On Memorial Day weekend in 1934, Paul Whiteman & His Orchestra’s recording of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was at the top of the charts. Whether Tom Carvel knew this or not—he loved music and even toured the Borscht Belt as the drummer in a Dixieland band in his youth, so chances are good that he did—doesn’t matter much. The song provides the perfect title music for his life, a tale of love, blindness, and, above all, a profound sense of nostalgia. And, really, what is the American Dream if not a nostalgic song sung in reverse?
The story opens with Carvel towing a trailer of ice cream through Hartsdale, New York, on an unseasonably hot weekend in late May. It was the year after Prohibition ended and a year before the first canned beer was sold. Carvel had paid for his rig and his highly perishable freight with a $15 loan from his future wife, Agnes Stewart, and had grand plans. But they all went to hell when a blown-out tire left him stranded on the side of South Central Avenue.
