I CHASED AN ICE CREAM TRUCK AND IT FELT GOOD     

I am 50 years old, ill in all the ways half century old men are supposed to be ill.  High blood pressure, type II diabetes,  creaky back and creaky knees.  The American Red Cross pays me not to donate blood and over the years, three friends in need of various spare organs, kidneys, portions of liver, bone marrow, etc all turned me down.  Apparently the old and infirm need not apply.

I worked an extraordinary number of hours last month and will do the same this month.  There is no rest for the wicked or the weary.  There are bills to pay, kids in college and all the drudgery of daily life.

My angst is further compounded by the problems normally associated with work and the article in today’s newspaper reporting rising tuition at the school of higher education attended by son 1.0.  Someday science and technology will resolve these problems.  But, for today, I have no flying car, no video wrist watch and no functional mechanical heart.  Somebody lied to me in 1972 and I am not happy about it.

As those of you who don’t live under rocks already know, times are hard all over; but, today I heard the bells and whistles of an ice cream truck.  I am 50 years old and have not screamed or run after an ice cream truck in well over three and one half decades.  You may recognize the ice cream truck song; but, I bet you don’t know the words:  Do your ears hang low, do they wobble to and fro, can you tie them a knot, can you tie them in a bow…..Do your ears hang low?

Imagine the electronic organ over a very bad loud speaker accompanied by whistle and bells calling to you while dreaming of a very cold very sweet multicolored popsickle shaped like Buck Rogers’ rocket.  Imagine the fields of your youth, the lazy riverside cane pole fishing trips and all of a sudden you are nine years old sprinting down the street, screaming and begging for the truck to stop.  Dress shirt un-tucked, sock footed and wearing the remnants of the day’s dress clothes, I caught the truck on the fly and bought the largest ice cream bar in the place.  For the time required to consume the ice cream, I was no longer old and infirm.  I was nine years old with grass between my toes and squaring up to catch Denny Teeter’s long fly ball to left field.  I even heard one neighbor say to another :  “He moves pretty good for a big boy.”

So, at half a century old, I chased an ice cream truck and it felt good.

See you next time (God willing).