Community Ice Cream Trucks

I grew up in a pretty rural town in Upstate New York.  So small is this place that only ONE stop-light exists within ~10 miles of the town center.  There was no "middle" school when I was attending the public system...grades K-6 in one building and grades 7-12 in the other.  Amazing we didn't take notes on slate.  Don't get me wrong now; looking back, it was a great place to be a kid/adolescent.  I'm sure I'll delve into some of my younger life on here at some point (some of you will not escape mention...so be prepared), but I bring up the small size of my hometown to make a point: there were no ice cream trucks.  Oh, we had a bad-ass hot dog truck (which, one fine summer day, I "worked" in for a few hours for a crisp 10$ bill and 47 hotdogs with kraut and mustard...thanks TJ, wherever you are) but no traveling, frozen treat-toting kid magnet.  I only knew they existed because of the movie "Friday" and random "Simpson's" episodes.

Now, being firmly ensconced in Suburbia - a fact that I sometimes lament - I have come to realize that yes, Virginia, there really is an ice cream truck.  And it is possibly the single most annoying part of spring/summer on my street.  It isn't the eye-sore of a micro-van plastered in an obscenely colored laminate that would make a circus clown blush.  Nor is it the slapping of hurried flip-flops worn by kids of all ages (this IS real) scurrying home to beg for $2.50 for a bomb-pop.  No, it is actually a one-two punch of amplifier and DJ.  One can actually hear this truck coming as it rounds the corner in Bethesda (I'm 18 miles north of Bethesda).  And the kicker is that they must have a drunk, one-eyed, retarded Bonobo chimpanzee working the ipod and loudspeakers.  Today, this damnable vehicle played a 5 minute stream of Christmas carols as a montage mashup.  Really?  Good King Wenceslas at jet-engine decibel on an 85 degree day in late May?  What, you couldn't find some crap-tastic Lady Gaga or Katy Perry tripe to blare?  Nope, Oh Tannenbaum it is.

My kids haven't yet discovered the secret mysteries of the ice cream truck.  They hear it come in, but, since Mommy and Daddy both work full-time, we're usually sitting down to dinner about the time the neighborhood kids are climbing trees and craving waffle cones.  I guess it's a sort-of rite of childhood in the 'burbs to grab the occasional frosty treat from some creepy dude (why is it always a middle-aged dude with three teeth missing?) driving around a freezer.  I'm sure we'll let them indulge at some point...but these trucks are the embodiment of Pavlov's dogs.  Patronize them once, and they show up at the same time every day hoping to bilk the homeowners out of a few more dollars by way of screaming kids.

It sort of makes me wonder if all that other stuff Craig, Smokey and Big Worm dealt with exists in as accurate a fashion...