The Ice Cream Truck
I was out tonight at a local park for my kid’s tennis lesson in a part of town that is surrounded by lower income housing. This in and of itself is not really that interesting. What is interesting is that for the entire time I was there ( about two hours ), there was the constant din of ice cream truck music playing as various freezers on wheels made their way through the park and surrounding neighborhoods. It’s like this every night that we are over there.
I have lived in my current house for over three years, and I think I have seen the ice cream truck one time. And yet, in this lower income area, the ice cream truck is omnipresent on hot summer nights. I am not sure why I find this strange or disconcerting, but I do. These are people that probably can’t afford to buy a lot of ice cream, and yet they are subjected to a constant stream of marketing about buying cheap, unhealthy ice cream. It’s like walking into a convenience store in lower income areas and seeing lottery advertising everywhere you look. I have heard lottery called a tax on the poor, and I felt the same way about these street vendors tonight.
Maybe I am way off here. I am not trying to be condescending about the people that live in this area. I truly don’t know what it’s like to walk a mile in their shoes, so maybe it is my ignorance showing through. Maybe they just really like ice cream and this is the way they buy it. But, it felt a lot like manipulation and playing upon desires of people that probably live month to month just trying to hang on.
It bothered me.
