Ah, summer in Pomona. The day was hot, but now, in early evening, a nice breeze has sprung up. What a lovely evening for sitting on my porch in an Adirondack chair and listening to the ice cream truck play, "Silent Night".
Other ice cream trucks tinkle out, "Turkey in the Straw", "Little Brown Jug" or the theme from "The Sting". But Goga Ice Cream of somewhere in Ontario, according to the sign on the side of the truck, plays a series of Christmas songs, so out of keeping with the season that every time I hear it, it sends me into a reverie of wondering.
Is its driver such a great fan of Christmas that he wants to be reminded of it every day? Is he from a different culture, and did some wise guy give him this tape and assure him that it was just what he needed to sell ice cream in July? Or is he smarter than all of us, and knows that when we hear, "Jingle Bells" in 101 degree weather, it attracts our attention and lets us know that a cool treat is right down the block?
This past Easter Sunday, I was walking my dog--the handsome pooch pictured in the entry below--and the out-of-season ice cream truck went by happily cranking out, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". I couldn't take it. "It isn't Christmas!", I yelled after him, "It's Easter!" But he didn't care. In fact he didn't even seem to care if I was yelling because I wanted ice cream. He just went on his way, playing his Christmas songs. One of life's mysteries, I guess.
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4 comments:
Your descriptions of the ice cream truck, without or without seasonally appropriate music, speak to a far more peaceful and serene time than the time we currently know.
Thanks.
hey, to this day i cannot hear the dreidel song without breaking into a cold sweat. it was sung to me one memorial day afternoon, and i hope i never hear it again. of course i had just been pulled from a car that had been totalled by an 18-wheeler on interstate 81 and the ambulance man must have had some benevolent purpose in mind. but it was memorial day, not chanukah. another mystery, eh?
The ice cream vendors have to be fingerprinted and have background checks in many areas now, They also must stay 100' away from schools. Apparently some vendors were selling lick em candies that were illegal drugs! This makes me so sad because as a little kid the jingles on the truck used to makes us feel so special...it was one of those rare times we conducted business on our own and it was one of the first efforts on how to use and respect $.
I, too, come from an era of ice cream trucks. There was nothing like the popcycles they used to sell - nothing in the stores can compare!
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