Pop goes the weasel! Now shut the hell up
suburbia September 4th, 2007
This weekend while trying to relax my crooked back after my high-heeled shoe fiasco, I almost drifted off to a glorious sleep when I was shaken out of my calm by our stupid neighborhood ice cream man.
Now, I know I’m going to get shot down hard for saying this, but there is a special place in hell for ice cream truck drivers who play the same tune over and over again. A lot of people don’t mind the music at all. I’m not one of them. This guy only occasionally rings the bell, which I do find quite charming and nostalgic. It’s when he plays the same song on loop that I want to run out there and throw spike strips under his wheels and smash his speakers with a very large mallet.
I suppose it wouldn’t be all that bad if it wasn’t the particular song he’s playing. Wanna feel my pain? He came down the street just a minute ago and I managed to hide behind some bushes and stuff to get the shot. Go ahead, I dare you to click this.
Seriously, just imagine that over and over, and LOUD, and it just doesn’t stop and you want to rip your hair out!!! I’ve considered going outside with a fistful of cash, then buying up all his inventory so he HAS to leave. But then he’d realize there’s a market for ice cream on my street, and that’s not what we want now, do we?
There is precedence for silencing noise menaces, so I know I’m not the only one who’s annoyed. Boston’s trying to have it banned. And you might have heard about the guy in Jim Thorpe, PA, who can’t stand his courthouse neighbors who play show tunes five times a day from their bell tower carillon. He’s since backed off his lawsuit, but I stand with him on principle. All he wants is a little peace.
I could almost stand it if Ice Cream Guy weren’t driving his Cartoon Mobile down our street on Sundays. I don’t know who I’m angrier at, him or the thoughtless neighbors who mow the lawn for three hours. Doesn’t anyone consider Sunday a day of rest anymore? Or am I just that old-fashioned?
Stumble it!
January 9th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Haha yep that is bad, a little variety shouldnt be such a hard thing to do.
February 23rd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Well, I understand your hatred for ice cream men, but look at it from the other side. You only have to listen to the music when they drive by. They have to listen to it ALL THE TIME. They’re already in hell. A cold, tasty hell.
February 24th, 2010 at 10:14 am
So many things are a matter of circumstance, aren’t they? I,too, hated the ice cream truck, or Good Humor man as we called him with heavy irony. Especially I resented his having ruined for me, by tape-loop repetition, Scott Joplin’s rag, “The Entertainer.” But that was before my next-door neighbor bought himself a diamond-bladed saw. These babies can cut anything,but are mostly used on rock. Do you know what the sound is like when such a saw is applied, say, to granite,or to pieces of bluestone? Especially do you know what it sounds like at dusk, while you are setting out dinner on your own patio table, on a beautiful August evening in Michigan, where precious few such nights occur?
Perhaps you do. And as you sit there eating, being philosophical about how stone dust is now a condiment on all your food, hoping your neighbor will lose interest in his new toy before dessert, or his hand, at last he takes a break to get another beer. In the blessed silence, soon to be broken again, there it is, heading your way down the block. All at once “The Entertainer” is charming to you again, nostalgic. What you had come to loathe is now sweet. How wrong you were! How small-minded. You sip your wine, tasting now of a quarry in upstate New York. And this seems just.
February 24th, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Barry — You should look into your town’s noise statutes. In many places it is against the law to have an outdoor shop. Your neighbor is turning your residential area into an industrial area. Attend a meeting. I got my town to adopt a noise ordinance regarding loud stereos in cars.
I no longer live in an area with ice-cream trucks (thank God!), but I am heading down to visit family in FL next month and the ice-cream trucks there are torture. If only all municipalities would ban the electronic amplification, we could still retain the ice-cream truck tradition with mechanical bells, as they do in Rochester, NY.
February 25th, 2010 at 3:55 pm
Susan N.
Yes, I could go to town hall and complain, but here’s the thing. Our town is tiny, the smallest incorporated city in the state. As a matter of principle–and self-preservation–it’s best to stay on good terms with those around you. As for the neighbor with the saw, true, he is sometimes oblivious, but he is also unfailingly generous in helping lifelong apartment dwellers who should have stayed that way, but who bought a house. Guess who that is.
April 18th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I feel your pain! I used to live right across from a gun club. That was horrible! Thank God we were able to sell that house! Ice cream sounds really good now….
September 4th, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Pop goes the weasel is a annoying tune, I was rise in NY use to love running down the street behind Mr. Softy. And I do cut my grass on the weekends, around NOON.