When I was a little girl we lived on a dead end street. Every summer I would lament this fact because ice cream trucks do not generally drive on dead end streets. On especially still nights we could hear the tinkling of the ice cream man just a few streets over. Unfortunately a large 4-lane road kept me and my neighbors completely isolated.
The only bright spot in my ice cream nightmare was Chuck. Chuck was an ice cream truck driver who frequented my grandparents' 'hood. Every time we visited, despite the scrumptious deserts my grandmother would prepare, we waited for Chuck. He was an old school fella who had been delivering ice cream since my dad was a kid. He often smoked cigarettes as he drove around in his white van, and I can still remember the little tune piped from his speakers.
Because I had been introduced to Chuck at such a young age, I made some kind of mental leap and decided that all ice cream men were named Chuck. For years, long after the original Chuck had passed away, whenever the familiar notes of the ice cream song reached my ears I would start screaming 'Chuck is here! Chuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!'
It wasn't until I was 11 years old that one of my neighbors informed me that most ice cream men have names other than Chuck.
I was devastated.
I say all this because tonight Sam got his very first popsicle from an ice cream truck. He looked absolutely perplexed when we carried him out to the curb in his pjs, but all we had to do was show him the goods and he was all smiles! So was I. But I purposely didn't ask the young man his name. I don't want to confuse anyone.
Myself included.
5 comments:
Surely you don't mean the music trucks? At least that's what we call them 'round these parts. We are going to have one very unhappy little boy on our hands when LG realizes we've been holding out on him...
Is that like the same way fish and chip shop men are called 'Gus?
We don't get ice cream vans here like they do in the UK. Well, there is one guy who sells tubs out of the back of a ute but it's nothing like the gaudily coloured vans with vast arrays of iceblocks and soft serve and Cornettos that you get in England. (and obviously Philly!!)
I heard the Ice Cream truck last night and I really wanted to run outside and get a "Nutty Buddy", but my husband wouldn't let me....somethings just never change...hahahahah!
My ice cream man's name was Charlie! We didn't call him Chuck, but both our ice cream men both had nicknames derived from Charles. So there is some truth to your childhood perception!
Charlie was an institution in our town; so much so, there was an article about him in the Washington Post!: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/30/AR2007073001800.html
There of course were childhood suburban rumors of him being a drug dealer as well, but I'm pretty sure we had all been watching too many soap operas with our mothers over the summer and invented that idea to make our town seem a little more, well, exciting.
Um, nutty buddies are the best!
Post a Comment