!" and a giggle, so more than once I'd be napping and be scared out of a sound sleep by this demented cackling voice shrieking "Hello!" outside my window. Then the weird animal noises and clown music would start, and I'd know it was just the scary ice cream truck. I hated that one. I bought a push pop from the Entertainer truck and it was a disappointment, nothing like I remembered from childhood. (Maybe you need to run around in 100oF weather all afternoon and then beg for change beforehand for it to taste as good.)

Nowadays we have 16 kinds of ice crema in the freezer, and I never really bother with it--I scavenge when I'm hungry, and if it isn't something I can grab and eat, sometimes I can't be arsed to bother. When I do want to go to the trouble of getting a bowl, scoop, spoon, etc., I have some Thin Mint and Blackberry Pie Edy's ice cream and that's great stuff. :) I get a yen for ice cream sandwiches, but they almost always get somewhat freezerburned before I finish the box. :(

I also think of the scary Mr. Softee lady in "After Hours", which is a great movie I highly recommend. Whenever you think your life sucks and too many bad things are happening to good people, rent this. It puts it all in perspective.

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Gwen, I'm glad that that perv didn't ruin ice cream for you forever!!!

Milla, maybe a little TMI for the ice cream man topic? I'm just sayin' (TM Gwen).

-- Anonymous, June 28, 2000

Yes we had Dickie Dees too! Also called "Dickless Dees". I lived in a low income townhouse complex and there were A LOT of kids so we had Dickie Dees coming around all day long. A Dickie Dee depot was in our neighbourhood and most of the more "skidly" teenagers got jobs driving those things.

There was a song too. "Dickie Dee, Dickie Dumb. Stick an icecream up your bum".

My first Mr. Softee memory was watching Miami Vice on a hot, summer, Friday night and catching the Ice Cream truck during a commercial break.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2000

I didn't like the red, white and blue super stars, I liked the chocolate and banana ones. And strawberry shortcakes and sidewalk sundaes. They used to be a quarter and a can of coke was thirty cents.

It's odd not hearing the ice cream truck tunes on sunny days. When I moved up out the ghetto I left the ice cream man behind. You could tell whether or not it was going to rain by the damn things - the ice cream trucks were out every sunny day (even in October...).

-- Anonymous, September 17, 2000

As a Dickie Dee distributor I have heard all of the negative and positive little ditties. When ever a Vendor comes back to the depot complaining about the Dickie Dee Dickie Dum stick your ice cream up your bum verse I relate a story told to me by one of our more experienced vendors. The day after hearing this verse from a young lad the same young lad asked for a free ice cream. My Vendor's answer............."Well you know where it is". This seemed to stop the use of the verse on that particular block.

-- Anonymous, March 25, 2001

I can barely remember the ice cream truck coming through my neighborhood. What I do remember is only having change for it about half the times, the other times I just had to watch. Still, that was more fun than when the mosquito sprayer truck used to come down the street, spraying a chemical fog all over everything and chasing all the kids inside. Talk about two sides of the coin. :-/

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001

I always hear Eddie Murphy's voice in my head when I read "the ice cream man". He had a whole routine about it.

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001

That was from the same special as his "shoe-throwin' momma" routine. :-)

-- Anonymous, March 29, 2001