7.24.2011

Waiting for Jerry the Ice Cream Man


Back in the day, our refrigerator's freezer was the size that fit two ice trays and a pound of chop meat. Then that small cool space froze over and there was never room for ice cream except at your birthday!
It was the same way up and down the block on Gless Avenue in Belleville, N.J. Anybody who got rid of their ice box and got an electric refrigerator had about the same amount of freezer space.
This is Jersey. It's hot in the summer in New Jersey. We were hot. We sweated and drank tap water from the garden hose to cool off. We ran around in the sun, got sun burn, it peeled, and we went back out in the sun.
In the summer, it was hot. We played in the heat. We kids kept cool by running around outside and making our own breezes. We played hide-and-seek and learned to count to 100 by fives. At our peak on that one dead end block we had up to 28 kids. (We're talking baby boom, here.)


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