I’m not sure who thought it would be a good idea to drive a Mr Whippy van around our suburb at 6pm on a school day this week, but the other people in this house were pretty happy about it.
Unbeknown to me, who had something nutritious cooking away in the oven for dinner, the three of them, including the adult, snuck out of the house and got themselves into the Mr Whippy conga line that was forming at the end of our street. Five minutes later they stood at the front door, licking away furiously.
“How could we resist a Mr Whippy?” they said.
They’d been given that line by the adult, and told to deliver it with big smiles on their faces so I wouldn’t be cross at them for eating something so ridiculous before they’d had their dinner. They’d practised the whole way home. Practised being cute so I wouldn’t yell.
How could I yell at them when my whole childhood was spent keeping my ears out for the sound of a Mr Whippy van? An ice-cream from Mr Whippy made the weekend worthwhile. In fact, the existence of, or even just the possible existence of, a Mr Whippy van somewhere in your neighbourhood was the whole point of the weekend, especially on the rare occasion you were allowed to get chocolate and nut topping.
Once, after a Mr Whippy frenzy on our old street, a bunch of kids stood around in the empty paddock licking softserves. I remember this day only because someone found an old oil drum and started beating on it with a stick, and then old Mr Patton came out of his house and whacked the kid over the ears. He said the drum banging was freaking out his homing pigeons.
It’s funny – my entire childhood was devoted to procuring Mr Whippy softserves, but the only actual memory I have of eating one involves this traumatic experience.
I also remember someone once put a dead snake on a stake in the middle of that paddock, presumably to warn us of danger. But it took more than a dried-up reptile to scare off these kids – kids who’d waited all weekend for the slightest of sounds, and at the mere hint of that jingle were up and ready, agile and resourceful enough to ensnare coins from their parents or raid their own piggy banks and in a mere whisker race out the door and up the street in time to catch a Mr Whippy van.
No, it took a grumpy old man with scatty homing pigeons to scare us away. After he arrived with his red face and steamy fists, we all ran off home to finish our cones in peace. No one needs that kind of rubbish when you’ve got a softserve thing happening.
Thankfully, keeping homing pigeons and whacking other people’s kids over the ears are pretty much obsolete these days. But Mr Whippy vans endure, even if in a tired, faded, gelati-hybrid sort of way.
I’m hoping the 6pm run around our suburb this week wasn’t the start of a regular thing, because there wasn’t a lot of broccoli consumed that night. But even if that van turned up at 7am, I’d still find it hard to say no to their pleas. No one can resist a Mr Whippy.
