‘Tis the season, and again today - even though it was only in the mid 60’s the ice cream trucks came down our street again today.

As we watched the neighbor kids run out to buy something, and turned down (yet again) similar requests from our own kids, my wife and I had an interesting conversation around ice cream trucks.

I’m ambivalent about them. 

On the one hand, I like the idea of them.  Take a sweltering, humid August summer day.  Like over 90 degrees with over 90% humidity.  Heat waves are shimmering off the pavement.  Any activity outside earns you drops of sweat falling off the end of your nose.  You’re only able to stand the heat because you’ve been running in screeching circles through the lawn sprinklers.  And just when you think you can’t stand it anymore, the far-off twinkling of the ice cream truck’s sound reaches your ears.  You dash inside to root around in the change jar for all the quarters, your fingers going into a frenzy as the sound gets louder and louder.  Finally you just grab a big handful of change and head back outside to wait by the curb.  The truck - a real, square back, step-side, right-hand drive-it-while-you-stand-up-next-to-the-open-door white truck stops at your feet.  From the menu pasted on the outside of the truck you choose your favorite and count out your coins.  The clean, dressed-in-whites driver hands your treat to you from the deepest recess of the freezer, its wrapper still coated in thick frost.  A little frozen slice of Heaven on a stick!

That’s my romantic, kid-centric, Ray Bradbury/Norman Rockwell vision of the ice cream truck.  I’d really like to hold on it, but unfortunately reality just keeps driving down the street every day.

The reality, for me anyway, is that the ice cream truck is an annoyance that I just wish would go away.  For several reasons.

First - the music.  Gone is music that is pleasant, or “twinkles” just enough to let you know what’s coming.  In it’s place is a repetitive boom-chuckaluck tune with sound effects interspersed that just isn’t fun to hear.  And I wonder - don’t any of the people setting up the sound systems on these trucks think of doing something more than a $20 bull-horn?  Maybe if the music wasn’t so distorted I’d have a better reaction to it…

Second - they aren’t even true ice cream trucks anymore.  Now they are nothing more than a rusty conversion van with some stickers slapped on the outside, a window removed, and a 12V cooler installed.

Third - the people I’ve seen driving these things....well let’s just say I wouldn’t be in a hurry to buy anything from them, period.

Fourth - the prices.  Probably they’ve always been high - but when you could hop on your bike and ride 5 minutes to the closest gas station and get roughly the same treat for 1/2 the price…

Fifth - Yea, me.  I’m older, I’m the parent, I’m the one that has to evaluate whether it’s really safe for my kids to buy this stuff.  And I’m the one that has to pay for it.  And I don’t enjoy having to be the bad guy and say no all the time (and it’d be a whole lot easier if all the parents here on 1st Avenue banded together in solidarity - it’d save us from the “but the other kids got some” speeches...)

I did some nosing around on the State of Michigan website today, and as I suspected here in Michigan you don’t need any sort of license or permit to start up an ice cream truck business - no wonder they’ve become such a seedy-looking affair.

...and I can feel I’m coming to the end of this post and I’m lacking a cohesive point to make.  I’m going to blame it on re-reading my entire Ray Bradbury collection in the same year that I’m turning 40—and being frustrated that the current state of the ice cream truck makes me more acutely feel my age, and mourn the loss of the idyllic world depicted in Ray’s Dandelion Wine. 

Even though that was years before I was born....