I announced the price to the mom and she handed me a ten-dollar bill. I turned to the cash box that Amanda had given me and got $3.25 in change. The family walked away from the truck and I turned the music back up. I had made a sale! I would only get about $1.50 from the sale, but at least it was something.

As they unwrapped their icy treats, the kids and adults alike noticed the trash hole on the truck's passenger door. Carl had taught me to set a cardboard box on the ground to catch the garbage, but -- as I was about to learn -- people always missed. It was as if they intended to drop their trash anywhere but the cardboard box. Naturally, I then had to grab the wrappers and insert them in the box myself, and it was for this reason primarily that I started carrying Purel antibacterial gel in the truck at all times.

I continued to wind through the streets, trying to think like a mailman. The goal was to cover as many streets as possible without traversing any space twice. But I would also come to realize that some areas were better at different times of day. Some places had more kids out playing during the early afternoon, while some only had kids at night, when families were out on walks or sitting in their front yards. Some neighborhoods were rich and willing to spend $15 on ice cream bars, while some were less wealthy and didn't want more than a fifty-cent popsicle. I learned to use a highlighter on my map to mark the most dependable streets, but tried most of the ones on my route at least once.

The first incident that really affected me happened on my second or third outing in the truck. It was in one of the nicer neighborhoods around 19 Mile Rd. I drove into the subdivision in early afternoon and turned on the first street. A few houses down, a little girl not older than three ran down her driveway. She had blond pigtails, and a smile spanning her entire face. She wasn't accompanied by her siblings or parents, but instead approached the truck totally alone. I thought she might have been experienced at this sort of thing, so I gave her a moment to make a decision. After three or four minutes of not making an order, her mom came down the driveway with a look of slight worry on her face, as if she had no clue that her young daughter had left the house to buy ice cream from a stranger. The mother told her that she couldn't get anything, and instantly the girl's smile melted to a frown. She let out a piercing scream and started crying as her mom picked her up and carried her inside. Her simple desire had been denied, and I felt terrible, almost like it was my fault. This would become the saddest moment of my time working on the job.

Luckily that sort of thing didn't happen every day, so I was able to keep working there without losing my mind. I quickly learned little tricks to make the day go by smoother. I brought a small radio/CD player to help liven up the high-speed drives between neighborhoods. CDs would skip in it though, so I ended up listening to the classic rock and oldies stations almost exclusively -- especially oldies, since there is no better music than Motown for such an occasion. Every few hours, a track by Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, or the Temptations would lift my mood. And it never escaped my mind that all those wonderful songs were born in Detroit, even if it happened long before I was born. Since then, the city has seen decade after decade of disintegration and shame, brought on mostly by an automobile monoculture in conflict with the modern world, but also by a general myopia and complacency that has prevented any sort of progress. But we have the music to remind us that -- deep beneath the layers of shit -- Detroit has an inextinguishable heart, and its people bear a lasting hope for better days.

As summer progressed, the weather got hotter and more humid. The truck didn't have air conditioning -- only a small fan above the driver seat that pointed at my face. I brought two liter-size bottles of water with me each day, and made sure that I drank them both.

I never really tried selling candy or pop, but I did bring bottled water in the truck, in a compartment that kept them cool without freezing the liquid. A package of 16 bottles of spring water only cost about four bucks, but I could sell each one for a dollar. That means I could potentially make a $12 profit. One time a group of boys halted their basketball game and waved me down. They spent a couple minutes looking at all the ice cream choices, then one of them asked, "Do you have anything to drink?"

"I have bottled water for one dollar each."

"Could we have two of those?"

"Sure." Those little dorks. They were buying bottled water from an ice cream truck right outside their own home. They could have simply walked inside and drank tap water. Or maybe their parents even had bottled water. What the fuck were they paying me for? I guess it's not my place to wonder.

At least I was allowed to sell the water. It really bothered me that I was only making 25% commission on ice cream. After all, the company was making a 50% profit on all their truck sales. For example, if they buy an ice cream bar from a manufacturer at $1 each, and I sell it for $2, the company and I each get $0.50 profit from the deal. But at the end of most days, I had only sold enough to make $50 to $80. And I was staying out from noon until at least 9 pm. That means I usually made about $5.50 per hour -- in 2004, not in 1984.

Carl had developed his own way to boost profits, but it wasn't a method I would have chosen. Once when I entered the office to check in, I ran into Carl. He seemed to be checking in as well, when all of a sudden Mark, the owner of the ice cream business, stormed into the room with a red face.

"Carl, I told you not to sell the fucking pocket knives on the truck! Do you know what could happen to us if an adult finds out about that???"

Carl looked worried and a little bit sad, like a child being disciplined for making a mistake. The orange basketball jersey he wore bolstered his immature appearance.

"They're only a one-inch blade," retorted Carl. "They're practically harmless."

"Some kid is gonna cut their eye out. If I catch you selling them again, you'll be fuckin' fired."

"Okay, okay. Fine."

I never had an encounter like that with Mark, but that didn't necessarily make my workdays any brighter.

However, I can't complain about everything that the job entailed. The work definitely had its ups, from funny moments to the truly bizarre. There was one specific stretch of homes with five or six kids that didn't speak English. Sterling Heights had become populated with many Indian and Middle Eastern families, some of whom were sharing a house with newly immigrated relatives. These kids would just stare at the menu with their mouths hanging open. When I asked them if they wanted to buy something, they'd shake their head and then run away. Sometimes I'd laugh, but other times I just wanted to give them a good choke -- not to strangle them, but only to scare them a bit. Perhaps I was expected to say, "Welcome to America. If you don't buy something immediately, you're of no use to us."

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