Crabgrass by Tauhid Bondia for June 29, 2022

Summer has a point? I thought it was just a long, slow drudge.

I don’t think I have really seen an ice cream truck passing through my neighborhood. However, there is a shave ice truck that often stops in our neighborhood called “Kona Ice” that’s decent.

I’ve never gone to an ice cream truck in my life. Mainly because there weren’t any in my town.

Hard to hear? Around here they’re inescapable. Three or four times a day from June through September. Some play the Mr. Softee jingle. Others used to do tinny synthesizer arrangements of “The Entertainer” or “Music Box Dancer” but seem to have switched last year to a tinny synthesizer arrangement of “La Cucaracha.” Whichever, you can hear it approach for a block or two and it keeps playing while it stops in a couple of places on this block and then it fades away for another block or two—maybe fifty or sixty repetitions of the same 15-second attack on the eardrums. If I could shoot out the speakers or cut the wires, i would.

I have very pleasant childhood memories of Good Humor trucks that jingled, once upon a time.

I live close to Greenway.

An early bird cameo by Old Jingles, the mysterious truck that would get an entire arc dedicated to it a year later.