Here comes the ice-cream truck

Connections

The first real sign of spring around here: an ice-cream truck drove by, playing a jangly, unidentifiable music-box tune. Last summer, they constantly played "Turkey in the Straw," a song I hope to never hear again. What do turkeys have to do with ice cream? When I think of a turkey, I think of Thanksgiving, which is more of a pie holiday than an ice-cream one. It's always seemed strange to me that, in the Middle Ages, pies were filled with meat rather than fruit or berries. I guess that explains the nursery rhyme about "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." Blackbird pie? Ugh. Eating crow, in other words. Today, to "eat crow" means "to admit one is mistaken or defeated" (according to Barron's Handbook of Commonly Used American Idioms). That's something it seems our fearless leader can never do. It takes a big man to admit when he's wrong, so they say. I assume that applies to women as well--but we never say, "It takes a big woman to . . ." For some reason, big has a different, entirely physical connotation when applied to a woman--as if she's been eating too much ice cream. And indeed, a lot of the people, male and female, who swarm around the Mr. Softee truck in the summer look like they eat too much ice cream. Maybe that explains the annoying tunes the trucks play. It's Pavlovian: hear the tinny, childish jingle, and suddenly you're eight years old again, and hungry for something cold and sweet.
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