Another Tuesday

Greetings. I know that I keep promising stories, but after being in the truck for 12 hours, I'm usually too weirded out to write much! The thing vibrates all the time, and it makes me loco. Here's how today played out, just for your reading pleasure.

I left the depot at about 11:30 and headed to Union Square. I got my spot, but immediately another fellow from our depot pulled up. Some lines were crossed, so I was reassigned to a spot in midtown. It's a place I'd been to with Andrea a few times, and it's right next to the husband's office, so it's a place I'm happy to go.

I parked up there, and then gave the machine a test. You never know what the nozzles are going to give you on first yank. The vanilla was ok, but there was no chocolate to be found. The base of the machine is a refrigerator cabinet. In there you place gallon jugs of mix, and the mix is sucked up into the upper section and frozen. I opened this refrigerator and the full gallon came flooding out. The pump had successfully drawn the mix from the jug but then leaked it back out into the cabinet. YAY!!

This spot was good work. The sun was out, people were buying, all went well.

At 4pm I pulled up stakes and headed to 24th street. I parked in front of the GMHC building for a "friend of the trucks" final day at work. About 30 people from GMHC lined up for cones, and I yanked 'em fast and furious. It was a great time. Most people stayed out on the street, having a great time and enjoying ice cream together. I think that our friend really had a nice party, and I was proud to help bring some fun along.

By 4:45pm I had finished there, and dispatch sent me up near Rockefeller Center. On the drive up I could tell that the weather was turning; you know how streetlights and headlights look different as the clouds roll in? No sooner had I parked than torrential rain came in. This went off and on for a few hours and I sat in ice cream truck purgatory.

At 9pm I'd had enough of this barren spot and called in for a new location. I moved down closer to the theaters and got some business going. My buddy Harry came along and got his first look (and smell) inside a truck. Eventually I cleaned everything up and sat in the driver's seat. I was quite proud that I'd gone a whole day with no spatter-explosions covering my upper body.

I was about to leave when a small family knocked on the window. A few more cones, a few more dollars, so I hopped up to serve. NATURALLY the explosion then came. Liquid mix shot out with such force that it shattered the cone, bounced back up and covered my face. It gave everyone a good laugh, including me (a kind of tortured chuckle) and I told the folks that they were out of luck.

I turned the truck back in at 11:40. That's how it rolls when you're an ice cream man.