Ya gotta be kiddin'. Jerry the Ice Man is retiring? Sixty years of delivering frozen water and the party's over?

Word is passing through the restaurants and coffee shops of the Golden Triangle as surely as Jerry Conistrano Jr. drives his red pickup through its narrow streets, Frank Sinatra blaring from his tape deck on a good day, and when doesn't Jerry have a good day?

It's not that he can't throw a 50-pound bag over a shoulder anymore. He can and does daily, but he'll be 76 next Valentine's Day, and he has grandsons in Virginia and Florida he'd like to see sometime.

So he'll finish out this month and then stop making deliveries. If anyone wants ice from him in 2007, they'll have to come to his ice chests in Beechview. He had a couple of guys look into his business and walk away.

"Ain't nobody going to bring a bag or two around like I did.''

Spend an hour or so riding shotgun in Jerry's pickup on a weekday morning and your trip is punctuated each block by toots of his horn and waves from restaurateurs, shoeshine men, security guards and idlers.

He has been running ice since he was a kid in the Hill District. The Conistranos lived right behind the Crawford Grill No. 1 ("they had the best pancakes") and around the corner from the Belmont restaurant that Lena Horne's parents owned. The Conistranos moved to Beechview about a half-day ahead of the wrecking ball that took their home in the late '50s to make way for the Civic Arena.

He, his brothers and father delivered ice and coal. Jerry got into construction when he got older, but in 1972 he joined his brother Louie -- who died in 1989 -- in dropping ice by the bag Downtown. He has kept at it through triple bypass surgery and appendix surgery.

He gets up at 5 each morning because, as he puts it, "I ain't right.'' After his coffee and jelly toast, he throws a dozen or so 50-pound bags in his truck's massive ice chest and heads to town. I met him around 8 at a lottery window on Market Square, and then we made at least a half-dozen stops, and he never marked anything down as he dropped the bags and accepted bills from the register, flirting with every women he saw.

Some people say he looks like Uncle Junior from "The Sopranos,'' but Jerry is about as threatening as a hug. He led me down the steps to Our Daily Bread, the restaurant in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church, singing Sinatra's signature song, "My Way.''

"Regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention . . .

"Jerry, my favorite ice man,'' Nikki Dattisman said coming around a counter.

"Give to me baby,'' he said, throwing his arms around her.

"You're going to lie on some beach somewhere,'' she told him after hearing of his retirement, "surrounded by blondes.''

No, more likely, he and Lorraine, his wife of 44 years, will drive down to see their daughter Angelina, named for his mother, in Richmond. They have two grandsons there and a third in central Florida where their daughter Marian lives.

But he did promise his audience in Our Daily Bread that he'd have six female pallbearers at his funeral. "I'm going to be looking up.''

He ended his morning rounds with a stop at Primanti Brothers on Market Square. He tapped on the locked door, and Michelle Castelli, who was preparing to open with her younger sister Jamie Cummings, poured us coffee as Jerry brought the boxes of bread in from outside.

"He's a gentleman,'' Ms. Castelli said.

Jerry and I sat and talked about this and that. He spends a lot of time talking about how the city has changed. Take drugs, for instance.

"I'm old school," Jerry said. "If a bottle of beer and a woman don't turn you on, you're in trouble.''

He wanted me to mention everyone on his route, from Cookie's Cafe in the Strip District on back to Cool Beans and Buon Giorno and all the other places that Jerry has lubricated with his wares and smiles and songs. But sometimes, like Jerry, I just run out of time, and there are people I'm always going to miss.