In This Truck, The Time Has Melted Away

Thirty years is a long time to be selling ice cream.

Charlie Tasnara relishes his role as the idol of children, dispenser of instant joy from a Good Humor truck. Few summer jobs carry the iconic power his does. But it's a tough one.

At 60, Tasnara's back now aches. Joints throughout his body are starting to hurt. It's as though the heat of all those sweltering afternoons in the truck with just a small fan as defense has seeped into his pores.

When he first arrived from Thailand, Tasnara had no idea how he and his wife would make a living. He harbored dreams of studying economics but knew only "yes" and "no" in English. So he washed dishes and bused tables. Until one day a friend suggested the ice cream business.

Just like that, three decades passed by in a blur of Dreamsicles and Creamsicles. These days, Tasnara has found himself thinking more and more about returning to Bangkok, where he grew up.

He loves his job, he said, and the life it has given his family. He can now speak English fluently, but unfortunately, his vocabulary now also includes words such as "pension" and "health care," neither of which he possesses as a self-employed vendor.

"I love this country, but the cost can be so high," he said.

The ice cream business has also changed. The new drivers come in for a month or two to make a quick buck and leave just as quickly. They raise prices without a second thought for the children scrambling after them with loose change.

In the neighborhoods of Crofton -- where he has worked for 20-some years -- the children all know him. The parents often know him, too, from their own childhood summers watching for his truck.

He has two grown children but no grandchildren and thus enjoys spoiling his young customers all the more. "I dream every day that they're my grandchildren," he said.

His son, a restaurant worker, lives with him and his wife in a rented apartment in Alexandria. Because of the cost, he doesn't often get to talk at length with his daughter, a flight attendant in Thailand. But that might change soon.

With the money he has saved from his 10-hour summer workdays, he has bought a townhouse in Bangkok. He visits in winter. He figures he has one summer, maybe two, left before he's ready to give up the truck.

He won't miss the heat or the small confines of his truck, he said recently as children lined up to order SpongeBob SquarePants bars and Popsicles.

But he will miss the kids.

"What can I get you today, Matthew?" Tasnara asked a blond-haired boy whose swimming trunks dripped water onto the pavement as he tried to make up his mind.

"How do you know his name, Charlie?" asked a little girl sitting nearby with an ice cream sandwich in her hand.

Looking down from his rusty truck, Tasnara lowered a hand to the height of a toddler, then slowly raised it higher and higher.

"I watched him grow up," he said.