Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.
"When I was a kid, I used to think, man, if I could ever afford all the ice cream I want to eat, that's as rich as I ever want to be." -Jimmy Dean
Dear Gentlereaders,
Now retired, my various and sundry attempts to create a career of some sort behind me, I admit to being an on-again, off-again popsicle pusher as my life happened while I was making other plans.
Over the course of several decades:
I was one of the group of Good Humor men persons who worked for Good Humor before they turned their backs on street vendors and became just another product line for globe-spanning Big Food firm Unilever.
{Are you familiar with that Paul Simon song, Fifty Ways to Love Your Lever? I never thought he'd be a sellout.}
- At one point, I leased a truck from a guy I used to call a wanna-be Goody Bar mogul behind his back (now deceased) whom I would seek out and apologize to if he were still around. Sorry, John. You're dreams didn't come true, but it wasn't for a lack of trying. My life has been much the same.
- After taking a geographic cure to mend a busted heart brought on by a cute, blond girl next door type, I shrugged off my coma two years later in Austin (where I met my wife and daughter) and found myself managing a fleet of ice cream trucks and lo and behold, my testicles had grown back.
Finally, I bought myself an ice cream truck that supported me and mine for nearly a decade (with the assistance of some really awful off-season jobs) before finally accepting the fact that ice cream street vending was on its last legs and got out while my sales were still healthy but my attitude was not.
{You're not gonna mention that when you first started you had to deal with one or two apparently parentless kids a day and by the end you were fantasizing about bitch-slapping all sorts of high-functioning chimpanzees?}
Nope.
{Nothing about attractive, well-maintained, lilly white mobile home parks out in the country sprinkled with pasty/pimpled teenage boys, gangster wannabes who talked like inner-city thugs, and teenage girls who talked and dressed like hos?}
Nope.
Hey, did you know that according to my research, the correct spelling of the plural form of the word ho is controversial? Is it Hoes? Hos? Even ho's? Who knows? I asked my favorite unbiased, neutral, nonjudgmental — but apparently woke — AI, Perplexity, which responded:
The slang term "ho" is often used derogatorily and is considered offensive. However, if you're asking about the plural form for educational or linguistic purposes, it would typically be "hos." This term is not commonly used in polite conversation due to its derogatory nature. It's important to be mindful of the language we use and its impact on others.
Sorry, Ma.
I became a popsicle pusher the same way most people do, accidentally, and like most people, I thought it was, at best, a temporary gig to keep the bills paid till a real job came along. I didn't know this was going to be a recurring pattern in my life.
It also was a great summer job for college students (see "cute, blond girl next door type" above).
It all began when I was the frozen food dude on a supermarket night-stock crew the night I had had enough of Ralphie's (the newly minted assistant manager who worked during the day with our fellow employees associates, whom we affectionately called daylight dicks) unfortunate tendency to wildly over order the weekly "specials" despite my pleas to the contrary, and my offer to order them myself.
I took one look at the pallets of merchandise waiting for me to process and knew that trying to stuff all those specials (and have nightly access to them) into an already overloaded storage freezer was going to be a nightmare.
Picture your basement freezer filled to the top, and something you must have is at the bottom, so you have to take out a ton of stuff to get to what you want. Now, multiply that by a hundred.
I asked the amiable, well-meaning dope who ran the night stock crew to unlock the door, "I quit, you can find someplace to put all that overstock!"
"You can't..."
"I just did, please unlock the door, or I'm gonna use one of the emergency exits."
WARNING! ALARM WILL SOUND!
{Well-meaning dope? That's not very nice.}
In my defense, I felt guilty once I calmed down...and celebrated. It was an awful place to work. Like Ralphie, he was also (technically) an assistant manager. However, once the evil owner and his equally evil store manager, Jim, determined that he wasn't evil, he was banished to running the night stock crew (10:30 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.) when the store was closed.
{Eight and a half hours?}
The half-hour was for our unpaid lunch break. Our alleged union, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the only union I ever belonged to — "the union has had numerous problems in its national office and local unions with financial misdeeds" — was a dues-collecting scam in my opinion, but I drift. We were a notorious bunch of tough-to-supervise rebels and hard cases (as far as supermarket employees go), and getting everything done by morning was often a bit of a nightmare.
I don't know if Jim was trying to get him to quit or go to the Dark Side.
It was almost Spring, and there was an ad in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in the morning. I needed a job ASAP. I was completely self-supporting and any of my hard-earned income that was left after I paid my bills was spent on partying and/with the girlfriend I had at the time, the red-headed predecessor of the blond girl next door type mentioned above, the only woman I knew who could smoke as much weed as I could at the time.
The Great White Fleet is Back On the Street! Good Humor Now Hiring!
{The great white fleet?}
The trucks were all white, Dana, not the drivers. Geesh.
I loved it (at first), and that's how "Ice Cream Man" was added to my resume. FYI, you may have noticed the term Goody Bar above. In Pittsburgh, I can't speak of other locales, Good Humor ice cream bars were (are?) colloquially called Goody Bars, and a person who drove an ice cream truck was called a Goody Bar Man/Lady.
For the record, this was still the Dark Ages, so the majority of drivers were toxic males, and yes ladies, they were trying to peer down your top from their elevated perch in the truck's serving window. In my defense, I always tried to be discreet.
I know what you're thinking, but it's not true. I'm not aware of any female drivers who dressed in such a way as to exploit their physical charms for monetary gain... with the possible exception of a woman whose nickname was the Terry Cloth Princess and who liked to wear terry cloth jumpsuits that rode up her...
{I don't think you should go there.}
Nope.
I will forever be grateful to Jackie, who taught me how to drive a "stick shift," or just a "stick," in about five minutes.
See, at the time, most Good Humor trucks were Ford Econoline Vans with "three on the tree". Those of you who aren't of a certain age may be unaware that three on the tree refers to a vehicle with a manual transmission with three gears accessed by a shift lever mounted on the steering column.
{What is this mysterious phenomenon you speak of, grandfather?}
Suffice it to say that the driver has three pedals to deal with: gas, brake, and clutch. The gas and clutch pedals must be properly worked together to keep from stalling the engine and/or making oneself look like a fool by causing said vehicle to lurch/pause/lurch/pause/lurch/pause when starting out.
It's hard to explain; you have to have experienced a stick shift to truly grasp what I'm on about.
My previous limited experiences with stick shifts had not gone well, and those were in ordinary cars. Jackie taught me to drive a full-sized commercial van with a stick, to reiterate, in about five minutes. I couldn't possibly explain to you how this is done, but I could show you.
If we should ever happen to encounter each other in meatspace, gentlereader, feel free to ask. I'd be delighted to initiate you into the not-so-secret society of those who can confidently drive a stick, enjoy doing so, and enjoy looking down on anyone who cannot.
{Is it true that there were a few trucks that had automatic transmissions, but they were all assigned to drivers who presented as female?}
Nope.
Jackie, by the way, presented as female. That is to say, she was a woman, in the traditional sense.
{But after all, what is a woman? Who's to say that...}
In addition to teaching me how to drive a stick-shifted ice cream truck, she administered my formal "classroom" training -- a brief film strip followed by a pretend test -- taught me how to read a "route book," and how to peddle popsicles in a company approved manner, all in record time.
I was out on my own, and making money with the help of my company-assigned coin changer, the very next day.
To be continued...
Colonel Cranky
Scroll down to comment, share my work, or scroll previous columns. I post links to my columns on my Facebook page so you can love me, hate me, or call for my cancellation/execution via social media. Cranky don't tweet (Xclaim?).
Copyright 2025-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved
