My First Day Driving An Ice Cream Truck



The Ice Cream Man, circa 1987


Back in 1987, I drove an ice cream truck in southern California. People usually chuckle when they hear that, but then when I tell them about my first day on the job, their mouths either drop open in disbelief, or they just don't believe me, period.

I don't know whether ice cream trucks operate the same ways these days, but back then, we went to the truck yard in the morning and had to buy all of our ice cream from the company. We'd load our truck freezers and head out. We set our own prices and drove until we made our money back, since we were responsible for buying all the ice cream. On good days you'd make a reasonable profit.

On my first day I arrived at the truck, a preppy, college bound teen-aged girl in a mini skirt and crop top. I probably even had a ponytail. The owner/dispatcher sent me out with a woman named Marty. She was supposed to show me the ropes. Not sure what ropes those were. We left the truck yard and drove straight to the prison where she went to visit her sister while I waited out in the parking lot unsure of what I should do if someone actually came up and asked me for ice cream.

After the prison visit we drove through a very dicey neighborhood where, to my surprise, some thuggish-looking teenagers hailed us to the curb for ice cream. Marty pulled over and did hand them some ice cream-- and some money as they slipped a baggie full of something to her. I pretended not to notice. I was naively encouraged that at least we'd turned on the tinkling jingle music while we got ice cream out of the freezer. I innocently hoped that I was about to get a little bit of training for my new job.

Instead, we drove to Marty's apartment. She gave me the once-over and didn't invite me in. She was inside for a long time. I can vaguely imagine what she was doing. I sold two pieces of ice cream while she was in there. I was having serious doubts about the job.

When Marty finally returned to the truck, imagine my surprise when we went to another bad neighborhood and made another bogus transaction that involved ice cream, money and drugs. I was afraid we were headed back to Marty's apartment again, but she called it a day and took me back to the truck yard. She told the boss that I'd done fine and was good to go. Thank God he took her word for it and gave me my own truck the next day. I was scared to spend another day with Marty. Instead, I figured things out for myself and found good neighborhoods full of kids. Though over the course of my stint as an ice cream truck driver, I did occasionally have people approach the truck looking for drugs.

A few years later when I started doing some freelance writing, I tried to sell my story to a few newspapers, but no one would believe me. The newspapers all but called me a liar. One newspaper in Florida seemed interested but decided that the story was only relevant to California ice cream trucks and said that things didn't operate that way in Miami. Now my jaw dropped with disbelief. I thought I was naive!