The Shore Sound
Part I
A faint sound chimes sporadically through the pine plantation edging the dunes. The melody is hard to decipher through the creaking weatherboards, getting a sanding from the easterly. The noise suddenly stops, hopes heighten in our young hearts. Reassuringly, it starts again, the notes now more distinguishable.
My older brother and I fling our best entreating gazes. We are aiming for a direct hit, not a deflection into the basket of disappointments. Yes! Dad starts ferreting about in the top draw, and seemingly in one motion, we receive the baton, and are bounding down the stairs with our happy coins.
The rear driveway is like the straight at the end of a cross country, but we are pulled along by the magnetic jangle. Our heads reach the end first, stretching around the corner fence like Rubberman.
There it is!
A pink and white truck beaming on the shingled corner in the dimness, like a landed spaceship. Twirled cones on either side giving it horns, wipers a couple of eyelashes, the front grille a large licking smile, and a small rectangular sign above its glinting eyes with neat blue handwriting: destination ‘Heaven’.
Part II
Decades later, the sound of Greensleeves skipping in a tin can rolls down Rockinghorse Road, bouncing round the now built-up burb. The villa laps the edge of the tidal mudflats. Inside the kids hone in on the beacon that beckons them, and start to do a Whippy dance. They celebrate like their tongues are already gluttoning the delicious dairy, knowing that I’m a soft serve.
I flick through my wallet checking for a few Edmund Hillarys. By now, all little legs have vacated, vacuumed up by the appliance churning out the tune. I struggle to match the zippy pace set to the same corner, which now brandishes an asphalt seal, albeit well cracked.
There it is!
Bright red, yellow, and white, dressed up like a fairy-tale, a Hansel and Gretel cottage on wheels, where sugar is the witch, and her spell is diabetes. But who is worrying about that today? Not this family.
The menu has a mesmerising effect, but the requests are soon flowing – double scoop! double flake! double dipped! double denied!! The Candyman hands over single cone sherbets and sprinkles, accompanied with his creamy grin.
In a blink, he disappears from the dispensary of delight, and his truck trundles off in a jingle further into the broken community, one where many homes are set to be demolished like ours.
Two generations retreat over the liquefaction spewed across the footpath. We hold onto more than hope with our confectioned cones – a sweet connection, one linking youthful dreams, and bred right here in the belly of the neighbourhood. Amidst the quakes, climate change, and rising oceans, there is an anchor, an unscathed constant – it sings right along our street.
go pūkeko 