I can remember grinning, the first time I saw the Sign, off to the left as we drove down Route 20 going east: 'Lou's Tyre Mart'. I looked over at Sabrina and said "Look. God is alive and well and working as a used tyre salesman in north-eastern Ohio." Don't worry if you don't get it. It's one of those married couple in-jokes.
I'm never going to forget the Satanic Bunnies either, evil twisted creatures with ears like horns - hanging in a bedroom window as a drape that was never drawn back. I often wondered what went on in there. Or Niggertown - my name for the three housing projects I regularly drove the icecream truck through.
Incidentally, If you don't like my use of the word nigger, too bad. My blog, my thoughts, exactly as I think them. If you can't deal with that, fuck off elsewhere. I'm not interested in hearing you whine about it.
I hated going there. Not because 99.9% of the population is black. But because the kids are all screaming brats. Because I can count on the fingers of my left hand the number of occasions when someone there (adult or child) said please, or thank you. Because I got tired of seeing 14 year old girls with a roll of bills big enough to choke a Clydesdale - since they got them by selling crack, selling pussy - or both. Because I got tired of seeing kids who were parents, and more tired still of seeing parents who were kids, running round in gold chains and designer clothing while their children were raggedy-assed, snot-nosed, bare-footed and filthy.
I got tired of the kids who could never quite grasp that the fifty cents, or the quarter, or group of filthy pennies in their hands, wouldn't buy them the top-dollar items on the truck - no matter how many times it was explained to them - and I got especially tired of the perpetual shriek of 'scuse me scuse me scuse me'.
I always went there first. In part to get it out of the way, over and done, as soon as possible. And in part because I knew that whatever the day of the week and the time of the day I could count on selling there - because not a goddamn one of the adults had a job to go to, except the dope dealers and the pimps, and you can do that from home.
If I hated Niggertown and was always glad to leave, I also hated the subdivisions, the white areas where the working joes live. The kids were clean, well dressed, usually well mannered (sometimes exquisitely so); the parents polite, and sometimes friendly. But they get embarrassed when they don't want to buy. They'll actually hide. And driving round an apparently empty subdivision (knowing full well that there's stay at home moms hiding behind the drapes and refusing to let their kids out till the truck chimes can no longer be heard) is like driving around on the far side of the moon. There's something utterly depressing about all those large houses that each look different fom any other but all of which are, somehow, exactly the same.
Weekends were the worst. Driving round yet another peculiarly twisted and convoluted road layout in some subdivision I would see into backyards - and there they'd all be, standing around barbecues, chugging beer, and every fucking one of them telling their kids they couldn't have an icecream. Unamerican motherfuckers - don't you know its un-fucking-patriotic not to buy your kid an icecream on a hot Sunday? If only the people I served icecream to had an inkling of the thoughts that ran through my head sometimes (come out you unamerican cunts and BUY ICECREAM or I'll come back tonight and murder your fucking kids) they'd have been a little less glib about sending their children out on their own - when they sent them out at all.
And that's another thing: Niggertown or working joe subdivision - not a one of the kids had any idea of road-safety. What sort of witless idiot is it that sends out a two year old to the roadside to buy icecream? One that's shortly going to be scraping its previously mewling brat up from the concrete. And what sort of stupidity is it that asks a child to choose an icecream, or worse yet actually suggests one to the kid, and then turns around and says 'no you can't have that.'
That happened too many times to count and it always infuriated me.
Is there anything I'll miss, from my time on the truck? A couple of the kids, one old lady who always bought six dollars worth at a time, never more or less. The pregnant woman on the corner who never seemed less than pleased to see me, whose kids couldn't count but were always polite. A couple of German Shepherd dogs that used to sing along with the truck whenever it passed them, and the crabby old lady at the seniors' resthome who always bought a Reeses bar and always asked for an M&M.
Is there anything I'll miss about this town? The fat woman who sold me my cigarettes, who has the must luxuriant hair. Lina's Beverage Store, that has the largest stock of beers, imported and otherwise, in the State of Ohio, and a staff of friendly, helpful Indians all from Gujarat.
And there are things I won't miss but will always remember: the quality of the light at evening, that makes the leaves on the trees a luminous greengold. The old, ill, wood at the back of the condos where I walked the dogs. The abominable roads, where I learned how to drive American, and our fanky little home, my first in America.
Will I be homesick? No. My home is with Sabrina. I'm going to Virginia on Friday to find us somewhere to live and when she joins me there I'll be at home again.
No, I won't be homesick.
But I won't forget, either.
