Water Ice

The three-paragraph mention in The Inquirer last month told of Leroy Robinson, a water ice vendor, being shot in a robbery attempt near the Mill Creek Housing Project. But the story couldn't begin to tell the suffering, fear, anger and shattered dreams that Robinson suffered since that fateful night. Robinson, 43, the married father of three, was Maced, punched and then shot twice by two men who tried to rob him as he made his rounds in his water ice truck, peddling pretzels, pizza and soft drinks along with the water ice. Robinson talked about his ordeal this week as he was recuperating from the injuries he received in the robbery attempt.

These days of crisp 80-degree weather might seem fine for most Philadelphians. But for businesses that count on hot, muggy, miserable weather to make heat-relief sales, 80 degrees is no breeze. Yesterday started out cloudy and overcast, and for Carol Cardullo, who runs John's Water Ice in South Philadelphia with her husband, Anthony, it was beginning to look terrible for business - reminiscent of the cool and rainy day that heralded in the Fourth of July weekend on Friday. "Hot, humid days, the weather everybody hates, that's the best kind of weather for the water-ice business," Carol Cardullo said yesterday from their business on Christian Street, near 7th. "I don't particularly like it (the hot weather)

Oh, go ahead, try some avocado ice cream. What's a vegetable doing in ice cream, you say? OK. Taste the grapefruit sherbet. But grapefruit's for breakfast, you say? Then how about the guava water ice? What is guava? OK, OK, plain vanilla. But sprinkled with chili powder, right? In Kennett Square on June 7, the corner store La Michoacana marked its fourth anniversary of offering such Latin American summer tastes to the Philadelphia region. "There are plenty of these, everywhere in Mexico," Noelia Scharon said in a recent interview.

NEW HOPE'S Bob Horowitz will be working Memorial Day. With Chad Ochocinco . Horowitz, of Juma Entertainment, is the executive producer of "Ochocinco: The Ultimate Catch," which begins shooting Monday in Los Angeles. The VH1 reality series, to premiere in July, features the Bengals wide receiver dating 85 women (his name means eight-five in Spanish) in a quest to find the one . Horowitz said seeing Ochocinco's dedication on "Dancing with the Stars" makes him confident he will take the production seriously.

With the third spacecraft to touch down on the surface of Mars now more than halfway to its destination, NASA yesterday announced where on the planet it will land. While the Viking and Mars Pathfinder missions landed in red, rock-strewn deserts, the Mars Polar Lander will touch down Dec. 3 in rolling hills of frozen tundra 500 miles from the Martian South Pole. There, at the fringe of a carbon-dioxide polar cap, the spacecraft will take panoramic pictures and send out a robotic arm designed to analyze the soil for traces of frozen water - apparently the remains of rushing rivers and vast oceans.

Dennis Raffa spent 14 months on Vietnam battlefields. In all that time, "no one came to us once and said the war was called off that day because of rain. " Which is why this emotional Marine veteran says, "Rain is no reason not to have a parade. " For the past three years, Raffa has been coordinating Port Richmond's Memorial Day Parade, a 60-plus-year tradition that was on its last legs until Raffa stepped in. Since Raffa has been the march's main man, the parade has grown from four to 56 units, and from around 130 marchers to more than 1,400.

Standing in a sunny farm field Friday, Jason Leonard and Zachary Weiserth, both 9, acknowledged that they had never eaten squash, but, having just picked a boxful, they said they'd like to give the emerald veggie a try. They liked something else as well. "I like how we picked the plants to help other people who are in need," Jason said. Yesterday, Jason, Zachary, and 70 other Washington Township schoolchildren did both - harvested and helped. For about a dozen years, Duffield's Farm in Sewell and the Washington Township schools have joined to teach children about where their food comes from and the importance of helping those less fortunate.

Joseph Rocco and Annette Villari wanted to sell water ice and soft pretzels from a takeout window at Ninth and Wharton, across from Pat's King of Steaks. They opened Rocco's South Philly on the Fourth of July with high hopes, 16 flavors of water ice, and six kinds of pretzels. But now the business is on ice, the store is boarded up, and the owners say they are trapped in the pretzel logic of the city's bureaucracy. "We lost a lot of business," said Villari, who had planned to operate year-round.

Could we please get over the Rocky thing already? The original "Rocky" movie is 24 years old, yet - just when we think it's safe to take the back way into the Art Museum - the mono-syllabic boxer jabs us in the eye again. Witness the ghost of Rocky Balboa, as played out in the nation's press during the run-up to the Republican National Convention: In the New York Times: "We throw in a generous slice of 'Rocky,' the ultimate movie of Philadelphia and the redemption of the underdog.

With the smell of chicken roasting over open grills wafting from neighborhood backyards, yesterday seemed more like the 4th of July than two weeks before Easter. On Kelly Drive, more roller-blade wheels hit the street than car tires. Even newborns got a chance to bask in the warmest day of the year, so far, as mothers pushed strollers along Penn's Landing. Children raced on their bikes in the streets or took a more relaxed approach and played cards on their front steps. To the delight of sunbathers and water-ice lovers everywhere, Philadelphia's temperature topped out at 83 degrees yesterday, almost 30 degrees above the norm for this time of year.