Ice Cream Man

19 Ice Cream Man fourth draft 3/13 11:30 AM

I sat in my apartment gazing out the window. It was a cool, drizzly day. Even for March, although I suppose that's when we get cool drizzly days. Better than snow. I used to love snow when I was a kid. We all did, especially when we were too small to shovel our driveways. Well, it's not snowing, and I need to go out to get some groceries. Drizzly works.

I hate going to the grocery store perhaps even more than going to a regular store. People stand and stare at the grocery shelves for the longest period while they calculate unit pricing and which apricots look best. They block half the aisle with their butts and their carts block the other half.

Cart. I remember living in the south, and they call them “buggies” down there. No wonder they lost the war. “The general is getting away! Stop that buggy!” and all the Confederate troops stormed the Piggly Wiggly. Or, as they call it, simply “the Pig”.

But thankfully, most all of my groceries are ordered online. I go to the Instacart website, pick what I want, and within a couple of hours I have the groceries. All without leaving my chair. Today, people act like that's a big deal. Back when I was a kid, we had men. We had the bread man, the milk man, the grocery delivery man, the ice cream man, and the mail man. In my dad's day, they even had a horseradish man.

Nowadays I guess you shouldn't be saying man, but person. Or change the name completely. Once we had stewardesses, but now we have flight attendants. Mail men are now letter carriers. I don't know what we'd call the others, if we had them. Persons, I guess. Newspaper boy would now be newspaper person? But that's OK. Most jobs can be done as well by a woman as a man. Sometimes better. And you just don't see too many stay at home moms anymore. When I was a kid, my mom was always home. My mom didn't have a car, or even a driver's license. It wasn't needed. But women today often have to work because dad's paycheck won't pay the bills anymore. That's called progress.

What was really good about having a milk man, from a kid's point of view, is that there was an insulated metal box that sat on your stoop. The milk man would take away your empties and refill the milk box with full bottles. But I was also able to stand on that milk box and open the back door. I couldn't reach the door handle otherwise. I wonder what kids stand on now? Of course, that's saying they leave the house at all.

I remember quite clearly the red and black Freihofer trucks. The Freihofer man delivered baked goods from the Freihofer Bakery in nearby Lansingburgh. I loved driving past the bakery when I was small. It always smelled like fresh baked bread. Freihofer followed the same model as all the others and had the bread man deliver right to your home. That's how you did it back then. My mom would put the bright yellow Freihofer sign in our house's window signaling the bread man to stop. And he did.

There was nothing special about delivery trucks at the time. But what was special was visiting my great-grandparents' house in Lansingburgh. Sometimes I'd see the Freihofer bread man there on his route. Only in Lansingburgh, he wasn't driving a truck. There he had a horse drawn wagon. The horse knew the route, and would walk from stop to stop and wait for the bread man, who would run between the wagon and the customers' houses with his wares. The horse knew the route, and knew the customers. It's funny, but at the time, it didn't strike me as being odd, having horse drawn wagons. That's just how it was. It's too bad that I didn't realize as a young boy then that it was the end of an era. By the early 1960s, the horses were all retired and replaced with heartless, polluting, noisy bread trucks. Those too were soon phased out of service even. There was no more home delivery of Freihofer baked goods. Or home delivery of anything. Supermarkets were the wave of the future. The modern way of shopping for groceries. Big selections, automatic doors, and double S&H Green Stamps on Wednesdays. The stamps were stuck in books. My mom would save up books to get free stuff from the S&H store in Lansingburgh. One time our moms got Russell and me the same red fiberglass bow and arrows. Free.

I thought back to being a kid in the 1950s and watching the Freddie Freihofer TV show. When I watched it, it was hosted by “Uncle” Jim Fisk. A select group of children would sit in bleachers, and Uncle Jim would come out from behind a Freihofer truck and ask “Hey kids! Who wants to squiggle!?” The kids would all wave their hands excitedly, and Uncle Jim would pick one at random. He'd hold up paper on which the child would squiggle a line or circle or something using a marker. Uncle Jim would look at it, think for a few seconds, and turn the squiggle into something recognizable. Much to the children's delight. It was like magic.

Years later, as an adult selling automobiles, I waited on a man who wanted to look at station wagons. I introduced myself, extending my hand in a handshake. He introduced himself as Jim Fisk. “THEE Jim Fisk?” I asked. It was. I sold Uncle Jim a Dodge Aspen wagon. At this point, with Breadtime Stories off the air, Uncle Jim was drawing maps for a living. His company was named Jimapco.

We kids watched Howdy Doody too. It starred Buffalo Bob and his puppet Howdy. How do you do turns into Howdy out west. The kid audience was called the Peanut Gallery. Clarabell the clown was mute. He didn't speak. He had a box hanging from his neck. The box had two horns, one for yes and one for no. I didn't watch Howdy Doody much mainly because of the horrible acting, and it had no cartoons. Buffalo Bob wanted us to nag our moms for Wonder Buns and Hostess Sno-balls. Put them in the freezer for a cool summer snack. Howdy Doody was lame. I preferred the Old Skipper and Popeye cartoons.

There were plenty of other TV programs for children. Romper Room with Miss Francis was popular, as was Captain Kangaroo with Mr. Green Jeans, Mr. Moose, the Dancing Bear, the Banana Man, and the Bunny Rabbit, who was always tricking the Captain out of carrots. The token old man was Grandfather Clock who we all had to awaken by shouting his name, and who would soon fall back asleep while the Captain was talking to him.

The Captain showed cartoons. Terry Tunes presents Tom Terrific. He wore a funnel on his head instead of a hat. The funnel was his thinking cap that blew smoke when he had an idea. He had a faithful companion named Mighty Manfred the Wonder Dog. Calvin and Charlie Brown look an awful lot like Tom Terrific. They all had big round heads. Tom was a shape shifter. He could turn himself into anything, animate or inanimated. Tom's World Headquarters was a tree house. How cool would that be?

Beany and Cecil was a favorite cartoon. Beany wore a beany hat with a propeller. He could fly. Cecil was a sea monster. Whoever came up with this stuff must have been Baker Acted.

The Rocky and Bullwinkle were favorites. Rocket J Squirrel and Bullwinkle were the stars of the show. Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat. Nothing up my sleeve. Every kids show had to have a villain. Theirs was Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale, spies from Pottsylvania. But what was great about this cartoon was that it was a show, and within it were more cartoons. I loved Fractured Fairy Tales, Peabody's Improbable History, Mr. Know-It-All, Dudley Doright of the Mounties, and Aesop and Son. Unlike Howdy Doody, Rocky and Friends was fast paced. Kids bore easily, and this show kept our interest.

One of the newer cartoons was the Roadrunner. This was when cartoons got really interesting to me. The Roadrunner's villain was Wile E. Coyote, who was on a hilarious never ending quest to catch the Roadrunner and eat him. Wile E. Coyote merely didn't chase the Roadrunner because that would be futile. The Roadrunner was fast, so fast that sometimes you only saw a trail of dust as he ran down the road. So Wile E. Coyote would build various contraptions with parts ordered from the Acme company, all in an effort to catch the Roadrunner. None of them worked. Not only that, they would always backfire and often had Wile E. Coyote falling off a high cliff. So high that watching from above, you would see him get smaller and smaller until he vanished. But there would be a cloud of dust and a thunk sound as he hit the canyon floor. He would sometimes hover for a second or two as he ran off a cliff, holding a sign that said “help”. Great stuff.

But I think kids would all agree that the best cartoons, by far, were the original Looney Tunes. The supposed star of the show was Bugs Bunny, but to me, “What's up doc” has to be one of the lamest catch phrases in all of cartoon history. Other characters such as Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Porky Pig, and many others were better.

One of the outstanding things about early Looney Tunes cartoons was the quality of the art work. Characters moved smoothly, and actually had shadows. Later cartoons did not move as smoothly and cast no shadows. I guess the adults running the company didn't think we kids would notice. We did.

No more quality, entertaining children's shows. Kids today don't know what they're missing. SpongeBob SquarePants? Give me a break.

Sigh. No more home deliveries by men. Now we have Instacart and Amazon for, well, everything. I suppose that's better and more efficient than one man for bread, one for milk, and so on. Economies of scale and all that. But one thing Instacart and Amazon will never replace is the ice cream man.

We kids would be outside playing, doing whatever we were doing on our summer vacation, and we would hear the jingle jingle jingle of the bells coming down the street.

Russell, Tom, and I were sitting on my parent's stoop one summer day. We were learning the fine points of negotiation, a skill that would take us through our whole adult lives. We were trading comic books.

“I'll give you one Lulu, one Donald Duck, and one Casper for your two Superman,” said Russ.

“Are you crazy?” said Tom. “Lulu is lame. Tubby Tomkins is funny, but Lulu? No way.”

“Superman is stupid,” said Russ. “A guy who can fly, has x-ray and heat vision, and is invincible? What has he got to be afraid of. Deals off anyway. I'd rather have Lulu than Superman.”

“I've got a Flash here,” said little me. “I'll swap you my Flash for your two Superman.”

“Geez... I dunno,” said Russ. Jingle jingle jingle... “The ice cream man!”

Everyone scooped up their comics and ran for their allowances. Jingle jingle jingle... Quick before we miss him! Into our respective houses we ran, emerging shortly with nickels, dimes, and the rare quarters. Jingle jingle jingle...

“Hur rey up!” shouted Tom.

“I am!” shouted back three or four kids.

The ice cream man stopped his truck, and stopped his jingling. He stepped out onto the street. He was an older man. He wore a white shirt, white pants, black belt and shoes, and a white hat. Gray hair stuck out from under the hat. He was always smiling. He walked to the side of his truck and opened the greezer door as the kids lined up.

Just like at Michon's and penny candy, each of us hemmed and hawwed about our selection. This required careful consideration. Ice cream sandwiches were a favorite, but on a hot day they melted really fast and quickly turned into a gooey mess, so we had to take into account the weather before deciding. Popsicles were dead last. We could get those at home. Freeze-pops were good. Fudgsicles were a favorite.

We would make our selection and hand the ice cream man our money. If change was needed, he had a change dispenser on his belt. It was bright and shiny. He would click the little levers and coins would drop out. That was fascinating.

We felt sorry for the kids who had already spent their allowances, and whose mothers had no change. They had to watch us buy our cold treats. We felt a little bad. But only a little.

Soon, it was gone. Eaten or melted. Sometimes both. The kids who opted for Fudgsicles were obvious with the brown ice cream all around their mouths and, usually, down the front of their tee-shirts. But then it was back to what we were doing. Unless it was playing in dirt, because melted ice cream and dirt was a nasty combination.

Even for kids.