I don't care what you say. Ice cream trucks are creepy. I've always thought they were creepy and they get creepier all the time.

Think about it: They wheel through town playing music that sounds like hell's doorbell. It may be "Pop Goes the Weasel" or "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." But its main intention is to lure children. And children are lured.

Kids stop in their tracks when the ice cream man cometh. They drop basketballs or kite strings and go running. Kids with fistfuls of money run and shriek and chase after the ice cream man from all directions.

It's like the Pied Piper with a vendor's license rolling down city streets. Or sirens luring sailors to their doom. The image I get is of empty playgrounds, swings still swaying from the youngsters who propelled from them just minutes before. You can hear the creak of the chains but no children are in sight.

I'm getting freaked out.

When I was a kid, I called the ice cream truck the Ding Ding. I've asked around and no one else calls them that. I was a strange kid. And at any rate, I avoided the Ding Ding. One moment, I'd be playing with groups of other kids - catching bees, playing baseball, eating mud. Whatever.

Then that tinny, hypnotic music would drift from a distance and - forget about it. The other kids scrambled like Titanic passengers scrambling for lifeboats. I'd be left alone in an empty ballfield, hearing the spooky creak of swingset chains.
I may need therapy. But at least I never got fat on ice cream.

I may be the only person who calls the Good Humor trucks Ding Dings, but I'm not alone in my innate apprehension of them. One woman I know shares my feelings. And she's a tough lady who isn't afraid of much. She compares ice cream trucks to clowns: There's something sinister beyond the happy colors. Like a clown has a painted smile, the Ding Ding has Day-Glo colors and "Row, Row, Row Your Boat."

As far as I know, Stephen King hasn't written about ice cream trucks enticing children into sewers where they are eaten. I'll bet King is afraid of the Ding Ding, too. He knows, man.

In Lewiston, we have at least two Ding Dings. There's no escaping when a pair of them are circling the city like vultures. Just the other day, I was driving up on Bates Street looking for crime. I saw a Ding Ding approaching in its cat-stalking-a-bird way. Children were racing after it like piranha.

I fled. But as I wheeled around the corner onto Bartlett, another Ding Ding was approaching. The headlights looked like eyes. All those ice cream cones painted on the sides looked like fangs. It was playing some soft, playful tune. But to me, it sounded like a funeral march.

I barely escaped with my life. I'm writing this column as a Ding Ding survivor. I don't want to brag, but it was only my driving skills and intimate knowledge of the city streets that got me through.

You're laughing at me, aren't you? You think I need help. You think I'm childish and paranoid, right?

Ah, go row your boat.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter.