I am fortunate to own a home on one of Bangor’s prettiest parks, directly across from the children’s playground. It is a summer tradition to hear the happy sounds of children playing and the occasional late-night raucous teenage silliness. Another seasonal auditory phenomenon regularly parks outside my window, playing Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” in jolly cacophony, children screaming their excitement, gathering their parents and their money, for the ice cream truck! What could be more Americana?

But could someone compile a new CD for the ice cream man which samples some of the fine music literature of the past 500 years as an alternate vehicle for enticing patrons? A fanciful baroque fugue or a Mozart string quartet in four-part harmony? Something perhaps from “Peter and the Wolf”? Even a different Scott Joplin piece would be fine, say, the “Maple Leaf Rag”? Or can residents bordering playgrounds be allocated municipal funds to provide headache medication or earplugs?

Let’s enact a new law. Those who willfully play the hurdy gurdy rendition of “The Entertainer” in one spot more than 37 times shall be subject to immediate arrest and incarceration for not less than 48 hours in a locked room which plays “Turkey in the Straw” continuously on bagpipes.

Surya Mitchell

Bangor