...is back again. For what seems like years now, the eerie tune of "Do Your Ears Hang Low?" has been drifting into my bedroom window on the warm breeze of spring, but from where it's coming from I can't quite tell. The development a few blocks away? The parking lot of the abandoned special ed school behind the backyard fence? Yet it never seems to come down my street. I've never seen this bloody thing. Which is cruel for two reasons : 1- I always want to get ice cream from a truck to see if they still have Screwballs to cure a decade-long craving, and 2 - I think I'm going slightly mad every time I sort of hear it but never see it.
I've even looked in Weird NJ to see if there are any stories of a terrible accident involving an ice cream truck, thus giving birth to some tortured soul calling out from the afterlife with only the delicate strains of music box-ish melody from warped and melted chimes, the brightly colored menu on the outside door faded, cracked and peeling from years of disuse...
OK, not very scary. Trying to work food into a good ghost story just makes it seem more delicious and less tragic. Oh, you died in a horrible, fiery accident? Boo freaking hoo, you helped make children's dreams come true along the Jersey shore for years and years! Drumsticks, screwballs and firecracker pops were your currency, O denizen of the perpetually air-conditioned cabin! Hell, even those plain-jane ice cream sandwiches were pretty good when all of your favorites were gone. You had it made, ice cream truck driver. Now leave me alone while I curl up in a corner and hum children's nursery rhyme melodies.
On an unrelated note, Googling the phrase "ice cream truck" delivers the following:
Can't say I saw that coming.