La, la, la. Summer’s here, the kids
are pouring out of schools, onto playgrounds and into pools. And I am
going to ignore every disaster going on around me. Wildlife dying in
the Gulf and up the east coast of my country? These things only
happen in Other Countries, not mine.
I'm not going to read the breaking news
on Twitter and instead go for an ice cream. When I was a kid the
sound of the Good Humor truck bells were music to kids' ears. We ran
to our mothers for a dime or two and skipped to the gleaming white
truck and the smiling man in uniform. A white uniform, not
camouflage, and holding not an automatic weapon, but a Toasted Almond
Bar. They told us little kids had been saved by our fathers from the
enemies and war was gone forever. No wonder we grew up to be peace
activists: our older brothers went to Korea, died in the snow,
marched again into walls of foreign soldiers. Meanwhile, ice cream
trucks all over the U.S.A. burned gasoline 12, 14 hours a day to keep
our Creamsicles frozen.
In our used Hudson, Daddy took us for
pleasure rides to his favorite cheap gas station. We’d stop for ice
cream cones. Butter Crunch for Daddy, pistachio for Mommy, a world of
choices for me.
Whoops, a headline snuck through: “Gay
sex = domestic terrorism?” In high school it was Suzy and me at the
ice cream parlor on Main Street near the railroad station, sipping
ice cream sodas when we had the money, milkshakes when we had less
and coffee at our most broke. I guess we were domestic terrorists
cause we were gay.
Is BP a domestic terrorist when it
spills the wealth of the earth into our waters? What about all the
kids who died in Iraq defending melted dinosaurs? In his home state,
Hawaii, the ocean was sacred, said President Obama. Which is it,
please: the ocean or the corporations that are sacred? The only
solution is to Facebook my ice cream buddy, Heather, and reminisce
with her about Brigham’s ice cream in New England, and connive to
get together at Spiritus during Provincetown Women’s Week for
Häagen-Dazs cones.
Dixie Cups weren’t confined to the
bathroom in the 1950s, they held 2.5 ounce servings of ice cream that
you ate with wooden spoons and, until I was nine, had pictures of
baseball players or movie stars on the inside of the lids. Even
though Dixie Cups were invented in Massachusetts, they were called
Hoodsies in New England after the dairy manufacturer, Hood. Did they
have Dixie Cups in old Dixie? In Alabama a billboard reads: Where is
the Birth Certificate? The Georgia-Pacific Corporation owns Dixie
Cups now, converting trees directly into ice cream cups for our
convenience. La, la, la. Not thinking about the consequences of
overpopulation and scarce resources.
Here in Florida, Governor Crist just
vetoed a bill that would have required women planning abortions be
shown a video of the fetus. This Crist guy has some gumption. Coming
partly from Irish Catholic stock, my ancestors helped overpopulate
the planet. Mommy, Daddy and I would take the train up to Boston to
see the four grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the greats, the
first, second and thirds cousins. On the train I’d eat my homemade
sandwich quick before the ice cream guy came down the aisle. He dug
through dry ice steam into a box on a strap around his neck for paper
squares of ice cream hard as rock. Vacation recreation involved
piling the family into Uncle Jimmy’s Kaiser to drive a mom and pop
ice cream stand.
La, la, la. That was back before the
superhighways were built to drain yet more of the oily stuff and take
Great Aunt Maggie's home by eminent domain and her beloved cat
couldn't go with her to the senior housing where she died, hustled
off like a criminal to a jail so I could years later drive like the
domestic terrorist I must have been away from my parents and back to
Connecticut where my lover welcomed me with a pint of Breyer's ice
cream.
“Plane crashes into eastern Ariz.
high school;” “16 dead, dozens missing in Ark. floods;” mine
explosions; foreclosure epidemic; bankrupt American dream; dictators
with nukes. My mother liked to chant, “I scream, you scream, we all
scream for ice cream!”
The headlines keep on coming. It’s my
fiancée’s birthday this weekend. Maybe we’ll go out for a ride
and find a Ben and Jerry’s Scoop Shop. Will Ben and Jerry’s ever
do a rainbow ice cream and call it Domestic Terror Bliss? La, la,
la.
[Editor's Note: Lee Lynch is the author
of over 12 books. Her latest, Beggar
of Love, was called “Lee
Lynch's richest and most candid portrayals of lesbian life” by
Katherine V. Forrest. You can reach Lynch at
LeeLynch@ontopmag.com]
Copyright 2010 Lee Lynch