Ice Cream Trucks

Allow me, please, to once again find my perch atop my all-too-new old man soapbox, for some terrible carousel tune from afar reminded me the other day of the growing difference between generations, primarily the ever-widening gap between what was once never questioned and is now questionable at best.

For my generation, the ice cream trucks (which actually haven't been trucks for decades but rather retired Dodge church vans with a demented clown's face tattooed on the side) were the trustworthy godsends to summer break afternoons. They drove in like the Messiah on His white horse, redeeming all dollar-bill wavers from the tyrannical grip of the sweltering summer heat. They arrived in style, belting friendly chimes and donning tasty colors that matched the frozen treats they delivered. Like clockwork, the trucks came ringing with sugary refreshments at the most opportune moments, as if their drivers were watching us kids play neighborhood tackle football and sounded the alarm when they saw the game conclude. (Here's to hoping that wasn't actually the case.)

I can only imagine how much better it was for the generations before me, when milkmen and non-suicidal mailmen also visited the neighborhoods.

Now... eh, not so much.

The ice cream truck situation is just creepy today. For several reasons, really. The recent times that I've seen a truck ding-donging around are closer to bedtime than snack time. What are they doing driving around selling Klondike bars after 9 PM? Suppers have been supped. Desserts have been supped. Leave our streets alone now. And these "trucks" are deteriorating by the week; perhaps this is because a sign of success for the ice cream truck business is lasting longer than the first vehicle, so the drivers try to give the impression of success to their fellow ice cream truck-driving comrades by wearing the crap out of that first vehicle. Just a thought.

Those drivers are starting to mirror the roughness of their trucks, too, aren't they? I'm not saying I'd invite any of the ice cream men to play backyard Wiffle ball with us back in my childhood days, but I never felt unsafe around them. Now, I don't doubt a bit it's largely in part due to the rampant pedophiliac turn the news has taken in the past decade, but the idea of a stranger driving a vehicle stocked full with children's chocolaty delights around, targeting this innocent, uninformed demographic, nowadays is a shade unsettling. I mean, the ice cream man is driving a tackle box of bait for eager, helpless children. And it's hard for a parent or otherwise superior to be expected to supervise each extracurricular neighborhood activity, so what shinier opportunity could there be for a child-loving lunatic?

It's really too bad that the ice cream truck deal has lost nearly all of its allure. They were pretty cool, pun inten--

Wait, is that "The Farmer in the Dell" on a xylophone I hear outside?

I gotta go, I'm sorry...