Berwick, Somersworth and my redneck past...

After a brief stop off at my office in Greenland, I went up to Eliot to grab a truck and do whatever route the Sandra said I'd be doing. Alas, it was not Newburyport... that brought me great sadness as I really wanted to go back out onto Plum Island and try to get that hot British nanny's number. Instead, I was given the South Berwick, Berwick, Somersworth and possibly Rollinsford route with a 3:30 gig at a day care center just near my buddy Steve's Saab repair garage.

Wasting no time, I ensured the truck was stocked and gassed. I made my way westward from the yard and arrived in South Berwick some 7 minutes later. I tooled around to get a feel for the area, then ventured into a neighborhood. As I wound through the streets and down a hill into a cul-de-sac, three buxom coeds in bikinis emerged from their house! Great success! I knew that despite the overcast skies and occasional drizzle from above that it was gonna be a lovely day. I managed to sell a bit of ice cream in South Berwick proper, and then made my way towards Berwick and Somersworth not long thereafter.

Before crossing into New Hampshire, I managed to make a few sales in and around the intersection of Routes 236 and 9. I then took a nice drive up Route 108 in Somersworth, with minimal success pulling into various car dealerships and businesses. Then came the motherload -- a pool party! That made up for every mechanic that didn't throw down the Snap Ons and come get ice cream. I continued back into downtown Somersworth and subsequently back towards Maine. It was getting to be 3-o-clock and I had to be over at that day care in Berwick for 3:30. I decided to go visit my buddy Steve as my buddy Ken needed a seat repair kit for his 1984 Saab 900 Turbo.

I pulled up and parked the truck so it would be partially obscured from Steve's viewpoint. His younger son was in a 1989 900, futzing around like little kids do but Steve was nowhere to be found. I walked into the garage and encountered Steve and his older son getting repair instructions off the computer. So I get to talking with Steve and I somehow brought up "...well that's better than what I'm driving". Steve asks "What are you driving?" to which I responded "The uh, Nine-Ice Cream Truck". Suffice to say, the youngest of the Snow clan got himself a Ninja Turtle pop and I was on my way to give ice cream to the kids up the street.

Upon landing the rusting hulk at the day care center, I was quickly trust back 20 years to a time when I once lived under that regime... forced naptime, smelly kids, Teddy Bear peanut butter and the constant smell of tempera paint no matter where you were. The warden, er, day care lady let the kids out two at a time from the fenced in pen to get their ice cream. But in the end, it wasn't so bad -- sold like $60 worth of ice cream and caught a smile from the cutest girl on the staff! As I left, I pondered my next move for the day and decided it was time to unleash the daily piece-de-resistance -- traveling to outlying neighborhoods where the truck never goes!

So I hopped on one of the roads that headed north from Berwick proper and spent a good hour and a half selling lots of ice cream in the sticks. When I returned to Berwick, I parked the truck by the baseball field and ate dinner. I managed to snag a few sales in the half an hour or so I was parked there, but knew that the real money would come in the approaching dusk across the river in Somersworth. So when the coast looked clear, and the game was in the 3rd inning or so, I knew I had about an hour to go do what I had to do. And I did. Somersworth was a lucrative market and when I returned to the field in Berwick, the game was just letting out so I managed to rake in a few more bucks.

I had tapped the Berwick market, so it was time to head to South Berwick for a nighttime sweep of the faithful neighborhoods. Before I did that, though, I went into Rollinsford, NH for a few minutes and managed to clean up at the end of an adult softball league game. My last stop of the night came soon thereafter in South Berwick where some lady bought an obscene amount of product, and even some for her neighbors. Crazy! So the short ride back to Eliot came and went, and I found myself gassing up the truck for the night alongside the guy who does the Rochester route. Now this guy looked very familiar when I started, but I couldn't place him. Well we got to talking and as it turns out, he just moved down from Claremont 4 months ago and lived there at the same period of time when I did. Small world.

I forgot to grab an order form in the morning, so I'd have to come back and do that in the morning. All in all, a good day and that's 4 more towns I've got figured out.