The DU Lounge

...he drove a Good Humor ice cream truck with the manual bell.

I was probably about seven years old. My parents kept from me the realities of the struggle: I certainly didn't know until many years after her death that my mother pawned her wedding ring, but got it out of hock when the strike was settled. (My wife wears that ring now.)

Anyway, broke as he was, my father's last stop with the ice cream truck was always our house, and there was always a free vanilla ice cream sandwich for his sons.

I love them to this day.

My old man was a strange bird, but I never think of him without wanting to weep at how much I miss him, and at how he taught me to be a man. I tell my sons all about him.