Days Gone By

by Jay Black | Oct 17, 2024

Have you ever seen a sea of Mr. Softee trucks?

When I was young, my grandparents lived in Marlton and we lived in Bellmawr. So, we’d regularly make the ride up 295 from our house to theirs. At some point, there’d be a break in the trees, and, like Brigadoon rising up out of the Scottish Highlands, the Mr. Softee holding lot would appear, with hundreds of the iconic trucks stretching as far as my little eyes could see.

This broke my 5-year-old brain. I mean, what is heaven except unlimited access to soft serve ice cream? What is the definition of joy if not an endless river of Nutty Buddies? What is the smell of ambrosia if not the odor of old sugar mixed with diesel exhaust?

I pictured them being waved out of the lot at the start of every summer, like British Spitfires launching a heroic salvo in the war against being too hot at little league games. And then, when September came, they would head back, hibernating like benevolent bears, waiting for when they were needed again.

What’s weird is that I’m not sure I even hear the Mr. Softee trucks during July and August anymore. It feels like ice cream has moved from summer to spring because the asphalt is the temperature of Mercury on a sunny summer day, and any treat my kids try to eat will be a goopy puddle before they even make it back to the house.

My kids are growing up in South Jersey now, in summers too hot to be enjoyed outside. We stay in every afternoon, wrapped up in the protective bubble of our air conditioner. It feels like something is lost with these inside summers. I’d love to be able to bring my kids back to the 1980s and let them experience the summers of youth.

Like, do you remember long stretches when you didn’t even need the air conditioner? When you could actually cool your house by opening all the windows and running a single, oscillating fan? Try telling your kids about whole weeks in July without air conditioning—they’ll look at you like you just told them that you’re half jellyfish (on your mother’s side).

Or how about above ground pools? Most of the pools I see now are “nice” and “deep” and “swimmable.” The pools of my youth were ugly, vinyl-lined circles whose main job was to collect leaves and dead bugs and were only occasionally used for something that resembled swimming. My parents had an above ground-pool and our main activity in it was inviting all of our friends over and walking in a circle until a whirlpool formed. I guess, subconsciously, we wanted that blue-green, chlorinated eyesore to be sucked to the bottom of the sea, but, unfortunately, it never was.

Remember activities planned entirely by kids with zero adult supervision? All those games of bounce ball played in the street, with the neighbor’s fence as the foul line and any ball hit over the power lines an automatic home run? And all that without a single parent around to tell us to get out of the street when a car would show up—somehow we just knew to get out of the way.

Or when someone would get a Slip ‘N Slide and set it up on their bumpy, tree-stump-strewn front yard. Your only protection from serious injury being four microns of cheap, chemical-covered plastic. Your main goal for the afternoon was figuring out a way to cheat the laws of physics, giving yourself a 900-yard run at it so that you could hit the ground with max velocity, whooping with delight as you slid over roots and old lawnmower parts at 200 miles per hour, your little bones doing their best to stay knitted and intact.

And, when you were done playing and were thirsty? You would detach the hose from the slide and drink directly from it, inviting into your gut biome every known microbe plus a few spiders and grasshoppers for good measure.

On those rare days when it did get too hot to go outside, you went to the movies, which you could actually afford on a reasonable allowance. What was on the screen was secondary to the air conditioning, which, on a hot day, could be worth the price of admission. The AMC in Marlton used to be cold enough to need a Zamboni in between showings.

I guess everyone’s memories of being young are always shaded in the bright, cool yellows of the morning sun, but the now we’re currently living in really does feel like an overheated afternoon with no break in sight.

I’m not sure how we fix that, but the 5-year-old in me thinks the solution might be with all those Mister Softee trucks.

Jay Black is an award winning standup comedian who tours all across the U.S. To find out when Jay will be performing near you, please visit JayBlack.tv

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Published and copyrighted in South Jersey Magazine, Volume 21, Issue 5 (August 2024)

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Author: Jay Black

Days Gone By

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