Ice Cream Trucks

I know they are still around but I’ve not seen one for a long time. I can still hear the sound of the Ice Cream Truck as it passed through the neighborhood in my memory.

Summers in Florida can be hot and humid, in fact downright muggy. Days would dawn clear and the morning dew covered the grass and the bushes in the yard. By ten in the morning, the temperatures would rise and the relative humidity would fall a little bit in the diurnal rhythm of a summer day. By noon it would be pretty uncomfortable and lunch time would provide a break from the morning chores and outside activities. Being “Green Florida” the St Augustine grass needed mowing at least once a week. Being Floridians, we knew that the only time to do that was as early in the morning as possible.

But lunch indoors was not the cool experience it is today. For we had no air conditioners, just the attic fan moving the air around our bodies as we ate our sandwiches and drank our cool aid. The cool aid was nice because it came from that big chilled pitcher in the refrigerator, augmented by half a tray of ice from the freezer.

Do you remember those ice trays? We didn’t have ice makers either. We had a stack of aluminum ice trays each complete with a handle in the middle over the cubes. A simple lift of the handle moved the blades in the ice tray and that broke up the cubes and freed them for our use. That was the way it was supposed to work anyway. Sometimes, however it felt like it would take a 500 pound gorilla to move that handle enough to break up the cubes. It was usually my job to fill the glasses with ice and refill the trays with water from the tap. In a few hours we would need that ice for dinner. It took four of these trays to make enough ice for our family on a summer day.

By the time lunch and the mandatory hour long after lunch nap was over, the afternoon sun had heated up the day to a touch above sauna level. Fortunately the heavy lifting of the day was over and it was time to wait for the two daily events that made up summer afternoons.

The first was the standard 3 PM Florida thundershower. You could see it coming. The cumulus clouds built up so quickly you could almost see it happen. The iconic cauliflower shapes of clouds building into thunderheads were all around. They were turning darker and darker until it was like they could hold no more water vapor and soon shafts of rain and lightning poured out of them. A quick check of the time and sure enough it was 3 PM almost to the minute. Every day, same time.

After the rain, it was no longer 95 and humid, it was 87 and so humid that just breathing was uncomfortable.

And that is what made the second event very important.

We’d sit on the back porch because that side of the house was in the shade. The puddles left on the street by the daily thunderstorm were turning into more steam for the sauna of a Florida summer afternoon as we first thought we heard it. Was it real, listening a little longer; YES, there it is. The crazy little jingle that said the Ice Cream man was in the neighborhood. Maybe three streets over, but it was time to hit Mom up for fifteen cents for a Popsicle. Good old Mom always came through, with the money, even enough for a Fudgesicle for her. Mom knows best.

After a quick retreat to the back porch with our booty, and Mom’s too, the next five to ten minutes were a cool sugar infused experience. I think Mom liked it as much as we did. She had a pretty good sweet tooth and it was a good family time experience. My favorite was the Fudgesicle, next was a cherry Popsicle, my least favorite was the banana flavor. In my humble opinion, whoever came up with that idea should have his or her Popsicle flavor designer’s license revoked. Just sayin’!

Pretty soon the Popsicles and family time are gone and the sauna dial is back up to “full on” for the rest of the afternoon. In a few short hours it will be supper time and time for “heat lightning” in the clouds on the distant horizon. The sun is beginning its slow, hot descent into the western sky. The temperature starts to go down which makes the relative humidity go up. Another Florida summer day is done.

There was a time when Ice Cream Trucks were common in Columbia neighborhoods but not so much these days. I think they are a victim of the ending of the age of free range children who enjoyed their entire neighborhoods without immediate parental supervision. Those days certainly seemed safer then. I may be getting older now but I got to grow up in the best of times. Oh MY!