“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”
The corner has been turned. Yesterday was cloudy but still felt warm. After the winter we’ve had, the low 50’s are tropical. I sat on my deck for a while and wished I had a drink with an umbrella and a piece of pineapple. Gracie sleeps on the deck and her fur gets hot to the touch. So many flowers have bloomed now. The hyacinths are the most recent adding some purple to the yard.
Tonight Captain Frosty’s opens. The boards are off the windows. In some places birds return, the cherry blossoms bloom and the gardens fill with flowers, all announcing the coming of spring and summer. For us the first sign of the changing season is when Captain Frosty’s opens. My friends and I are going to first night dinner, another one of our rituals. I can just taste that shrimp, the corn fritter and those amazing onions rings. It’s a happy day!
When I was a kid, it was hearing the ice cream man’s bell which announced the changing of the seasons. Johnny came up the hill and parked his truck in its usual spot as if it had been yesterday instead of a year ago when he was last here. We all ran home for a nickel or, if we were lucky, a dime. A nickel bought a popsicle and a dime brought so many different choices. I liked chocolate covers but my favorite was a drumstick. The vanilla ice cream had hard chocolate and nuts covering it. The cone was always soft, and after I finished the ice cream, I ate the cone, a sugar cone. My dad, who worked for Hood’s Ice Cream, told me that my drumstick is called an ice cream novelty. I think that name fits a drumstick perfectly.
This morning I read my two papers and a phrase, seldom heard any more, was written in one column. I don’t even remember what it was, but it sent me off on a tangent wondering what will happen to all the neat words and phrases of my generation. It seems sort of silly for woman of 67, almost 68, to say groovy. Nobody bums a smoke any more, nobody smokes. My brother and I yelled dibs when we reserved a seat in the car, usually it was dibs on a window seat. Drop a dime is gone forever. Where was the last pay phone you saw?Remember always checking the change slot in case someone left a dime. I found one a couple of times. On dates guys tried to get to second base or even go all the way. It usually started with making out. Luckily some of the lingo survives. You can still flip the bird, catch some rays or wear shades.
Every new generation needs its own vocabulary. It’s a sort of teen rebellion to break from our parents and speak in tongues they don’t understand. The problem is that vocabulary, like all the previous, will be replaced when a new generation takes center stage. How uncool all of that is, a real bummer.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: grovy, ice cream man's bell, ice cream novelty, idioma, new generations, onion rings, payphone
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April 16, 2015 at 12:22 pm
Across the Atlantic, my sister and I always have a “Words with Friends” in process. It amuses us no end to accrue points with a word long gone but not forgotten. Nit is a personal favorite such as in “You are a Nit”
Your musings today were Fab Gear.
April 16, 2015 at 12:45 pm
My Dear Hedley,
I had a blast writing it. It’s solid.
April 16, 2015 at 2:07 pm
The ice cream car never came to my neighborhood, too many small candy stores and grocery stores selling ice cream there I think but it did go to where my best friend lived, not even a mile away. I always thought it strange buying ice cream there when we just could walk down the street to the nearest candystore when ever we wanted 🙂
Moving away from my old home town meant no old phrases can be heard here, even though it isn’t that far away the dialect is so different. Today I actually heard one of those old frases here but in my old home town it meant something was dropped but up here it meant somethig was turned around 🙂
Sunny and rainy here in the village today but the sun shone all day at work, from now on the weather will be more stabile and the warmer weather will return again 🙂
Have a great day!
Christer.
April 16, 2015 at 2:50 pm
Christer,
No stores close to us-they were a bike ride away. The ice cream truck was an afternoon event. We loved hearing that bell.
Even here the regional differences are amazing. What idioms the south uses, we don’t here and vice versa. Though we all speak English, words change from place to place. Here in Massachusetts we order a frappe while in other places they ask for an ice cream soda which doesn’t have ice cream. People get confused.
Lovely day here. I’m happy!!
Have a great evening!
April 16, 2015 at 3:11 pm
I would get confused too if anyone ordered an ice cream soda that doesn’t have any ice cream 🙂
April 16, 2015 at 3:17 pm
Christer,
In Rhode Island the same thing is know as a cabinet.
April 16, 2015 at 2:24 pm
It was yesterday that I last saw a pay phone and that 2 friends bummed a smoke. The ice cream man’s bell probably rang. I admit we are old-fashioned.
I looked up Captain Frosty. I think I’d take fresh cod and chips. I miss the ocean and really fresh fish, without a car it’s not so easy to reach the Dutch shore anymore.
Groovy greetings, have a great evening and enjoy your dinner!
April 16, 2015 at 2:53 pm
Birgit,
I haven’t seen a pay phone in ages. My two sisters smoke, and they are about the only people I am close to who do. That you are old-fashioned amazes me.
The fish and chips is a delight. It is such a large portion it falls off the plate if you’re not careful. I’m thinking shrimp tonight but now you have me thinking about fish and chips.
I definitely will enjoy that dinner. Just thinking about it makes me salivate.
April 16, 2015 at 2:34 pm
Captain Frosty’s sounds brilliant! For us spring meant the freedom to stay out playing, adventures across the fields to the waterfall that we used to love sliding down & just roaming with a big group of kids. I hope my son has some of the same freedoms I did, but sadly it’s not so common now to let your kids out to play alone. He did notice the ice cream van tune for the first time today though – that was an exciting moment! I’m so pleased you’re done with the snow – it sounds like you had a tough winter.
April 16, 2015 at 2:57 pm
kathryn,
Spring conjures the best memories. We too had a field that led to the swamp where there were polliwogs in the spring. I would have loved a waterfall.
I am sorry for the kids today as they can’t do all the roaming we did. It just isn’t fair.
Your son is enjoying an event which connects all our childhoods-the tune of the ice cream truck. I’m glad he has a piece of what we all had.
Yup, the snow is finally gone, even the big old dirty piles left in parking lots from the plows. It was the worst winter!
April 16, 2015 at 3:38 pm
Hi Kat,
Drumsticks were good. Creamsicles were my favorite.
I was going to ask why all the ice cream men were named Johnny until I remembered that the last one of my childhood was named Andy. Oh, well.
The ice cream truck comes around here during the summer but it’s not the same. On my street the kids do play outside in the road but now most of them are in middle school and high school. Too old for the ice cream truck. No little kids running for nickels (or dollars now). Often the kids aren’t even home. They’re off doing “activities”. And the truck doesn’t have bells anymore. It’s just a sad, endless loop of Turkey in the Straw. I want to shoot the speaker and put it out of its misery. 🙂
Lovely day up here. Cool but sunny. I spent the morning in various medical facilities because my doctor is really bad at drawing a blood sample. She tried once in the back of each hand, failed both times and sent me off to have the medical center lab do it. A student technician did it quickly and painlessly and out of my arm. It was a fasting test too, so by the time I got breakfast I hadn’t eaten in almost 18 hours. Hungry!, I was. 🙂
Now I need some ice cream. 🙂
Enjoy the day.
April 16, 2015 at 5:58 pm
Hi Caryn,
I liked creamsicles too but loved drumsticks. I now order a drink which tastes just like a creamsicle.
No ice cream trucks come around here, and this street has 9 kids under 10. He’d make a haul. They play on the street a lot and ride their bikes up and down the street.
The same sort of day here today. I am not a fan of spending lots of time in a medical office. I have been to all of them in the last week. I’m done for a year.
Now I need someone cream!
Have a great evening!
April 16, 2015 at 5:22 pm
Getting to Second Base? You’ve got to listen to “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” (in case you haven’t … ). 😀
s
April 16, 2015 at 5:59 pm
Thanks, S
I may have but I don’t remember it!
April 16, 2015 at 6:14 pm
You’d remember it if you had. 🙂
April 16, 2015 at 6:19 pm
I’ll hunt it down!
April 16, 2015 at 9:17 pm
When I was living in NYC we knew Spring had sprung when the Good Humor ice cream truck came around. They drove specially designed trucks with an ice box on the back. The driver wore a change thing on his belt and could reach into the box from other the rear or side door. One summer in high school I was a Goid Humor man on a tricycle. The ice box was in the front and the bike part was in the back. My favorite flavors were Chocolate Eclair or Strawberry Shortcake. I ate most of the profits while peddling that thing the three or four miles from the shopping area to the ice cream plant. The bike used dry ice to keep the ice cream frozen in the tricycle ice box. The trucks didn’t use dry ice. They were plugged into an AC socket all night which froze the ice cream. The box held in the cold all day so the ice cream bars were solid but not frozen as hard as a rock.
Today was cloudy most of the day but no rain here.
April 16, 2015 at 9:39 pm
Bob,
I never have seen a Good Humor truck as there were none where I lived. I guess the sorts of ice cream must have been similar. I know exactly what you mean by that bicycle. They used the same thing in Ghana to sell Fan Milk which actually tasted pretty good. It was in a couple of flavors. We used to freeze it to make a sort of slushy ice cream.
I could probably keep from eating the ice cream, but I’d eat all the profits if I worked in a candy store. I figure you must have worked off the calories of all that ice cream as you pedaled in the sun.
Where is that rain? It seems to be threatening!
April 16, 2015 at 10:43 pm
Missing out on Good Humor ice cream is a real kid tragedy. Good Humor was the Creme’ de la Creme’ of ice cream bars. In those days they didn’t have Dove bars or Haggen Dazs.
April 16, 2015 at 10:47 pm
Bob,
My dad worked for Hood Ice Cream, a local brand. It wasn’t Dove, but their special ice cream was wonderful.
April 16, 2015 at 11:59 pm
No ice cream trucks where I grew up, sadly. Must have been urban zoning rules, because there were hundreds of kids around in the baby-boom era. Do kids swipe their Mastercards now?
The neighborhood where my daughters occasionally lived with their mom (college and post) had an ice cream truck that played “Pretty Red Wing”. On endless loop! If I owned a shotgun, I’d be writing you from prison today.
Creamsicles were great! That company makes a wonderful sugar-free “Fujicle”, but has yet to market an Equal-based Creamsicle, Important for us diabetics.
Hood was “New England’s ice cream”, even before Friendly’s.
April 17, 2015 at 12:07 am
Jay,
I always thought the ice cream man was a universal. I can still see that small white truck and Johnny with his chinos ringed by a belt holding his coin changer. Johnny rang a bell. Had he looped the same song, the adult me would have joined you in the shooting.
My dad would have liked your Hood comment. He worked for them for several years. He used to bring home ice cream. At Christmas they made a molded ice cream of Santa. It was wonderful!