A Traveling Truck of Sweetness

--by DoNothing, posted Dec 15, 2008

I was on my school's campus the other day and there was an ice cream truck parked right in front of one of the main common areas of the school. Since I had primarily seen ice cream men drive their musical trucks around neighborhoods for elementary school kids, I never thought an ice cream man would circle our campus and come for us, overgrown kids, such as myself. I was intrigued and was prompted to investigate further.

I was quite surprised when the sweet and rather chubby man in the truck called out, "free ice cream!".

I questioned him just to confirm his words saying, "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Free ice cream, you have your choice of these four frozen treats: the rocket pop, the chocolate eclair, the strawberry shortcake, or the drumstick ."

After I got the confirmation that this guy is just giving away free ice cream, I talked with the man for a while. He told me that his dream had always been to travel around giving away ice cream, and that's exactly what he did. So his passion was expressed through maxing out all his credit cards, sleeping in his truck, and living with his mom, so he could continue to follow his dream during hard times. Now, he has sponsorships from large corporations such as Levi's to do what he loves, and to date he's gifted 125,000 of his truckload of ice cream treats!

The ice cream man told me that he was interested in inspiring people to do exactly what their hearts tell them to do in life. I kept asking him in awe, "so your dream was to just drive around and give away ice cream?" It seemed like such a peculiar goal.

"Yes, just meeting people and making them smile," he replied.

It was a magically appropriate moment to then proceed to tell him about smile cards as I handed him one. He hadn't heard of them, but said he would check out helpothers.org. I assured him that what he was doing was exactly what the wonderful people on this site do all the time: small acts with big love.

If you'd like to learn more about the ice cream man, you can at his website:

http://icecreamman.com

Ice Cream Man (in case you find us here), this treat is on us!

7182 Reads

Posted by DoNothing
Dec 15, 2008
Comments (24)

Readers Comments

JuneBug wrote: Ice cream! M-m-m-m-m! And FREE at that! Yes, I'll have to check out the website! Thanks! :}

MakeSomeoneSmile wrote: That is awesome! People who follow their heart like that, regardless of what happens, are my heroes!

sathsath wrote: great, and unheard about a warh herat with cold treat.

sathsath wrote: GREAT! TO HEAR ABOUT A WARM HEART IN COLD TREAT

AURELIA wrote: That's absolutely incredible!!!! thousands of free icecreams!!!!Thanks for passing on a card to him. I'd love to hear about his days delivering Free Icecream! ~aurelia

lmil1954 wrote: I absolutely LOVE this!!! Thanks for posting it---Linda:)

sukiyaki wrote: How cute! Love the story! Bless his heart!

RABIA wrote: This is awesome, i simlpy love this unique act of kindness.

Ice cream man why dont you come to our part of the world. Its asia (continent) and pakistan (country).

Thanks for sharing!

God bless you all!

hotcocoa wrote: Wow! That`s so kool! And kind of his part! Now he is in y heroes list :)

Geneva Harkness wrote: I don't know if this is the same man but one summer my grandkids ran in the house to tell me that a man was giving away free icrecream from his truck. I went out there and sure enough he was giving our free icecream. I even got one. I never saw him again and if this is the same man he was truly an angel in our neighborhood that day!

Stories of Kindness from Around the World