Ding-Ding Man Ice Cream Truck

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rachel. I’m calling from College Park, Maryland.

Hi, Rachel. Welcome to the show.

Also, I recently moved to Maryland for grad school, and my housemates and I were just sitting around, and we heard the sound of the ice cream truck coming down the street.

And without really thinking, I just said, we should get some ice cream from the Ding Bean Man.

And needless to say, they all kind of looked at each other and were like, what?

And I realized it was kind of a juvenile term, but I hadn’t really thought about it because it’s just kind of what we said.

So I’m originally from Omaha, Nebraska.

Ding-ding man.

That’s what we say, yeah.

This is the truck that drives around with the music and serves you ice cream from a little window on the side.

Right.

Yeah, it’s funny that you describe it as ding-ding because I was just talking to Grant the other day about how we had ding-ding in our family as a family word.

We referred to our belly buttons as ding-dings.

Different.

You know, they’re like doorbells, right?

How can you resist?

So your friends are laughing at you, huh?

So in Maryland, they don’t say ding-ding man, but in Nebraska they do?

Apparently.

My roommates are from Ohio and Florida.

Okay.

So they hadn’t heard it there.

And I’ve done a little bit of fooling around campus from people that I’ve met asking if they’d ever heard of it, and none of them had.

Yeah.

But people in Nebraska that I’ve asked earlier, oh, yeah, the ding-ding man.

It’s such a funny term.

Yeah, that’s really funny. It seems to be localized now pretty much to Nebraska.

And Omaha in specific.

Do you remember specifically what kind of truck that was and what kind of bell? What did it sound like?

Yeah. Like growing up, I think I remember it being more of a like ding, ding, ding, ding kind of sound.

But then like going to college, which was also in Nebraska and Lincoln instead of Omaha.

And I remember hearing the sound because I was confused why there was a music, like Christmas music playing in the summer.

Yeah, right.

But I remember that being odd, but then I didn’t really make the connection between it not having a ding-ding sound.

They’ll still call it the ding-ding.

Oh, so this is an important distinction.

In Omaha, they just have the bell.

They don’t play like turkey and the straw or jingle bells, right?

That’s what I was going to say.

Turkey and the straw is the one that I heard in Kentucky.

It was really annoying, too.

But, yeah, all these other public domain songs like that.

Yeah.

But, yeah, turkey in the straw for sure.

Yeah, Mr. Softy in New York.

I can still hum that song in my sleep.

Well, Martha and I both understand that this term is still used in Omaha and parts of Nebraska.

It used to be more widespread.

You can find mentions of the ding-ding back as far as the early 1900s.

Often, though, it was a conductor of a trolley car and not, again, ringing a bell.

But again, here and there in St. Joseph, Missouri, which isn’t that far from Omaha, Springfield, Missouri, which is a little further, Central Ohio, as far back as 1917, and in Illinois, I can find uses in newspapers of people calling the ice cream truck the ding-ding man.

Yeah.

But now it’s just mostly in Nebraska?

Yeah, as far as we know, it is exclusive to Nebraska and mostly in Omaha.

Yeah, it’s kind of an Omaha thing.

That’s so funny.

So you can take that back to your friends.

You’re not the only one.

Yeah, that’s good to hear.

They thought I was ding dong.

No, you’re very nice.

We like you.

Rachel, thanks so much for calling.

Thanks, Rachel.

Thanks for talking with me.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

I remember calling that person the good humor man back in the day, too.

That’s the brand of ice cream.

It’s still out there, I think.

And that’s in New York.

Mr. Softy is like a brand of truck and ice cream.

But the Christmas music throughout the year, that’s the signature of a lot of these vehicles.

Right? Yeah, and I remember some kind of classical music too that they played, which sounded ridiculous on one of those trucks.

I did hear one doing the Star Wars theme driving down the street in New York when they were trying to make a name for themselves.

Yeah, I think I remember hearing J. Sue Joy of Man’s Desiring or something like that.

What do they call the ice cream truck or the person who operates it out your way?

Let us know.

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Thank you.