random thoughts – Day 1,220 – (Thursday) – music truck

There is an ice cream truck that makes its way through the neighborhood at various times between 2:00 and 7:00. This afternoon around 3:30, as I sat at the home office desk working, I could hear the tinny music of the truck in the distance. 

Music truck cranking out the hits.

When my nieces were very young and the ice cream truck rolled through the neighborhood, my sister, in her infinite wisdom, told them it was a music truck. They would laugh and clap when they heard the music truck drive down the street blaring Scott Joplin’s 1902 ragtime hit “The Entertainer” and that was that. Well, until the little girl next door spilled the beans about it actually being an ice cream truck.

Today, the music truck was playing a most eclectic medley of partial tunes. There were no jingly strains of “The Entertainer.” No “Camptown Races,” “Pop Goes the Weasel,” or “Sailing, sailing.” This was a very different music set.

From a distance, the first musical strains that interrupted the quiet and registered in my brain were “O Come Let Us Adore Him.” Yes, the super popular Christmas song. This transitioned into just enough of “Red River Gal” to trigger flashbacks to sixth grade and the girls so-called “phys ed class” of square dancing. Suddenly, the dance call “and circle to the left and to the right” was dancing in my brain. This was immediately followed by the memory of me, at about the same age, pounding out that song on our electric organ at home. Good times. 

The quiet returned for a few minutes, then suddenly the music truck’s eclectic playlist of tinny musical snippets came back into earshot with “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” Christmas in July for real. By the time it was at the end of my street and making the u-turn on front of my house, it was cranking out “Battle Hymn of the Republic” which we sang at high school graduation so many years ago, followed by “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music as it departed. Wow. 

There were no customers coming out to buy ice cream treats so it was a quick visit on the street. I’m slightly interested in the ice cream, which I imagine to be grossly overpriced, but I'm more fascinated by the playlist. Are there more songs I didn’t hear and what are they? Who compiled the list? How long is the loop? Can I get a copy?