A tale about Cosmo the ice-cream man in the dog days of Levittown summers

By BARBARA TAYLOR WITTENBERG '60

We lived on Pinetree Lane from 1964 to 2009. We had four children and they all experienced the happiness that Cozzy brought to our block every day at 3:30 P.M.

So did our English Springer Spaniel, Clancy.

Cozzy made three stops on Pinetree Lane at the beginning of the block at Blue Spruce Road and Pinetree, in the middle of the block, right in front of our house and at the end by Birch Lane. Kids lined up 10 minutes before Cozzy showed up. I am sure that this was repeated all over North Levittown. He seldom used his jingle bells, the kids knew his schedule. So did Clancy.

Clancy would get on the line and wait his turn. When it came, he would get up on his hind legs, take his cup of vanilla ice cream, walk under the nearest tree, carefully take the cover off, and enjoy his daily treat.

There was one problem though.

Clancy knew Cozzy’s schedule too, and he would start at the top of Pinetree Lane and work his way down to the other two stops. At the center stop, one of our kids would pay for Clancy’s cup, but the other two stops were a “hit and run” tactic by Clancy.

One day there was a knock on our door, and there stood a smiling Cozzy with a bill in his hand for the extra ice cream cups. Clancy had built up quite an invoice.

I asked him why he let Clancy get away with this? And he said that he enjoyed it as much as Clancy did. In fact he said, he gave Clancy a “regular customer” discount. And we know that he threw a couple of freebies in the mix too.

It took a few weeks to wean Clancy down to the one stop by our house, but every once in awhile we would see Clancy casually walking up the sidewalk towards Birch Lane. Coincidently, Cozzy was on our block at the same time.

Clancy spent 17 happy summers with us and every day around 3:15 he would walk out to the curb, sit and look towards Blue Spruce Road and watch and wait for his pal Cozzy.