Then the canary-yellow truck comes into view. Small children tug on their mother's shirts with pleading eyes; kids on bikes ransack their pockets for spare change.

The ice cream man is in the neighborhood.

He goes by the name Mr. Ding-A-Ling, and he makes his rounds between 3 and 8, most days, from April through September.

I was curious about the man behind the window in the yellow truck, because I grew up hearing stories about the summer my dad spent peddling ice cream as a teen in the Midwest. I wanted to know how the old-fashioned tradition has changed.

I caught up with Mr. Ding-A-Ling, aka Dave Bellinger of Oneonta, as he meandered through Neahwa Park on a sunny Saturday afternoon. By day, he's a janitor on the State University College at Oneonta campus, where he has worked for 27 years. He said he took the job last year with the Albany-based Mr. Ding-A-Ling franchise, which operates more than 40 ice cream trucks, after seeing an ad in the paper. He wanted to make some extra cash, and establish a new hobby.

"I'll be retiring, Lord-willing, in a couple years, and then that's what I'll be using as something to keep busy with," he said.

Bellinger rents the truck, pays for gas, buys the ice cream and gets a commission from each sale he makes. On a typical day, he said, he sells $100 to $150 in ice cream products, which range from the 50-cent Bubble Gum Swirl Popsicle to the $2 Breyers Soft Frozen Lemonade sorbet cup. He said most of his customers are children, but he also runs into a fair amount of nostalgic adults.

"A lot of people really enjoy it," he said. "They say, `They had this when I was a kid.'"

The music that blares from the speaker over the windshield makes a strong first impression.

"People come up and say, `What's the name of that song?' `I like it,' `I don't like it' or `Can you turn it down?'... And some people want me to turn it up."

Bellinger said he tends to stick with the same tune for weeks at a time, even though he can switch between 32 selections with a twist of a knob on the dashboard.

It's a sharp contrast from the image I have of my father hawking cold treats 40-some years ago. In the late '50s, when he was 15 or 16, he had a summer job as the "ice cream man" in Rochester, Minn. The technology was quite different. Each morning, Dad would ride his bike to the local dairy to pick up the day's supply of ice cream, and a three-wheeled cart with handlebars and a compartment for the treats, which were kept cold with dry ice.

"It was like a super-bike with this big chest on it," he recalled recently.

There were always cherry, orange and grape Popsicles, and sometimes a less-common flavor, such as banana. My dad also sold Fudgsicles, orange-sherbet push-ups and bars of chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream on sticks. These went for 20 cents apiece, and the Popsicles sold for 10 cents. He made 4 cents on each 20-cent item he sold, and 2 cents on each 10-cent item.

Dad's selection was limited, compared to today's offerings. Lifting the lids on the 7-foot-wide freezer in his truck, Bellinger showed off some of his goods. There are time-tested staples, such as the Good Humor Strawberry Shortcake on a stick ($1) and the Chocolate Chip Sandwich ($1.75), plus more-current offerings, including the SpongeBob SquarePants Popsicle, a mixture of fruit punch- and cotton candy-flavored ice with gumball eyes ($1.25).

My dad said the hardest part about the job was when a cute little girl, maybe 3 or 4 years old, would ask for a Popsicle — and hand him 9 cents. He'd usually give it to her, anyway, and watch his profit margin shrink.

Bellinger said he faces the same scenario and agreed it's the toughest part about being the ice cream man. Once in a while, he said, a kid will give him a pile of change — and come up a little short.

"I'll kind of slip them an ice cream," he admitted.

I find it comforting to know that, though many things have shifted in the past four decades, human nature hasn't changed.

Lisa Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Oneonta. She can be reached at lisamiller44@hotmail.com.