ONE mellow Friday evening a little while back, right after candle lighting, I was taking a walk. It was still a wintry and snowy time, but on that particular evening there was an elusive sense of spring in the air. I was walking back home with a sense of purpose when suddenly I heard a familiar sound in the distance. A lovely sing song sound floating on the air giving me an immediate sense of sonorous pleasure. Could it be? And in March?
I hadnt heard this delightful chime in quite a few years. But there it was coming closer and closer, louder and louder. It was unmistakable, the metallic, tinny, bell-like high note sound of the wind-up music chime box coming out of a megaphone speaker. The sound of the ice cream truck jingle-tinkle.
Do you remember this adorable vestige of a time gone by, of a more old fashioned time, as fondly as I do? Hearing the promise of an ice cream cone or popsicle coming nearer and nearer from a traveling treat truck?
AS a child, whenever we heard the ice cream truck music, we dropped whatever we were doing and ran as fast as our legs could carry us. In Jerusalem it was often and usually a pale yellow singing ice cream shoppe, on Fridays, just in time to buy ice cream treats for Shabbos.
We were prepared with our allowance or treat money from our parents. We would buy a long rectangular box of either chocolate, vanilla or strawberry ice cream, and sometimes all three flavors came in one box: brown, creamy white and pink. That was for the whole family.
Then we each got to choose our very own flavor for an artik (popsicle) or the more expensive cassata (cornetto).
For me, it was always the cassata with the flower molded vanilla ice cream crowning a sugar cone with hardened and crunchy chocolate and nuts embedded in the vanilla ice cream center.
To this day, and I am a complete ice cream snob (nothing but home-made, Haagen Dazs or Bonnie Brae) for me there is a special pleasure in reliving the glory days of long, carefree summer nights of long ago and holding, enjoying and catching the drips and cold meltiness of a cornetto on a hot summers day. Ice cream snob or no ice cream snob, this cornetto? I swear by it.
ANYWAY, in Denver, we never knew when the ice cream man, as we affectionately called him, or as my mother called him, The Good Humor Man, might just be coming down our street. We could have been playing outside barefoot or indoors not yet through with dinner but wherever we might have been we just jumped and ran.
It was a complete Pavlovian response to the chime and jingle heard from blocks away.
Sometimes it was to the tune of Lips Stained Blue or Creamsicle of My Dreamsicle, but mostly I think it was Greensleeves.
As the music kept playing and coming closer and closer, our excitement would rise.
We couldnt be fast enough, scared the beloved ice cream truck would pass us by before we had our chance.
As soon as we heard the music, we would run to plead with my mother to let us have a cone. As soon as the first note of ice cream music was heard, our eyes would instantly meet, begging, searching for the sign of assent in hers.
At these moments my mother had a lot of power. Anything she said, we would agree to. Many compromises and many deals were struck. Many a room being cleaned up deals were made. And many healthy dinners that, until that point in the evening were being moved around the plate by a fork, were suddenly albeit painfully scarfed and gulped down in an instant.
Wed run to get my mother her purse, and she would ever too languidly (to us), dig in for some change clinking at the bottom of her bag. With pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters or crumpled dollar bills in hand, we skipped down stairs, jumped out the door and sprinted across the lawn or driveway, calling for the ice cream man to wait; finally crossing the street and arriving, congregating at the sliding window, under the wide striped awning, breathless.
NOW was the time to choose. There was the whole side of the truck filled with signs, pictures and names, to look at and ponder. There was the arched KLONDIKE polar bear picture, the blue and red popsicle picture with red dots all around the popsicle, the ice cream sandwich and the Good Humor heart squiggle. There were the cornettos, the fudgesicles and creamsicles.
Of course, we always chose from the kosher certified ice-cream, but it was still fun to look at all the ice cream adornments.
One by one, we announced our ice cream choices. One by one, the ice cream man would slide the freezer door inside the truck, reach down and then hand it to us through the window with a big smile.
He was leaving behind some pretty happy kids as he drove off, with the ice cream chime and jingle trailing behind him, the sounds becoming dimmer and dimmer, as he turned the block toward Crestmoor Park.
We may no longer have the milk man, but at least we still do have a lemonade stand and an ice cream truck. There is something just so charming about this quirky little business that holds so much innocence and joy. I hope there will always be ice cream trucks somewhere in the world driving down streets chiming and jingling and making little kids happy, giving them the feeling that life is good, that everything is going to be OK.
That ice cream truck music? It is a tune for the ages.
