I shouldn’t have asked for fruit punch.
It was just a few nights ago, the first evening we in Washington were going to be locked down under a 7 o’clock curfew. This after weeks of being under something like a 24-hour coronavirus curfew. At least the new riot-related curfew created the happy illusion that we weren’t fully locked down during the daytime.
And so it was that, having finished dinner at about 6:30 p.m. (Argentinians, feel free to roll your eyes at such an uncivilized time to dine), my wife and I went for a short walk. It was a soft evening, more spring than summer, with a cool, easy breeze. Every few minutes, we fell in with friends from one block or another, as they, too, were out enjoying a last few minutes of freedom to stroll the sidewalks. We all kept a joking watch on the time, as if Washington’s finest would be waiting in our quiet corner of the city to cuff us if we were still on the street at 7:01 p.m.
It was when I walked in my front door — at 7:02 p.m., to be precise — that things started to get strange. A weird, sad silence was settling over the neighborhood when a strange sound gradually supplanted the silence: We heard what sounded like an electronic calliope playing, of all things, “Jingle Bells.” Coming down the street for the first time this summer, as if in some sort of Philippe de Broca film, was an ice-cream truck.
We did the only thing that was possible. We waved for the ice-cream truck to stop.
Had it been just any old ice-cream truck, we might have been able to grab a quick treat with which to retreat into the house. But this was no ordinary ice-cream truck, no mere purveyor of pre-fab, plastic-sealed Drumsticks and Creamsicles. No, who should show up out of nowhere, just as the curfew fell, but an artisanal maker of shaved-ice snow cones? There would be no grab and go. We would have to wait while the cheerful man in the truck made each order by hand.
As he set to it, the speaker on top of his truck bleeped and blooped a video game-sounding version of “Silent Night.”
First, there was the business of making the ice, and a serious business it was. You knew he was serious because the truck was equipped with a vintage Snowie, a miraculous machine famous for producing frozen water so finely shaved that it is reduced to a dry powder. Each cup was carefully overfilled so that the tops could be compacted into dense semispheres.
The Snowie whirred; the speaker synthesized “O, Christmas Tree”; neighbors wandered over and started a queue; I looked anxiously at my watch.
The efficient construction of the cones hit a snag. The man in the truck had gallon jugs full of sugary syrups with which to drench the cones. Some were easy to spot — the lemon flavoring my son had asked for was the only yellow liquid. Other flavors, perhaps not as clearly labeled as they might have been, posed a challenge. The ice-cream man puzzled over a trio of pomegranate-red jugs, trying to figure out which was the fruit punch I had ordered as opposed to the watermelon and cherry also advertised on the side of his truck.
What had been a short, tidy line of eager customers was clumping into a crowd. My snow cone was finally ready. Just as I reached for it, an authoritative voice from behind me boomed out over “Good King Wenceslas”: “The District of Columbia has been under curfew since 7 p.m.” I turned to see a young policeman standing in from of his cruiser. He did not seem to share our amusement at the Fellini-Serling mashup our evening had become. “It is now 7:20, and you are all in violation of district law. Go home now, or you will be arrested. Now!” He got in his car and raced away.
A few steps, and I was lawfully on my own lawn. The shaved-ice man closed the side window, started up his truck, and eased away from the curb. I scooped out a spoonful of red ice and tried to figure out whether my cone was cherry or fruit punch or Robitussin as the sound of computerized carols faded in the distance.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
