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Some may think that God has forsaken Texas this blastedly hot summer, but I know it isn’t so. Because when the sun is baking, I only have to hear that contorted, strangely familiar music to know that salvation is on its way. Like manna straight from heaven, it’s the ice cream man.
And the ice cream man pulling up to the curb this scorching afternoon is Fat Lucky. Well, not Fat Lucky himself. The real Fat Lucky has never even taken a ride in the ice cream truck, says Sean Johnstun, the spiky-haired, treat-toting man who feeds him. See, Fat Lucky is a dog.
“There’s not a seat for him to sit on, and there’s no window,” he says. “And plus, I don’t think it would be very legal.” Lucky is Sean’s beagle, who moved with him from Las Vegas to Austin last year. More than just a beagle, Lucky (who isn’t so fat since Sean put him on diet) is the inspiration for the name of Sean’s ice cream truck business, “Fat Lucky’s,” founded earlier this summer.
Lucky was found smack in the middle of a busy intersection. But lucky for Lucky, the then grapefruit-sized puppy didn’t get hit. Sean’s mom gave him the appropriate name and declared his official birthday to be St. Patrick’s Day. Mom should also be credited for putting the “Fat” in Fat Lucky by feeding him from a self-refilling food tower.
“He would just eat all day,” Sean says, “and he just got fat.” Despite a much svelter Lucky these days, the ice cream truck still bears the name of Sean’s formerly round canine companion.
It was when Sean and Lucky were still in Las Vegas that Sean began thinking big. He and his friend “Skeet” (it seems that lots of folks who live in Las Vegas have a swinging name like “Skeet”), talked about starting an ice cream truck business together. The partnership never happened. Sean ended up moving to Austin (probably kicked out of Vegas for not having a cool nickname). But things turned out for the best. It just goes to show that ice cream dreams never die, especially not in places where it’s hotter than Hades. Skeet drives his truck “Skeet’s Treat” out in Las Vegas, and Sean has “Fat Lucky’s” here in Austin.
It all started with a plain white van, complete with a wheelchair lift, that Sean bought from a retirement home. He gutted it and replaced the innards with smooth vinyl flooring to accommodate a freezer for the ‘scream and to comply with various health department regulations. For the grand finale, he painted all the artwork on the outside of the van using a medley of paint markers, brush paint, and spray paint. The end result is a cast of colorful characters that includes a self-portrait of Sean lamenting the unavoidable end of his frozen treat. (“All gone,” it says under a picture of a yellow-haired boy with a bare Popsicle stick.)
Twice a week or so, Sean makes his long, hot pilgrimage to Ice Cream Mecca out in far north Austin. That would be Aben’s Ice Cream, a group of corrugated metal buildings surrounded by a parking lot full of ice cream trucks – big ones, little ones, fat ones, skinny ones, all ready to be rented to the aspiring ice cream person who isn’t quite ready to invest in his or her own truck.
It’s hot in the non-air-conditioned warehouse, but Aben Mairena looks unfazed by it, standing before colorful posters of ice cream world offerings. Aben, the ruler of this ice cream palace, has been renting trucks and selling ice cream and treats to vendors for 12 years.
“This is a clean business,” says Mairena, a civil engineer from Nicaragua, who started in the ice cream business after fleeing his country with his family in 1984. “We have over here good people, like this guy.” Mairena smiles and nods his sweaty head toward Sean.
After Mairena fills Fat Lucky’s icy order, Sean loads up the freezer and heads out, ready to hit the red-hot pavement. Sean’s routes around town have gained him mild celebrity. One day, while sitting at an intersection in his ice cream truck, Sean noticed a ruckus. “I hear this kid screaming, `Fat Lucky! Fat Lucky!’ When he turned to look, he saw a boy hanging out the back window of his parents’ car waving his hands wildly.
“I was stoked,” Sean says, with a twinkle in his Bomb Pop-blue eyes.
“That was cool.”
Speaking of Bomb Pops … (the red, white and blue comfort food known to all ice cream truck fans), they, along with the classic ice cream sandwich, remain the most popular choices. Not even Batman with the bubblegum eyes or that crispy Choco Taco can hold a candle to them.
Although adults and kids alike clamor for coolness via the ice cream man and his treats, the kids are the ones who make the efforts of this summertime rescue worker worthwhile. One sunny Sunday, Fat Lucky’s was covering the usual route, passing minions of heat warriors engaged in softball, volleyball – all in defiance of the ungodly weather. Some of the grownups didn’t even turn their heads as the ice cream man passed through their very midst. What kind of sad childhood they must have had. It’s the ice cream man, for god’s sake! Unfortunately, even the ice cream man faces rejection.
Then, as Fat Lucky’s turned onto a welcoming shady street, there it was: joy incarnate. A red-haired, seven-year-old boy instantly began jumping up and down, waving his arms and legs like he was trying to signal a rescue plane. The grin on his face was as big as they get.
Sean later recalled that “Red,” as he calls him, had once chased him for blocks down the street in his socks. Once he caught up to the van, he told Sean that he didn’t have any money but was hoping he might get something for free. Fat chance. With price tags averaging around 85cents (Sean takes home about 40% when it’s all said and done), Fat Lucky’s has to sell a lot of frozen goodness to break even.
“The worst part of driving around in the ice cream truck is driving around going two miles an hour and no one is coming out,” Sean says. “And you’re sweating.” Touch�. Fat Lucky more than earns his cut considering his AC broke down a couple of weeks ago. On the day I helped copilot Fat Lucky’s, the only thing below 100 degrees was inside that freezer. I thanked the sun god for the spare change in my pocket. But for some kids, life isn’t so kind. When you don’t have the cash, the ice cream truck can be a torture device. As the truck rolled by, wide eyes stared longingly, filled with mournful, suffering “I-don’t-have-any-money” looks. It makes you want to grab a box of push-ups and chuck them out the window one by one, ending their pain if only temporarily.
For some, the ice cream truck relentlessly tortures in a different way – through the loudspeaker. Fat Lucky’s proudly broadcasts three tunes: “Yankee Doodle,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”; all with fancy, drum-machine beats.
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“I just wanted regular ice cream man songs,” Sean says. There are only a few companies that sell the ice cream man music boxes, he says, which are stark, metal boxes with two knobs: volume and song selection (1, 2, or 3). The cheapest route, $120, is to buy the box with factory tunes, which is what Sean did. He chose his hits from a standard list of federally approved ice cream man songs. For $40 more, you can get custom tunes, even some Elvis, but Sean says he wanted to stick with the familiar. “I wanted everyone to know that the ice cream man was coming.”
And people definitely know. When they hear those first few heavenly notes, they start to move. “I’ll see people a block away, and they’ll start dancing,” Sean says as the truck rolls along. As if she had heard what Sean just said, a young girl by the swimming pool began to shake her bootie right on cue.
“Everyone has a real positive attitude about the ice cream man,” Sean says. “Except of course the occasional grouch, like the man who rode by on his bike and shoved his finger in his ear closest the ice cream truck. I threw him a wrapper. I know it’s hot, but it’s summertime, and if you can’t celebrate ice cream on wheels, you’re in big trouble.”
When I was a kid, how far along we were into the summer was gauged by measuring the thickness of the dead skin on our feet. Going barefoot was a symbol of freedom that began the day school let out, but one that had to be eased in to. On those first few days, my sissy soft feet couldn’t go the distance over to my friend’s house around the corner. By the end of summer, I could take a leisurely stroll over and around the bend with no problems. So while riding with Fat Lucky’s, it warmed the cockles of my heart to see kiddos braving the egg-frying temperature of black Texas asphalt just like the days of yore. But to stop and stand in front of the ice cream truck deliberating between a Fudgesicle and a coconut pop required a helping hand from the King of Koolness, the ice cream man. Sean reached back behind the freezer and pulled out a piece of thick cardboard and threw it down in front of the window for the two little boys to stand on. As they walked away with pops in hand and smiles on their faces, they turned and waved.
Life just got a little cooler.
Local writer Cristina Smith wrote about changing roles for female clergy in “Women of the Cloth” [Vol. 17, No. 19] for the Chronicle.
This article appears in August 21 • 1998 and August 21 • 1998 (Cover).