A Website on the World Wide Web with writing by Laura Jayne Martin

It took me exactly three phone calls from Kathleen’s phone in the pool store to secure the perfect summer job.  I would drive an ice cream truck throughout a rural town in Upstate New York: an airtight plan.  From what I can tell, driving an ice cream truck is a lot like being President of the United States.  Everyone wants something from you and you are not entirely sure they won’t kill you to get it.

My first day on the job, we drove the truck to the Florida Family Fun Fest in Florida, NY.  My boss, Jim Jones, would ride with me as a probationary measure. I had met Jim at his house the night before to learn how to drive the truck.  Jim was an unconventional teacher and his method involved sitting at his kitchen table, using a salt and pepper shaker to show me how far back I should stay from other cars.  You probably don’t remember this but back then most cars were condiment-sized—so this made sense. Also, by not permitting me to practice driving the truck, Jim prevented me from making any mistakes. Therefore, day one I jumped into the driver’s seat with a flawless ice cream truck operating record.

The ice cream truck itself was a converted UPS truck.  Jim painted it white, which looked totally creepy. He attempted to soften the truck’s visual message, (which said something like: “hi, we’re picking up your children for a cult, okay thanks bye!”) by having a friend draw imitation cartoon characters all over it.  A sloppy Snoopy, squirrelly Woodstock and, my favorite, a soft-skulled Bart Simpson with a disconcerting dent in the side of his head. (Should he still be riding his skateboard? Does he need an MRI?)

We arrived in Florida NY at 9am.  Florida NY is a village of 2,757 people—and at 9:05am they were all on line for ice cream.  The soft serve machine broke by noon.  A group of teenage boys starting rocking the truck back and forth; it was like a police car in a riot.  Or, more accurately, it looked exactly the way you would imagine an ice cream truck would look in a riot of 2, 757 people.  Children wailed and parents berated us, as I offered them rock hard Pokemon pops from the freezer.

I should take this time to mention that Jim hated people.  He warned me countless times about the ice cream biz.  According to Jim, all our clients were lowlifes.  He drowned them out with two wooden stereo speakers he’d hung inside the truck, just above the windshield.  These speakers did double-duty, by also drowning out the ice cream truck music.  I felt like a deaf Pied Piper most of the time.  I blasted the Bangles, while the outside world was listening to one of six choices: “Mister Softee” by Les Waas, “Turkey in the Straw/ Do your ears hang low”, “The Entertainer”, “Yankee doodle”, “Greensleeves”, and I think something by Huey Lewis and the News.

After that first day, I learned simply not to stop if I didn’t have soft serve.  I ran my route, learning the hard way that the truck would break down if I put it in reverse gear for more than sixty seconds.  I only picked up a few hitchhikers before one jumped out of the–still moving–truck and I decided that it was probably not a good idea.  At the end of each day, I plugged the generator in the back of the truck into Jim’s house to recharge.  Note: before you plug a truck into a house make you cut the power to BOTH the truck’s generator and to the house.  One forgetful day, I forgot to flip the house switch to “off” and I looked like Tom Hanks in the end of The Burbs.

Things devolved over the summer as I made less and less commission.  Toward the end of the summer Jim hired another driver, so I could make even less.  The way commission works was 50% of all profits goes to purchasing more product.  Minus $50 for gas and maintenance, then he and I split the remainder 50/50.  It was a reciprocal relationship.  He got paid thrice and I got shocked by a house.

Another exciting feature of operating the ice cream truck was the way grown men were always very eager to loudly, and insistently, give me unsolicited driving instructions.  They saw a teenage girl driving a truck and it made them kind of woozy.  Then, they would regain their strength and walk into the road, usually in front of the truck, to save me from myself.  (Preventing suicide by attempting it?) One particularly hot day, I was double-teamed by two such men as I drove down a narrow street.

One older man stayed in his lawn chair the entire time, shouting indiscernible things.  Who was I to stop him?  This was obviously his passion.  Why else would his chair be so close to the road?  This was not a parade route.  In hindsight though, maybe for him it was all a parade.  Another younger man in corduroy pants and no shirt stepped into the road vigorously waving me forward.  I’ve always assumed he had been just about to don a shirt, when he saw me driving and rushed to intervene. (But don’t call him a hero).

Admittedly, cars were parked on either side of the street, but I could fit through easily.  The true cause for alarm was a tree branch over-hanging the road and being quietly being stretched as the top of the truck pushed against it.  A crowd formed, instantly.  Suddenly, my shirtless guide decided I couldn’t make it and started walking toward the truck with his hands up demanding my retreat, revolutionary war-style.

I reversed nervously.  No longer being compressed by the front corner of the ice cream truck, the branch discharged like a catapult.  I was too busy watching the windshield glass splinter like a frozen pond to see the branch crack off and shell the elderly man who dove from his lawn chair.  The crowd actually booed.  They gave me way too much credit, as I could never have engineered this type of calamity (Do wishes count as premeditation?).  I heard the old man’s beverage hit the side of the truck and I fled the scene of the crime.

I realize there was only one way to escape Jim’s wrath.  However much anger he displayed, I would be angrier.  I slammed the door of the truck and seconds later flung open the door to Jim’s house.  He burst outside and I commenced yelling about lowlifes.  Jim yelled and I yelled, neither of us directed our tirade at the other; it was more like a performance piece of free form rage.

In the end, I avoided being held accountable in any way.  I suppose Jim could have garnished my non-existed wages to pay for the windshield replacement, but that would have meant taking it off the road for one day to repair it.  I’m told the very next day, when the new driver showed up to work Jim pointed to the windshield.  He shook his head and said only two words: “f**king Laura.”   I think that’s still the best way to explain it.