Shopper

Car advertising before the fall

Range anxiety, patchy charging infrastructure and uncertain consumer demand. Then a novel virus broke people's brains.

Trusted Goods

Conservative cannabis branding

The Collins Brothers are from a large Irish Catholic family in Wisconsin. Smart, accomplished entrepreneurs with a low tolerance for bullshit, and a dry sense of humor.

The Trump era

You'll never work in this town again

It started as a novel, and got more graphic.

'67

Riots, Revisited

Ever met anyone who was actually there?

Origin story

The truck was fine.

This is probably one of the only stories I get requests for, and it's also the one my son doesn't believe actually happened. He's not crazy: Telling it today, I'm inclined to question my own version of events.

It starts with the standard American male work trajectory: paper route, lawn work, McDonald's, yogurt shop, lifeguarding. But there was one job that only lasted a day.

When I was 18, I found a classified ad seeking ice cream truck drivers. With an adventurous mindset, I showed up early at the yard, and they hired me on the spot, and before I knew it the mechanic walked me to a truck and handed me the key. When I started it up, I heard a rod knock and shot him a look. He said it had been fixed, and that it was "fine." I sensed this may have been meant as a joke.

Upon arrival across town in the assigned territory, I fired up the music; It's true that this is the only way to move product.

That summer, the kids were after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ice cream bars, which I ran out of in the first hour. I tried to talk dismayed customers into Drumsticks and Bomb Pops, the classic Ice Cream Sandwich, but they were stoic. Decent sales for a first outing, and it was a pleasantly dry summer day, in a much simpler time.

On the drive back however, the truck was overheating, so I pulled over and called the dispatcher. He told me to drive it back to the yard instead of getting a tow. I argued against, but he wouldn't budge.

Looking back, I may have taken the freeway out of spite. About halfway up an incline, the knocking got louder, and the temperature gauge jumped. The shoulder was narrow, and I firmly believed I could make the next exit, so I continued on.

Then came a bang, a surge of black smoke, and the front of the truck burst into flame. The brakes went straight to the floor, and smoke filled the cab. I tried to run it into the rail. My memory is spotty on the next few moments, but at some point I made the decision to leave the vehicle, because the next clear memory I have is getting up off the pavement, watching the truck roll on.

It bounced off the guardrail toward the offramp, and I gave chase until it came to rest at a concrete bollard. In my movie-mind, it seemed it would surely explode, but somehow it didn't. The firemen had a laugh as they hosed it down, and joked about melted ice cream. The wrecker pulled up before the fire was out.

The boss back at the yard had one look at the charred remains and refused to pay me. Randy from Speedy Towing disagreed, and let him know I was getting my thirty-three dollars, one way or another. On my way out, the mechanic who'd signed off on the truck that morning told me I should come back tomorrow. Said I shouldn't take it so hard, or give up so easy. All at once he was indistinguishable from "Miller," played by Tracey Walter, in Repo Man (1984).

He was probably right. I told him thanks, but I knew it was never getting better than this.