The Frozen Food Truck

As a kid, one of the most exciting times of the month was when the Schwan’s man came.

For those who don’t know, Schwan’s was a frozen food delivery service that — at least when I was a kid — was known for driving around in their armored yellow-green trucks, chilled and filled with everything from frozen vegetables to fudgsicles.

I can still remember stopping our daily street-hockey game (rollerblades in the late ‘80s, amiright?) to let this diesel-powered food drive past, hoping that it would stop in front of our house. At the time, I didn’t know that my mom had to order the food ahead of time for him to stop; I just thought it was like an ice cream truck, but on chartreuse steroids.

However, on those glorious summer days that he would stop, we knew that the hockey game would end in approximately six minutes because that’s how long it would take for the ice cold treats to make it from his truck to our freezer. Not to mention we were probably also getting a frozen personal pizza for dinner!

One of my favorite things from Schwan’s was a neon green citrus juice that to this day, I still don’t know the name of. It started as a concentrate that looked like an oozing, viscous sludge (TMNT in the late ‘80s, amiright?), but when combined with water, turned into the nectar of the gods.

I’ve searched around for the actual name of this drink (Reddit can’t remember either), but some people called it “alien juice,” others “green punch,” and some simply “slime” (Nickelodeon in the late ‘80’s, amiright?).

My sister and I called it “bug juice.”

I can’t say how many gallons of bug juice we drank each summer, but it couldn’t have been good for us. Was that sweet, sweet, sour drink absolutely packed with sugar? Most likely, yes. But was it also tubular grindage for our gnarly blade skills? Uh, No duh! (Slang in in the late ‘80’s, amiright? Okay, I’m done now).

……..Righteous!!!