Reflections of the Way Life Used to Be

The Milk Man may be long gone but spring is still on its way as it has been every year since those last glass bottles were taken away, never to be refilled. I soon expect to hear the ring of a bell from an ice cream truck. Though I may expect that, I am unlikely to hear it. In fact, It’s been a while since I’ve heard that sound, since I’ve enjoyed orange sherbet packed into an inedible clear plastic cone with the familiar gum ball at the very bottom (or the “cannonball” as it was called). That and Nutty Buddies and sometimes Pushups were the closest things to actual ice cream you could buy from my friendly neighborhood ice cream truck. I liked visiting my grandmother as her neighborhood ice cream truck actually dispensed soft serve vanilla and chocolate ice cream. I really like soft serve vanilla ice cream. No, actually I love soft serve vanilla ice cream. I’ve always loved soft serve vanilla ice cream, or so Delbert Grady has told me. That truck was blue, not the standard white. We had a blue truck in our neighborhood too. But our blue truck offered no soft serve ice cream. It sold pizza by the slice and canned soda and cigarettes, of course, for the adults (they hadn’t invented vaping yet so the kids were s**t out of luck when it came to getting their nicotine fix). There was also that yellow and green truck. That one was owned by an old pervert named Mr. Lemon who got a kick out of having children drink his urine, which he infused into the frozen lemonade that he dispensed along with a very dry pretzel rod. Often he wouldn’t even charge for it, the lemonade or the pretzel, and I’m not sure how exactly he was able to make a living. His frozen citrus beverage was quite popular among the neighborhood children, even if most of them wouldn’t eat the pretzel. I would later learn that the sweet deliciousness of his icy lemonade was indicative of type two diabetes, which I suspect was untreated leading to the eventual loss of Mr. Lemon’s eyesight and, subsequently his driver’s license. And so we never saw Mr. Lemon’s truck again. He had gone the way of the Milk Man.

Things are so much different these days, and not just on account of the lack of a Milk Man or the rarity of an ice cream truck or the absence of Mr. Lemon. Now it’s all about TikTok and Greta Thunberg and robot baristas, a barista now having been redefined as a person (or an android) who serves you coffee, as opposed to what we called a lawyer in a goofy wig back in my day. Funny how words change. I’ve heard lawyers are now sometimes called “solicitors”, which is what we used to call prostitutes. Now prostitutes are apparently called “sex workers” and they’re held in the highest esteem, so much so that a red umbrella has been added alongside the stars on the American flag to recognize their important contributions to the Republic for which it stands. I am not certain what an umbrella has to do with sex work, though a whoremonger I once knew told me that, on a rainy day, a solicitor (as we called them back then) would often be willing to get into your car for half her usual fee. Maybe it has something to do with that.

“You’re a pile of f*****g s**t!” the unwashed gentleman without a home shouted to me. I was getting into my car at a 7-11 on Ventrua Blvd in Los Angeles, the City of Angels as they call it. He was across the street sitting on the pavement, his back against the curb. I thought it was a rather unfair judgement of my character. He didn’t even know me. How could he? I wasn’t from there. Homeless people used to have much more grace back in the day. They would politely ask, “Sir, might you spare a dollar or two?” and when I would respond “no” they would say “God Bless.” Now they just want to yell profanities at me. This seems to be an American thing. Last summer, while in a foreign land, I came across numerous homeless people and none of them swore at housed people or even wanted a handout. They were entrepreneurs, having had coolers stocked with juices and sodas that they offered for sale to passersby. I was rather impressed by that. Our contemporary American hobos could perhaps learn a thing or two from them. I’d lobby for some sort of exchange program but I’ve not the time. I’ve got to install microwave ovens, do custom kitchen deliveries. Yeah, I’ve got to move these refrigerators, move these color TVs.

If only there was somebody to deliver milk to my doorstep in the meantime.