mystery revealed

The magic truck arrived at 10:45 pm.

For weeks I have heard about the "mystery truck" that would suspiciously pull up to Barb's house late on a random night. What was exchanged between Barb and the driver of the truck was the source of constant speculation and intrigue. We joked about the ridiculous possibilities: Barb had a secret trucker boyfriend that stops by on occassion; she's an underground druglord in Termo (she only says that's alfalfa growing in that field...); and so on and so forth.

Well, the truth was far less sinister than all that. The mysterious truck that pulls in late in the night is the Schwan's man - a frozen food delivery service. He drives around in a truck that is essentially a well-stocked freezer on wheels and has a catalog from which you can order everything from sirloin steaks, to shrimp scampi, to strawberry shortcake ice cream popsicles (all items on my list, by the way). You simply tell him what you want, and he'll go from one door to the next collecting your wished-for items and making your dietary dreams come true. Equating him to the ice cream man would be doing him a disservice. This is the Santa Claus of the food industry.

Mary has been ranting and raving about the "magic truck" for weeks now and I'd be lying if I said she hadn't gotten us all worked up into a bit of a frenzy about his impending arrival. Last week she stole the catalog from Barb and it has been sitting on the coffee table with her list tucked in it since then. It has become increasingly crumpled as day by day each of us flipped through its pages of edible wonder and wrote and rewrote our lists of desired items. Yesterday I seriously spent over an hour calculating the number of days left here, and from that the number of meals left, and wrote my list accordingly. The magic truck is no joking matter.

All today Mary was in a state of anxious excitement, like a kid on Christmas morning before her parents released her to tear into the stack of presents beneath the tree. I think the first thing I heard her say this morning was "Today's the day the magic truck is supposed to come!" and before she left for work at two she took me aside and very seriously said, "If the magic truck comes while I am still at work I want you to get these things for me," and she handed me a list and some cash. With the degree of gravity in her voice, I felt as though she had just placed her first-born child in my hands.

Alas, the Schwan's man had not yet come when Mary got home from work at 10 pm, and thank goodness because the pressure I felt to get her order completely and correctly was no light burden - I think all her future happiness rested on this evening's success. She burst wide-eyed into the house and the first words out of her mouth were, "Has the magic truck come yet?!" I told her no, and from that moment on she was standing at the window with her hands clasped together, watching the road and commenting every few moments:

"Barb said she thought he had come last week, but she must not haev seen the note that he'll be here today."

"What day is it? The 28th? Yes, that's right, he's coming tonight."

"He'd better not be out of my ice cream. We're the last stop on his route, you know. Sometimes people hog all the good stuff so he's out of some thigns by the time he gets here. Don't worry though, I'm sure he'll be well stocked."

Claudia and I sat on the couch just watching her and laughing at how excited and nervous she was about his arrival. Her enthusiasm was such that when Barb finally walked over and said, "The Schwan's guy is coming, he's turning down the driveway as we speak," even I felt my heart skip a beat. The magic truck was here!!

And what a magic truck it was. It was stocked with every kind of food anyone could ever want and the thing was lined with lights like a ride at a carnival. Mary stood grinning and eager with her list and money held out in front of her like a child who was next in line with a ticket to ride the Scrambler. She chatted giddily and incessantly to the man about how wonderful the magic truck was and how we'd been talking about it for weeks. Claudia and I stood back and were dying of laughter behind the catalogs we were holding in front of our faces. The hilarity of the situation was almost too much to bear - here we were, at 11 o'clock at night in the middle of absolutely nowhere, standing next to a carnival-esque truck stocked with food, making small talk with the driver about where we were from and how long we were staying, while Mary chattered on about every single thing that came into her head, and one by one we each collected our bags full of goodies and scampered back inside to see how we would make it all fit into our freezer.

It was truly a memorable moment, and I'll be sure to think on it every day for the next few weeks as I eat my 24 strawberry shortcake bars, 12 cream cheese stuffed graham cracker coverd soft pretzels, bourbon grilled steaks, shrimp scampi, broccoli and cheese filled chicken breasts, and fire-grilled vegetable medley mix. Magic truck indeed.