The Ice-Cream Man

                                                     THE ICE-CREAM MAN

                                HARRY THOMAS DANVERS

 

          "No, you see, we make it all ourselves and there are no more cones that cost fifty cents. Oh no, only a quetzal and still the people buy it!"he exclaimed with delight, through gold tapped teeth and genuine enthusiasm.

           They were huddled together in a dark corner of the local cantina. It happened to be the only one in the neighborhood, which provided the industrious and weary inhabitants with their measure of local rum or below the table, homemade moonshine.

          There were three of them: the ice-cream man; the chauffer of the local bus (on his day off) and his youngest son, who was now old enough to drink.  They were all pretty well sauced and it appeared tht the money was coming from the profits of the ice-cream man. The ancient dark features of the patriarch were repeated in his son, who stood gravely at his side. The bus driver intent with the conversation, as the ice-cream man poured them both another drink and took one for himself.

       He had begun his business by going up and down unpaved roads on a bicycle. He later purchased a loud speaker, run by a battery, so that he could announce his coming.  He might have been the age of the son that was standing next to him, which was just before he got married and bought a mortorcycle. Later the streets were paved and he had children.  In a bleak corner of this dirty cantina, he was laying his life bare.

                        "You see, I have a special formula on how to make the ice-cream, but I'm not going to tell you about it because you might want to copy it and make competition with me, "he remarked with a sly insinuation of erudition, "There's also a way of reprocessing what you didn't sell one day to the next.  That's also a secret, because you can't destroy the quality, that the people know you for, even though we don't sell any more ice-creams for fifty cents and only a quetzal."

            His discourse provoked a thirst so he gulped down what he had in his glass and ordered another round. He figured that if each small bottle of rum cost seven quetzals, he had to sell seven ice-cream cones to meet that figure and with ten bottles on the table, that would mean seventy ice-cream cones and rising! But; he was happy.

            He had been born a peasant, in a nearby village, where he worked the land like his father and grandfather before him. That was the way of things, since the beginning of time. He was between seventy and eighty years old, but he had married young, when he only had a bicycle. Now he had ten grown children and more than twenty five grandchildren. He considered that perhaps the one standing next to him could inherit the business. He was apt enough and faithful to his father. It might happen that one day he would turn in the motorcycle for a car.  Nothing was impossible if one showed endurance toward adversities.

                    "So you see, if you sell quality, even if you have to raise your prices and reprocess what you didn't sell the day before, there is still a profit!"He exclaimed, with puerile delight.

         The Dona of the establishment came out to inform them that she was closing for the night, so they all got up and the ice-cream man paid.  They were all feeling at one with the world as they walked together on the dark street. The ice-cream man began to wonder how many cones he would have to sell to pay for this fiesta.  It didn't bother him much though, for through all his simplicity, he was a happy man.