Enjoying a Licking : Ice Cream Truck’s Jingle Spurs Sweet Memories--and Wow, What a Job

Pssst . Kid. Want to slurp a Tyrannosour? How about a Drumstick? A Bomb Pop? A Choco-Taco, Push-Up, Eskimo Pie?

Terry Schimmel is your guy.

Chances are, you’ve probably seen him. Or heard him.

He’s the Ice Cream Man, the dude with the long, reddish hair and black shades who rumbles around this seaside city in his white truck with the faded, peeling Popsicle stickers on the side. The one who bounces into parking lots to the jangling ice cream truck standard, “Pop Goes the Weasel.”

Schimmel, 41, who has been selling frozen deserts to Orange County children for eight years, is again entering ice cream’s prime season.

“This is Utopia. Nirvana. Heaven,” Schimmel pronounced on a recent hot afternoon, cruising south on Pacific Coast Highway in his ice cream-mobile. “Look at that ocean. Is this what it’s all about or what?”

Schimmel drives from his home in Santa Ana to the nearby Tropical Ice Cream Co. seven days a week to pick up his truck and buy cones and sweets. He gets lollipops, bubble gum cigarettes and other candy at warehouse stores.

After loading his truck, he heads south on the San Diego Freeway to San Clemente. His route, a prized one, was granted to him years ago by a friend who left the business.

Schimmel has a strategy for selling his frozen concoctions. He coasts by industrial parks in the early afternoon to sell to employees after their lunch breaks. (“Just when they want dessert, heh!”) Then he drives by residential areas and parks to attract children during the afternoon.

“I am a rolling store,” Schimmel said. “I truly deliver.”

About half the ice cream sold all year in the United States will be dished out in the next four months; about half of that will be purchased at supermarkets. But on a recent afternoon, Schimmel had no problem locating eager customers.

As he crept up a hill at the start of his route, he spied a hefty man standing outside a computer plant, eyeing his truck.

“Ohh, this guy’s really into it,” Schimmel said. “Yeah, he’s gonna buy a couple .”

The man sauntered to the truck. “Hey, Ice Cream Man,” he said. “Whatcha got?”

Schimmel plunged his hand into a steel cooler encrusted with ice and pulled out a round ice cream sandwich. “UFOs, man,” Schimmel said, slowly passing it before the man’s eyes. “These just landed this morning.”

“Ohhhhhh,” the customer said, plunking down a buck. Schimmel crumpled the dollar and tossed it at a small cardboard box filled with coins and bearing the words: Candy is delicious food. Eat some every day.

Down the road at a Hobie sunglasses plant, he sold Pepsis to a few technicians he calls “the soccer guys.” They fixed his glasses in the process.

Around the corner, he pointed out a large dent in a garage door.

“I did that when I passed out in my truck,” he said. In January, Schimmel said, he was taken to Mission Hospital, where doctors discovered he had a congenital heart defect and replaced a valve.

“I got a new start and I’m just happy to be alive.”

Raised in Joplin, Mo., Schimmel says little about his past, giving details parsimoniously. “I’ve had my wild times,” he said. “I’ve been there, done that.”

Schimmel started selling ice cream in 1983, in Los Angeles, after losing his janitorial business.

“I needed a job. Now it’s turned into a monster. The people, the interaction, I just can’t leave.”

Once, he remembered, he got lost driving his truck in Los Angeles and ended up in Norwalk, outside a gigantic children’s party.

“There were like a hundred kids and they just kept coming and coming ,” Schimmel said.

And then came his dream day, when he could do no wrong.

“It seemed like everybody who looked at me wanted ice cream,” he said. “Like they were stopping their cars and getting out. Wow.”

He rents his truck for about $150 a week, which goes up to about $200 a week in the summer. After buying the ice cream and candy, he keeps what he makes--an amount that he won’t reveal.

There are advantages to the job, he said: meeting people, independence and no rules. It’s better than past jobs in a chicken processing plant or in plumbing, he said.

On one block of his route, he pointed out the home of an elderly resident and longtime friend. On another, he stopped to see how a man who broke his ankle in a motorcycle accident was doing.

When one of his customers had only 60 cents, not enough for a $1.25 Drumstick, Schimmel accepted a three-foot-tall, green Gumby doll as collateral. (“I will keep it if he doesn’t pay,” he said with a laugh.)

Even San Clemente’s canine population, with names like Bogie, Chopper and Barkley, know him. Schimmel turned into an empty cul-de-sac and waited, his ice cream tunes churning. “Watch this,” he said.

A golden retriever bolted into the street and planted its paws on the truck’s serving counter. Schimmel tossed him the expected dog biscuit.

But everybody’s favorite ice cream man, the same man who listens to “Pop Goes the Weasel” umpteen times a day, does have another ambition: to become a full-time musician.

Schimmel, who taught himself piano in his family’s garage, is cutting an “alternative folk” album with studio musicians. He also is getting his younger customers involved, running an art contest to garner a picture for the album cover. The name of the group? “Ice Cream Man.”