Louie the Ice Cream Man

The gravel and dirt residential street was straight as an arrow and probably five miles long. People could see the rain and snow and cloud shadows come and go right up and down the street, sweet as you please. Once a year the road grader, the oil truck, then the gravel truck came by leveling the street, oiling the dust down, and spreading new stones over the whole length. It was like getting a brand new street, though it stank of oil and petroleum exhaust fumes for weeks afterward.

All the property-lots sloped toward the road, and there were run-off ditches along each side of the street to keep the rainwater from washing the road away. Without this drainage processing system, the street would be as muddy and innavigable as was the system of alleys behind the houses.

The old essential stores were few and far away, the new ones were yet to be built. Each family had only one car, and the father usually needed it to get to work and back. It was no help if he took a bus, most of the moms wouldn't drive. Only a few women were strong enough to bear the certain scandal which attended a woman out in the world alone, so family shopping was a rare, planned, day-long project which started out pleasantly enough, but always wound up filled with stress and anger. People usually came home exhausted and unhappy.

But this was just one of those everyday problems that people have always had. It was the same in 1950 as it was in 1920, or 1850. And the solution was pretty much the same:  Traveling Peddlers.

Swarthy little immigrant men with leathern features seamed and wrinkled, weathered with character, they rode like gypsies in a variety of old trucks and horsedrawn wagons throughout the maze of neighborhoods selling daily necessities and services. They worked on a cash-only, no refunds basis, but they were usually so pleasant and generous that complaints were virtually unknown.

With a speaker horn that played a chime version of Santa Lucia, the Vegetable Man came by every few days. The back of his rusty old pickup truck was filled with shelves and boxes of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, covered with a clever tent whose side walls opened up into awnings. He'd park near the middle of the block, off to the wrong side of the street, quickly set up, and suddenly there was a European open-air market just a few yards from all the houses. The women milled around, chatting and laughing and gossiping, buying enough to last until the next time the market came rolling by. You could watch this happen over and over again all the way down the street.

There was the Clothing-and-Linens Man, selling sheets, pillowcases, towels, kids' underwear, socks, and a hundred other domestic items (then called "notions") like sewing supplies and cloth by the foot off a bolt. There was the Scissors and Knife Sharpening man. He was a flagrant alcoholic who walked for miles pulling a stone sharpening-wheel from door to door. He did a great job. People often tipped him with shots of whiskey because his broken English got worse when he was loaded, and he staggered around foolishly. Great entertainment.

Most remarkable was probably the Sheenie-Man. He rode through the alleys on a big flatbed wagon with fence-like walls, pulled by two huge horses. Sometimes it was a smaller single-horse wagon. With a thick, heavy accent, and a strange feral cast to his tanned features (all the kids just assumed he was a werewolf, they were probably right), he roamed the nether regions unchallenged, digging and nosing through all the trash, looking for things that were still good. A few older folks understood him, but the younger families gave him a pretty wide berth. He was spooky, dangerous, and quite malodorous.

If anyone ever noticed that he returned in a truck from time to time as the Junk Man, selling a remarkable assortment of secondhand and refurbished stuff like tools, the odd radio or lamp or frying pan, they kept quiet about it. And so he redistributed cast-off property for a living in the Land of Opportunity.

But for us kids the sun rose and set for only one reason, the daily arrival of Louie the Ice Cream Man.

Around one o'clock every summer afternoon, we'd start looking down the street (to the east), hoping to see his approaching truck in the distance. It was an old, big-fendered Ford, brush-painted white, with a big sun visor above the double-paned windshield. On this visor, in red letters he'd painted his name: Louie. Over it there was a bank of bells, connected into the cab by a chain, and he jingled those bells with true gusto whenever he was driving. The main body was basically a white icebox unit with thick square rubber-insulated doors on both sides and the back, each bound and held closed with huge chrome hinges and handle-latches. All over the truck there were decals and actual paintings of frozen confections, real and imaginary, that he sold, or used to sell but not any more. There was an ice cream cone, a popsicle (alternately known as a paddle-pop), a sundae, push-ups and torpedoes. Oddly, there were also musical notes, a cake with candles, slices of pie, and a happily wrapped gift, with ribbon and a bow. It was a comic and noble vehicle, and it bore the ice cream man of the gods.

When we spotted him, some of us would run and tell the others. In no time, all the kids were bunched under the biggest tree on the block, sitting not-so-patiently, chattering like birds about all the particulars of the day's play to come. And, in the fullness of time, Louie arrived among us.

He'd pull the truck over to the wrong side of the street, open the door, and emerge into a crowd of moneyed children. No more than five-foot-seven, he was a thin grizzled old man the color of rich golden-brown tobacco, with a small cheerful face and sparse, silver whiskers. He wore white pants with a black belt, a white shirt (over a white t-shirt), and a white cap (a half-sphere with a small brim and a button on the top). He always had a cigar in his mouth. His hands were always blistered from handling, and reaching into, the big chunks of dry ice. It was like being visited by a strange angel, wonderful and scary at the same time.

Never orderly at all, we'd yell and jockey for his attention, holding our nickels and dimes up in trade for the wonders in the truck. He'd patiently work his way through all of us, and in the end we'd each have our wish come true. We'd rush away into our pre-selected cliques, sit up on someone's porch, read comic books and eat ice cream. Louie would drive off to the next stop, and all would be well.

And then one day Louie didn't come! We were flabbergasted. He didn't come. It was like we'd been hit by lightning. We walked around dazed, like shell-shocked soldiers. We talked about it for the rest of the afternoon. Some kids kept a lookout for hours, right up until they were called in for dinner. Everyone was talking about it. Though the adults cared well less than we did, there was a generalized fear overall.

The next morning was very tense. Kids were quiet, or at least less noisy. When noon rolled around, we started looking down the street. No Louie. One o'clock (his usual time) came but we didn't see him. And just when he was supposed to be right among us, giving us ice cream, he was no where to be seen. We couldn't believe it. One particularly irreverent kid got mad, "Where the hell IS he?!" He looked around to see if any adult heard him swear.  Louie never showed up.

Next day, we all knew that Louie wasn't coming. Weird gossip sprang up. People said that Louie was really sick, on vacation, on honeymoon. We all found out at dinner time. A kid ran to each house yelling, "Hey everybody, Louie's DEAD!! It's in the paper!!"

Louie was dead all right. He'd tried to expand his route into traditionally "bad" neighborhoods where he was set upon by a pack of wild black kids who robbed and killed him. It turned out that Louie was a successful man, with two kids in college, and a third just to start, so he needed more money. He'd managed his life quite well, loved by his family and honored in his Orthodox church. His death marked the passing of an age, and forever changed all our lives.

In order for the new era of ethnic victimology to arrive, the old era had to die. Louie, by his success, represented the triumph of ethnicity over adversity. Through hard and deeply ignominious work, he created success for himself and his family. His college-educated children would never sell ice cream for a living. Nor would their own children, thanks to his endless diligent labors, tedious and unskilled as they were. Louie was unique, noble, resourceful. He made what way he could, and he made it work quite well, building a future which still exists today.

But Louie was too free to live in the midst of the rising entitlement ethnic sub-culture, he wasn't a victim of an evil system. He wasn't a product of his own self-pity, he didn't demand redress from the government for his lot in life. He was too good to live as a minority. He never thought that some people might feel entitled to commit crimes, entitled to his hard-earned money. And so he was killed, sacrificed on the altar of political evolution.

Louie could not possibly exist in today's America-hating climate. He was too good-natured, too self-reliant, too honest and self-motivated to sit around waiting for someone to give him the life he preferred instead of the one he had to make for himself. He wasn't an angry redistributionist.

The malignant forces of class, race, age, economic and gender warfare, have destroyed every decent thing in their way. Gone are the noble individuals, replaced by the herd of victims. Gone are the principles of entrepreneurial self-determination, replaced by the outstretched hand of contemptuous, shame-mongering parasitism.

Louie died, and now we all know why. He was killed to pave the way for Liberalism.

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