Ice cream man! Ice cream man!

~ oneletterup

SixWordSaturday
BeckyB’s PastSquares

~~~

You could hear the kids yelling up and down the block as those familiar.. and oh so repetitive…melodies grew louder and louder. Summer days and early evenings interrupted by the sounds of the approaching Ice cream man! Ice cream man!. Always shouted in double time…and always “man” because…well it was always a man. I hopefully imagine that in 2021, there are women driving as well.

My sister, brother and I must have had super sonic hearing because we were out the door or across the yard in seconds – quarters clutched in sweaty hands (if we were lucky enough to finagle them from Mom). We needed to make it to the curb before the truck went by. Chasing it down our suburban street was just not the same, although we took off after it whenever necessary.

It was always a Good Humor truck. My favorite ice cream bar was the one with the candy bar inside, but it cost more so I rarely bought it. Chocolate Eclair or Toasted Almond were my usual go-to choices.

The truck featured in this square photo was parked out of the way at the National Zoo in Washington, DC during a visit in 2019. Plugged in and keeping cold. When I saw it kinda tucked in under several trees, branches resting on its roof…I thought of all the times when the sights and sounds of a simple ice cream truck became the highlight of my day. A blast from the past.

Published by oneletterup

37 thoughts on “Ice cream man! Ice cream man!”

  3. What a fond memory of ice cream from the truck, Andrea. My daughter’s first ice cream bar from an ice cream truck was when she was about two years old. We’re now in a different neighborhood. At the end of our block is an apartment complex. The ice cream truck usually circles around the apartment area but we can hear those tunes.

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  4. I think almost every kid enjoyed seeing and hearing the ice cream truck coming down the street, sweet memories! As a kid, I didn’t care what sex the driver was, it didn’t matter then and doesn’t today.

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    1. Thanks. It remains a sweet (!) memory for me. When my kids were growing up, there was an ice cream truck that came to our neighborhood – but not a Good Humor one. Perhaps it was more of a regional company.

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  7. We had one that visited our neighborhood in the summer. In the mid-fifties, in Texas, it is like a furnace outside, so the Ice Cream Man was a huge hit. He came by every day at around 3 PM. We could hear the cheesy music about 2 blocks away and dashed for the change jar.
    In those days, dry ice was the method used to keep everything frozen and the popsicles were kept at 50 degrees below zero. Put one of those babies on a hot dry bottom lip and it sticks like glue. Imagine twenty or so kids running down the street with a cherry Popsicle stuck to their bottom lip, screaming in pain. it wasn’t funny then, but is now. Good recount.

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    1. Thanks for sharing your great story – You got me laughing (I guess it IS funny now..oh well!)…Yes the popsicles could be a problem that way. I’ll bet the dry ice was used in the early sixties when I chased down the truck too. I hope you weren’t one of those kids (at least more than once). 😉

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  8. I had a dear friend with whom I also had a lifelong rivalry, and our first contest was about ice cream trucks. She liked the truck that came by her house called “Bungalow Bar,” But I knew that the Good Humor truck’s plain old vanilla-ice-cream-bar-with-chocolate-coating was superior to all. Fast forward 55 yrs and a change of neighborhood. On one of my walks, I spotted my first square white “Good Humor” truck in all that time. I think I cried. But there were no tears when I tasted their vanilla-ice- cream-bar-with–chocolate-coating and discovered it was exactly the same … just joy! Thanks for this reminiscence via this photo.

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    1. Thank you! What a great story of a fun rivalry. And I agree…Good Humor IS superior. I’m so glad to know that the quality and taste remain the same! When I saw this truck, I had to stop and take the picture.

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  11. Such joys of childhood always lives in our memories. This reminded me about my own childhood when a small ice cream truck, playing the melody I would never forget, used to made rounds in my neighborhood during summer nights.
    Nowadays, ice cream “men” on their bicycles roam my neighborhood almost every hour.

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    1. So true – and it’s good to recall those extra special memories like this one. Those melodies did stick in your head after a while!
      I wonder how the bicyclists keep the ice cream from melting, but how nice the tradition continues this way.

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      2. Wow. Good memory. I can’t remember the one from my childhood, but I do remember the one from when my kids were growing up. It was the first few measures of “The Entertainer” (from the movie “The Sting”).

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