The Dime That Bought a Rich Taste of Summer

It always began with that bell.

That bell had a lyrical, almost orchestral tingle to it. It summoned you in the sweetest way, waking you from an afternoon nap, yanking you from the back yard, stopping you cold in a game of patty-cake with your big sister.

The Mister Softee truck was a big, boxy thing, ice-cream white, rolling on its own time. And it was some kind of magic to a kid.

James Conway, who founded the Mister Softee company in 1956 with his brother, William, died at his home in Ocean City, N.J., earlier this week. (William died in 2004.) The Conways' enterprise evolved into a multimillion-dollar business, operating in 15 states.

They hardly could have imagined, in the beginning, how much of a ritual it would turn into: summertime, a truck with ice cream, the twisting legs of little boys and girls giddy with delight. As if there could be such a thing as starving for ice cream.

Actually, there was, and you did.

So there you were, on your front porch, the bell someplace in the distance. Wafting over rooftops, through leafy trees, coming around corners, shooting rockets of adrenaline into your 7-year-old body. Was it coming from the east or the west? You look both ways, head spinning. You better not even think about scooting over to Sixth Street to get to the truck before it gets to your house on Fifth. Mama or Grandma or Grandpa (whom we lived with) would just kill you. Vanishing from their sight! No way.

And yet, brave friends sometimes did just that. Down off their porches, and whoosh! Gone. Six- and 7-year-olds -- a glint of truancy in their eyes -- sprinting to get their cones a block away, then walking back, past my house, tears already falling as they licked their vanilla cones because they'd spotted Mom or Dad back at the house. And they knew: Sure as dusk was coming, so was a spanking.

You had to wait. And with the waiting came the fretting. Would Mister Softee run out of chocolate, out of vanilla, out of strawberry, out of sprinkles? Out of that milky chocolate syrup? Out of -- no! no! -- the pineapple topping?

Rarely, if ever, it seemed.

Looking back, of course, that was part of the drama of it all. You had to pray that by the time the truck circled Seventh Avenue, then Eighth Avenue, then Ninth, only to circle back to Fifth Street and you, that it would have enough ice cream left.

The ritual was sacred, something you held inside yourself.