You didn't come every day.

You didn't come most days. But when you did, and when that warped, tinny melody came curling down the street like an off-key prophecy, our hearts flipped, the dogs barked, the air shifted, and time stood still.

I could hear you before I could see you. That cracked rendition of "Turkey in the Straw"—or maybe "Camptown Races"—played through speakers that sounded like they had weathered five wars and a hundred sticky summers.

Church bells for children.

It was a sound of hope, of possibility, of freezer-burned bliss waiting just around the corner.

And then, there you were, lumbering through the heat waves, a steel-sided miracle on four creaking wheels plastered with peeling decals of Bomb Pops and Choco Tacos that looked better on the menu than they ever did in your hand.

But it didn't matter. You were real. You had come.

I'd tear through the house like a raccoon possessed, grabbing quarters from couch cushions, lifting pillows like manhole covers, begging change from anyone with pockets.

And then I'd run, barefoot.

No time for shoes.

Down the hot driveway, feet slapping the pavement like applause to meet you before you pass me by.

The windows slid open like a magic portal and inside: the hum of refrigeration, the glint of novelty treat wrappers, and the driver?

A sunburned oracle with mirrored sunglasses and zero patience.

"What do you want, kid?"

And I’d choose, always in a panic.

The frog pop with the gumdrop eyes? The push-up that turned your lips orange for a week? Or the ice cream sandwich that melted faster than you could eat it?

It didn't matter. Not really.

Because the magic wasn't just in the treat.

It was that you came.

That you remembered us.

That in a neighborhood where not very much ever happened, where the heat just sat on houses like a wet blanket, you came barreling through like a musical parade float for the lonely and the overlooked.

You weren't just dessert on wheels.

You were summer itself.

I haven't seen you in years, but I can still hear your music sometimes—not in the streets, but in my bones.

That sticky, glorious, warbled hymn of childhood.

And I still look, just in case.

This has been a love letter to a forgotten thing, and the summer hymn that turned driveways into dance floors and children into believers.