Town of the Tofu Trucks

As I travel around the city and the suburbs there are particular details that I make a habit of looking for. They tend to fall into categories that will be familiar to regular Mirror Sydney readers, like ghost signs, interesting trees, architectural oddities, shops with cluttered interiors, and vacant lots. In this way I navigate, from detail to detail, checking on what’s changed in between now and the last time I passed by. Another level of detail occurs with seasonal changes – it’s late February now, so the crepe myrtles are out, with their blossoms of various pinks, and then as the cooler weather starts, the purple tibouchinas will bloom.

There’s another layer of detail in the daily movements that occur, sometimes regularly, sometimes not, like the flocks of cockatoos or corellas that sweep overhead or gather to roost on the powerlines, or the mournful song of the icecream truck that trundles up my street in the afternoons. It has a faded painting of a knight on the side and when I see it elsewhere in the city it’s with a feeling of recognition like spotting a friend in a crowd. There are a few other distinctive trucks I see around that I feel a similar kinship to – Extreme Piano Removals is one, and the plumber’s van with the painting of the dolphin leaping out of a toilet on the side is another.

My favourite trucks to spot, though, are tofu trucks. There are two in particular that I often see around. The Evergreen truck is pale green and has pictures of the tofu products it delivers on the sides, a lineup of bottles of soy milk and blocks of firm or silken tofu. Fortune has illustrations of the tofu making process on the back door of the truck, and on the side, an advertisement for the Triangular Tofu Puff.

As is generally the case with noticing any detail, once I started paying attention to the tofu trucks, I began to see them quite often, although never often enough for me to predict when I would cross paths with one. I particularly like seeing Fortune; it seems a lucky sign.

The reason for my particular attraction to the tofu trucks dawned on me one day when I was driving along behind the Evergreen truck. It had turned out in front of me on the Campsie bypass and as I followed it, considering the tofu dishes pictured on the back, I I recognised a similarity between a block of tofu and the blocky, square shape of the truck. Surely this was unintentional: a small refrigerated truck has a high, square shape, and there are plenty of such trucks on the roads, used to convey all manner of goods. Now though, every time a tofu truck crosses my path, there is something freshly pleasing about registering this coincidence.

 

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