It’s the Coolest Job Around : Vendor: Into the heat rides a truck with frozen delights for kids. For Jim Case and others like him, it’s a chance to make a living and become a neighborhood hero.

With music tinkling from its loudspeaker, the Mel-O-Dee ice cream truck prowled subdivision streets near Avenida de Las Flores.

At the wheel, 33-year-old Jim Case--a former carpenter now better known as the Ice Cream Man--was scanning the sidewalks for customers and explaining what he does.

“It helps if you like kids, of course,” Case said with a grin. “And it helps if you’re still a kid yourself. . . . You have to do a little schmoozing with the clientele. You have to relate to them.”

It was another hot day in Case’s territory--the fast-growing, new towns of eastern Orange County.

In Santa Ana an hour earlier, as Case loaded his truck with Sno Cones, Slimers, Blue Ghosts, Cowabunga Bars and other icy delights, the temperature was in the 70s. But by early afternoon on this backcountry route, his cab thermometer was hitting 90.

It was ice cream weather, Case observed--but then nearly every day is a good day to sell ice cream.

As if to prove his point, a band of children waved at him, and, clutching fistfuls of money, ran to his truck.

“Hi, guys,” Case said casually. “Whatcha gonna have?”

Eileen Ramirez, 11, asked for a UFO, a circle of vanilla ice cream wedged between chocolate cookies that also goes by the name Unidentified Frozen Object. Mike Strizik, 12, wheeled up on neon-laced, black roller blades to buy that old-time favorite, a Drumstick--a 75-cent cone laced with chocolate-and-peanut topping.

“It’s good stuff,” Mike observed. “But he (Case) always has good candy, good food. Everyone likes the Ice Cream Man.”

Ice cream men and women like Case are part of a longstanding American tradition.

Around 1905, someone got the idea of selling ice cream from a horse and cart, said Dave Sarin, owner of Santa Ana’s Mel-O-Dee Ice Cream, which leases compact white trucks to drivers like Case.

Over the years, as vendors traded their horse-drawn carts for trucks, ice cream sales flourished, Sarin said. A major setback came with the oil crisis of the mid-1970s. As fuel prices soared, national firms like the Good Humor Corp. sold off their trucks, concentrating instead on making ice cream for the dairy case.

Still, local and regional ice cream vendors have remained. This year, Sarin estimated, Orange County boasts perhaps 100 vendors, some leasing the 30 Mel-O-Dee trucks, others leasing 40 trucks from a rival Santa Ana firm, Tropical Ice Cream, and still others driving their own vehicles.

The competition is friendly, said Tropical owner Hossein Nabati. “Everybody has enough business out there. You go out. The kids are gonna buy. . . . There’s something about ice cream. When you see it you smile. It brings the kid out of you, no matter what your age.”

But not everyone is smiling. Leaders in half a dozen Orange County cities have declared ice cream trucks a nuisance--even “a menace.”

After a 9-year-old was run over and killed near an ice cream truck, Santa Ana officials in 1984 enacted regulations that bar vendors from playing music in city limits and require them to carry $1 million in liability insurance.

Other cities have similar restrictions. Yorba Linda, for instance, bans the vehicles entirely. And in an effort to cut congestion on narrow streets, a Newport Beach ordinance prohibits street sales of any food south of Coast Highway--which includes west Newport and anywhere on the Peninsula, said City Atty. Robert Burnham.

The vendors call such ordinances an unfair restriction of their business.

But in new communities such as Rancho Santa Margarita, Robinson Ranch and Portola Hills, Case hasn’t had to contend with regulations. His biggest problem, he said, comes from some of his customers--the indecisive ones.

After all, to make a living he needs to close sales quickly and move on to the next customer, he said. But, “Have you ever tried to get a 5-year-old to hurry up?”

Still, he enjoys the children, so he tries be nice when they procrastinate.

“You want ‘Um’? “ he said patiently that afternoon to a little girl who couldn’t make up her mind. “I don’t have any ‘Um.’ ” When, finally, she settled on a “Fun Dip,” he helped her count her pennies to get the correct change.

In his three years of selling ice cream here, Case said the subdivisions have grown so fast that his route has lengthened considerably. When he began, he served four housing tracts and finished his route in 90 minutes. Now it takes him six to seven hours.

Still, he knows many customers--children and their parents--by their first names.

With his shoulder-length blonde hair, sleeveless T-shirt and faded jeans, Case admits he doesn’t resemble the legendary Good Humor Man. As the old ads depicted them, the earlier vendors wore close-cropped black hair and a uniform--crisp white jacket, white pressed pants and a slim black tie.

“That’s a little overly formal for this day and age,” Case said.

Case also admits something close to sacrilege: He doesn’t like ice cream. “No, I rarely eat the stuff,” he said. He doesn’t like all the artificial flavors. And “I just don’t care for sweets,” although occasionally he’ll eat a fruit bar.

Overall, he enjoys the job. Being the Ice Cream Man, said Case, is “like any job. It’s got its good points and bad points. But it’s kinda neat being like a hero to the kids.”