Obituary : Mario brought ice cream and joy to Northsiders for 39 years
By David Pierini staff reporter
When Mohammad Ali Nassiran left Iran to study engineering at the University of Minnesota, he drove an ice cream truck to pay his way.
But his livelihood turned to love and Mohammad, with twinkly eyes and a bushy mustache, was soon given a new name by the Northside customers who loved him – “Mario.”
Mario the Ice Cream Man, who resembled the Mario Bros. video game character, died shortly after he purchased a freezer full of treats for his route on Sept. 30. He was 65 and had been selling ice cream in the neighborhoods between West Broadway Avenue and Highway 55 since 1982.
“I liked him because he was happy all the time,” said Javad Feghahati, a friend of Nassiran’s for more than 30 years. “All the people he knew, his customers, that was like his family.”
Nassiran was a proud Persian but was touched by his given nickname, Mario. Kids started calling him Mario because one of the treats he used to serve, a Mario Pop, was shaped like the character. The name stuck, said James Freid, owner of Big Bell Ice Cream.
Photo from his facebook page shows Mario with some of his customers. Facebook/Mario North
Among the sounds of summer were children shouting his name to get him to stop. Fellow drivers, when subbing for him ,reported kids would go back to their homes when they realized Mario was not behind the wheel.
Longtime Northside Lynne Crockett remembers seeing swarms of kids run to his truck during baseball games at North Commons Park.
Another Northsider, Mia Ridley, also remembers her children buying ice cream from Mario.
“He was a nice guy,” Ridley said. “If kids didn’t have money, he just gave them ice cream. Not a lot of ice cream guys do that. He was a sweetheart.”
Every Thursday evening, Nassiran used What’s App to chat face-to-face with his sister in Iran. For graveside service in Lakewood Cemetery, Feghahati used the app on his phone so that his sister could view the ceremony.
Nassarin earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering and got part-way through a Master’s degree when he realized he could live comfortably selling ice cream in the summer. Early on, he spent his winters driving a taxi but later decided to use the winter to see relatives in Texas and California.
Nassarin still loved engineering, Freid said. When the brakes on his car started to go, he went to the library to research on how to fix the brakes himself. When a part on his truck was being fixed, he wanted to see the installation.
This carried over to his truck. His freezer was logically laid out with the 40-some treats for sale.
Nassarin lived in an apartment in St. Paul, but his Facebook page suggests his heart was in North Minneapolis. His page was called Mario North, with only a handful of followers. He posted cartoonish pictures of ice cream, graphics like “We Love North” and the occasional selfie with a customer, the brim of his cap always down over his eyes.
He posted sunsets from his route and the occasional video of a young customer doing cartwheels in his yard or of a teen-ager showing off his chops for rapping.
“He was literally selling to the grandchildren of his original customers,” Freid said. “People would run out of the house and if it wasn’t him, they ran back inside. He was just their guy.”