It is one of the sweet sounds of spring.

The tinny, single-speaker symphony in all its redundant splendor, echoing from street to street to street, as the ice cream truck snakes its way through your neighborhood.

In our Auburn neighborhood, it's apparently Skippy's Ice Cream Truck.

Skippy first appeared about the same time as the manure smells and the bugs on the windshield, telltale signs of spring in the country Cayuga.

When I first heard the Skippy's Ice Cream Truck tune, I immediately stopped what I was doing to look for the truck to pass, as if it was the opening day parade for spring and I had to salute.

But Skippy wasn't driving the ice cream truck down our street. Instead, I spotted Skippy's truck on the street behind our house, and driving a bit faster than I remember ice cream trucks moving, making one wonder if Skippy got paid by the Popsicle or by the mile.

I have waited for Skippy to make the turn and drive down our block, but he has yet to do so, presumably because our street is busier and drivers would not tolerate Skippy stopping traffic so that I could buy a bomb pop. I'd consider jumping our back fence and flagging down Skippy, but that would require running, and running in an effort to buy high-fat ice cream is a conflict of lifestyles.

It's comforting to know that ice cream trucks are still in service. Where I grew up, those in the nicer neighborhoods were blessed with the Good Humor ice cream man.

The Good Humor man had a real cool, glistening white made-for-ice cream truck, with an exceptionally wide variety of dairy delectables, clearly marked on the side of his sweet refrigerated ride.

You always knew when the Good Humor man was coming because his truck had Bose-quality surround sound speakers playing Bach and Beethoven, and never the same symphony twice.

But if you heard that music playing in my neighborhood, you knew the Good Humor driver was brand new on the job and was lost.

Good Humor wouldn't send their trucks into our lower-middle class neighborhood. We couldn't afford Good Humor ice cream. Our neighborhood was patrolled by a deep discount ice cream truck, Sam's Ice House.

Sam's ride wasn't as much an ice cream truck as a 1968 white conversion van. Sam's Ice House was scrawled on poster board and sort of glued to the side of the van over what probably was rust spots.

It was easy to know when Sam was coming down your block - the single rusted speaker on the roof repeatedly battered Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven."

Sam didn't have a cash register, just a glove compartment, and he always seemed to reach under the counter - out of our vision - to grab us our ice cream. There was no price list posted on the side of the Ice House, you relied on Sam's memory, which changed depending on the time of the day and how hot it was outside. Sam only had about four ice cream choices, and they were Good Humor knock-offs, things like Strawberry Eclectics (fake Eclairs), Ice Cream PoBoys (fake Sandwiches), and the Chocosicles (fake Fudgsicles).

Sam scratched himself a lot, but that didn't seem to bother us kids that much as long as the ice cream was wrapped. As we got older, we realized Sam's Ice House was probably also Sam's Permanent House; we saw it parked down the street a few nights with Sam still in it.

I have fond memories of summers with Sam, so I was delighted this month to hear the strained acoustics of Skippy's one fairly annoying song playing over and over and over again throughout our Auburn neighborhood.

I just wish Skippy would stop down our street.

I have a taste for a Push-Out.

Editor Mikel LeFort can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 230 or e-mail mikel.lefort@lee.net