The Second Truck

Every day for months, with a regularity and reliability to rival the sunrise, the first truck would come in the middle of the afternoon.  It reached our street at 3:30 or so, and the children flocked to the familiar music, their tiny fists clutching coins and crumpled currency cajoled from their parents.  The timing was carefully planned: for the first and last few weeks of the season, the truck arrived just long enough after the school’s final bell to allow the little rug rats to return from class and beg some money from whichever parent was home, or to dig out the lunch money that had never been spent as intended.  At the song of the pied popsicle purveyor they ran from backyards all along the street to buy their frozen treats and retreat hastily back to the shade to consume their prizes, sticky drips running down their grubby forearms.  After the routine had been established, it was just good business practice to return at the same time every day, piping out the same nasal music to invite the same Pavlovian response, so all summer long the first truck would drive the same route at the same time every day.  On a good year, the driver spends the three coldest months of his off season within walking distance of a beach, rarely wearing more than swim trunks and an open shirt, a large floppy-brimmed straw hat shading his face and dark sunglasses hiding the eyes which relentlessly pursued the local ladies.  On a bad year, he only spends a month at the beach, and spends the rest of his time pouring drinks at a tiki bar and cajoling tips from the same ladies.

The second truck, with all the reliability of dusty batteries found in the back of your kitchen drawer, came anywhere between 5 and 9:30 in the evening.  This was also by design.  Children crave the reliability of routine, but adults hold a yearning secret even to themselves to be pleasantly surprised.  Anything that arrives every single day can eventually seem dull and commonplace, but a truck that arrives somewhere in a four to five-hour window and sometimes not at all keeps you on edge and hopeful.

Adults, robbed of childhood dreams, sustain themselves on hope.

The second truck is only for the adults.  Even the teenagers know this, and make do by visiting the first truck, or raiding the bottom shelf of the fridge when their parents run outside at the sound of the second truck’s music.  The volume is not as loud, and the notes not quite as grating, but the songs have been carefully chosen to set a mood, not just beckon forth bulging wallets.  Many songs were written and famously performed by men in garish Aloha shirts, and one song in particular suits the purpose of the truck better than any other, for the second truck specializes in that most popular of tequila cocktails.  Other drinks are available, but the driver never bothers stocking much of those, because when the mercury spikes high in the middle of summer, nothing is quite so refreshing after a day at work and an hour or more driving home than a frozen cocktail, salt and a lime wedge on the rim, condensation beading heavily and forming rivulets down the side of the cup.

Adults will leave the table in the middle of dinner, abandon their televisions still blaring, and ignore the questioning looks of their children when they hear the second truck.  They often get an early warning, when lawnmowers would abruptly cut out as their operators saw the truck approaching, and the mechanical din which had drowned the music was slowly supplanted by it.

Children retreat quickly with their frozen prizes, but adults will linger, letting alcohol, rather than shade, dull their perception of the evening’s heat.  Conversations bubble up between otherwise disparate neighbors, tools are loaned or returned, and sports casually discussed.  Children usually only score one treat in an afternoon, but the lingering adults will often get refills, and thus the driver of the second truck habitually spends a solid six months on a sandy stretch of saltwater, and will occasionally make his way to the bar to order a margarita from the ice cream man, smiling to himself, and thinking of adding rum cocktails to the truck next summer.

June 4, 2013

This story has been percolating in my head since the first week of temperatures in the eighties. I know that a roving liquor truck is not legally feasible, but I still think a Margarita Man is a fantastic idea.