April 4, 2023 • 47 mins
The iconic ice cream truck holds a special place in American culture -- but where did they come from? In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive deep into the waffle cone of ice cream history for the scoop on one of the world's most successful street food industries. (We also don't actually get to waffle cones, but that's a story for another day.)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. What's that familiar jingle you might be hearing, Well,
it's the sound of our super producer, mister Max Williams.
I am the ice cream man, y'all, I am I cream?
Do you make the ice cream? It's dump a dump
(00:49):
do you know? We'll probably talk about it a little bit,
but like this is normal by the way. Um, there's
like a couple of of iconic ice cream truck jingles.
There's that one that I was just humming, the Daisy days,
the bicycle built for two, you've got, um, let's see
do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do
(01:09):
DoD d dude, like the Beanie and cecil theme, I guess,
and then just the classic uh, well, what's another one?
Goodness gracious, there has to be another one that I'm
totally missing. You guys have any other iconic ice cream songs? Oh?
I'm ben um and I had I had a storied
history with a with an ice cream truck in our
neighborhood that was playing some very off the books kind
(01:32):
of ice cream jingles. It was. It was the driver's
kind of creative expression, and that's fine. He used to
play his mixtapes. Uh. He called himself the ice cream Man,
and his mixtapes were pretty good, actually awesome. My my,
my girlfriend, who is in this tiny hotel room with me,
just and pointed out that also do your ears, saying low, dude,
they wobble do. That's another iconic ice cream jingle. I
(01:56):
heard the version of it growing up. I heard the
version of that song with um balls. Yeah, yeah, everything
everything about the song, but without the years yet. Ice
cream trucks, though they're a um I think they're a
huge well of nostalgia for a lot of people in
the United States, and it is not uncommon for an
(02:19):
ice cream truck to roll through a lot of I
think they're associated often with suburbia nowadays, and it's weird
because when you look at the inside of an ice
cream truck, you see that there's a lot more going
on beneath the surface than people might assume. We want
to give a shout out to our research associate, Max Williams,
(02:41):
who brought us some awesome man brought us some awesome
articles from Mental Floss Smithsonian. Even TRIPLEA dot Com gets
in the conversation here. Uh maybe yeah, Like the song
is such a great entry point. We'd love to hear
your favorite ice cream jingles or ones that you have written.
(03:03):
And today we wanted to talk about the history of
ice cream trucks, which means I guess we need to
start with the history of ice cream. It's so serendipitous
that we're doing this episode today. I'm actually mentioned being
in a tiny hotel room. I'm in New York for
a friend's wedding and my girlfriend day and I went
to the Museum of ice Cream in New York, which
(03:25):
is a thing. It's sort of like an installation where
there's like lots of hands on fun ice cream related
sort of like you know, activities, but also some really
cool exhibits on early ice cream and like refrigeration and
all of that. And one of the things that it
discussed was, you know, ice cream dating much further back
than we might believe, you know, much further back than
(03:48):
things like Klondike bars and you know, Sunday cones and
all of that stuff. This is actually a global phenomenon.
There are certainly what we would call parallel thinking kind
of moments attached to ice cream. You had, you know,
very very powerful people in countries like Turkey and India
and Arabia that were creating flavored ice desserts to really
(04:11):
create a sense of opulence at banquets, because as we know,
the history of ice is also something that is associated
with opulence. People could only have ice if they could
keep it cold, and that was something that only the
very wealthy folks could do. But these early you know,
Turkish and Indian and Arabian versions of the treat were
(04:31):
flavored with things like fruit, pulp and syrups and even
flowers and herbs and kind of spices that you might
associate with like maybe chai or you know, more kind
of savory spices. Yeah. Yeah, rosewater would be another great
ice cream flavoring or ice flavoring at this point. You know,
(04:53):
years and years back, I heard this wonderful description of innovation.
I think it was at a commenced speech. There was
there was this speaker and I'll have to look for
the details who talked about the old business up in
the northeast of running ice from Canada and when refrigerators
came out, these ice truck empires. They didn't get into
(05:17):
the new technology. They doubled down on faster trucks, on
more absorbent hay because they would drive up to Canada,
knockout chunks of ice, cover it with hay or straw,
and then drive down as fast as they could to
the you know, the well healed consumers there in New York.
And it shows us. I don't know, ice cream is
(05:40):
such an interesting way to look at technology and how
people deal with it. And this is nuts when we
talk about the idea of an ice cream renaissance. But
it's it's a real thing, right, oh totally. And I mean,
you know, we're talking about sort of frozen ice desserts now,
the very early versions that were kind of used to
(06:01):
wow guests of these feasts. But it wasn't until the
sixteenth century during the Mughal era in India or something
called coalfie was invented, which was which was essentially the
first frozen dairy dessert that was flavored with some of
those things that we talked about, like rose, right, mango, cardamom, saffron, strawberry, peanut,
(06:24):
and even avocado and u Coalfie isn't a churned ice
cream the dessert. It is not whipped, which gives it
a more solid kind of frozen custard kind of vibe.
And it is actually a frozen in molds rather than scooped,
you know, onto cone, so it looks more like kind
of a creamy popsicle. And it's very, very popular still
(06:47):
to this day. But it wasn't until the advent of
mixing a bucket of snow with something called saltpeter that
the real kind of like ice cream renaissance as we
know it began over in Italy in the mid sixteenth century.
M And I'm glad that you mentioned the Mughal era
(07:08):
and that innovation because you can see other versions of
ice cream throughout history. It makes me think of don Derma,
which is a Turkish ice cream like analog. And if
you ever want a little bit of eye bleach or
want to give yourself a giggle on a tough day,
then go to YouTube and check out Turkish ice cream vendors.
(07:32):
They're for the different they do. They're infamous for the
parkour that they use when they they never just give
you the ice cream if they think you're cool, and
it's it's just magic. It's almost like up close magic.
They kind of like, yeah, it's really, really really I
completely that's a really good recommendation. There's some funny videos
out there. And that is a tradition carried over from
(07:55):
you know, the beginning of the time that we're talking
about here, and they are these certain little outfits and
have these certain little kind of trolleys. They also, yeah,
they have carts. So let's go back to this kind
of European renaissance of ice cream. It becomes this cold
creamy treat, becomes the hottest thing amongst the elite European
(08:16):
courts love it. If you are a royal chef, then
some aristocrat is coming up to you and saying like, hey,
the chef at the other place makes ice cream, what
are you doing? And so they start putting ice in
everything the way that every so often restaurants in the
US will go through this phase where they put truffles
and everything. They put ice in red wine, and they
(08:37):
made the icy custers you mentioned earlier. They made like
nut flavored confections. Almond's creams were very popular. They loved
a sorbet. Who doesn't love a sorbet? And they just
started they were throwing everything in there to see what
would work, what would click. And while people loved this stuff,
(08:58):
it was thought to be food of the elite. Right like,
if you were the average person in Western Europe or
even in Italy, you're not eating ice cream for quite
some time, just because the technology to preserve it wasn't there. No,
that's right, And it wasn't until it kind of came
to America with the first colonists that the sort of
(09:19):
you know, ice cream for the people movement kind of began.
A little bit didn't happen right away, but British settlers
brought these recipes with them, and you actually saw some
supporters of this in the found Among the Founding fathers.
George Washington was a huge fan. Thomas Jefferson was a
huge fan, and he actually studied how to make the
stuff in France when he was abroad and came back
(09:42):
with a machine that he was able to install at
his you know, famous estate at Monticello. So you know,
it was the idea of these Founding Fathers being sort
of like the figureheads for separation from the elite, even
though of course they were really their own forging their
own new elite class. That it did become something that
(10:05):
needed to be available, you know, kind of to the people.
It was like, you know, the people's treat. But it
wasn't until we started to see refrigeration kind of take
hold that the stuff could be delivered and by the stuff.
At this point, I'm literally just referring to ice, because
it wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that folks, you know,
(10:27):
who weren't super wealthy and could afford their own ice
houses and all of that stuff could get just plain
old ice. Yeah. Yeah, And this is the industry I
was I was referring to earlier from that commencement speech.
So this whole aggloberation of companies. Really they start harvesting
ice whatever rivers freeze, and because they reached an economy
(10:49):
of scale, they were able to ship enough ice to
make this kind of affordable, you know what I mean.
It's no longer just for the emperors of the world.
And then another innovation comes along, hand crank ice cream.
Hand crank ice cream. And I don't want to ruffle
any feathers here or upset any sorbet trays, but hand
(11:12):
crank ice cream is a fun thing to do, like
once or twice as a kid. But otherwise, you know,
I don't even I don't know anybody who regularly hand
cranks ice cream these days. But back in this era,
it was the most affordable way to create your own stuff,
(11:33):
and people started making Sundays at home. It became for
quite some time, starting around the eighteen thirties, it became
the like notable treat for Independence Day, kind of the
way turkey at Thanksgiving. Well, and again it really did.
It was I think as a result of I mean again,
maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it makes
(11:53):
sense to me that what once was a treat of
only the super wealthy and like you know, the kind
of uh colonizers and all of that stuff, and the
folks that you know, the US were trying to separate
themselves from both both you know, governmentally and in terms
of image. You know, we have no kings and all
of that that they would want to attach this formerly
(12:14):
only for the super opulent treat to an average people's
you know, celebration of a holiday light July fourth. But
still there were some folks that couldn't afford to make
their own ice cream at home. So, uh, what's what's
what's what's the what's the line from Hamilton immigrants, we
get the job done or something like that. Yeah, they
(12:35):
came to the rescue and in the form of street vendors,
which really, if you think about it, is the kind
of advent of the ice cream truck. Even if they're
were motorized, yet they were portable, and that was sort
of the point. They could come to where the need was,
they could come to where the demand was in the
in the US, it's definitely the beginning of the ice
cream truck. And a lot of these immigrants were channeling
(12:57):
their earlier experience in Europe where they saw ice cream carts, right,
something like that. So this idea comes to the rescue
for what we would call the middle class and the
working class. And if you were in New York in
this time, then one of your favorite street foods is
(13:17):
the tragically named penny lick. This one's really gross. As
a guy who literally has physical problems touching metal, penny
lick sounds like a federal level punishment. Well, you're not.
(13:40):
You're not licking pennies, but you are licking something that's
been handled by various and sundry others. This this is
before the advent of disposable you know, cups or waffle
cones or certainly waffle cones, and they would just kind
of have like one glass per vendor, maybe a couple.
The customer would come and like, you know, eat the
(14:01):
ice cream or literally lick the glass clean and then
give it back to the vendor, who would quote unquote
sanitize it. Yeah, in the form of what like they
swish it in a pale you know, cool super sanitary,
which led one of our favorite authors for this episode,
Laura B. Weiss, author of ice Cream of Global History,
(14:24):
led Laura to say the mixins were bacteria, not chocolate chips.
Unfortunately true. That is not chocolate chips on the chuck
E cheese plate right there. I mean, I gotta say,
like the worst part is together think they weren't changing
out that pale water very so you're getting people before
This is also before the advent of like disinfectants really too, right,
(14:47):
so there wouldn't have even been maybe there would have
been something like wet bleach. They would they would have
known that would have affected the taste as well, and
they didn't. They probably didn't have time to give it
a hot wash and then dry it. If you are
interested in other unsanitary street or carnival foods, check out
(15:08):
our two part episode on the history of lemonade pink
lemonade in particular, cut clown pants. Let us leave it
at that. Yeah, called it the Rise of clown pants
because we're adults. So here's the moment you've all been
waiting for. He says to maybe twelve people, maxt oh,
(15:28):
thanks man, can we get a drum roll? Perfect, We
proudly present you the ice cream sandwich, the ice cream
confection that melted social boundaries. White collar workers, blue collar workers,
the rich and the poor alike loved these sandwiches. People
(15:48):
just generally dig stuff in sandwich form. And there's this
great article that comes out on August nineteenth, nineteen hundred
in the Sun, and it's all about Wall Street brokers
buying ice cream sandwiches and eating them side by side
with like the couriers, the office gophers. You know, is
(16:11):
the ice cream set at least that's what the Sun
would have us totally. Yeah, you gotta have an angle
of the sun. Yeah. Can you imagine how sticky those
ticker tapes must have been, you know, the sticky ice
cream fingies I mean it got of course it's the US.
So things are there's a recursive cycle, right of something
becoming popular and then they're being a backlash. Ice Cream
(16:33):
became so popular that philosophers, authors, thinkers of the day
like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, hey, we're going too far,
like ice cream is uh is a ice cream is
a cobblestone on the road to hell sort of. They
said it it's making America more materialistic, more gluttonous. And
(16:55):
he was like, and you could see it on street
corners across the country. The devil smoothie. I don't know,
he didn't say that part. I don't know if he
said it. Smoothie wasn't a word, no, no, no. That
came later. That's when they started to try to rebrand
ice cream in a healthy light. The smoothie. No but
I but ice cream was hugely popular. You know, these
(17:15):
vendors were dealing with, you know, unhinged crowds of folks
clamoring to get their hands on one of these ice
cream sandwiches or you know, one of these disgusting penny licks.
So you know, ice cream really was a street food.
It was it was walking around food, you know, it
was something that you could it was self contained, specifically
(17:36):
the ice cream sandwich. And again you got to think
about the what made the ice cream sandwich unique was
it was its own packaging, It was its own kind
of vessel, you know, that you could also eat. And
this is before the ice cream cone. We're gonna get
into that a little bit too. Yeah, let's fast forward
to nineteen twenty, give ourselves a few decades. We'll travel
(17:57):
to Youngstown, Ohio. It was recently in that area. Youngstown,
Ohio was home to a confectioner, a guy named Harry Burt.
Just like our pal Max Williams. He's a real life
ice cream man, candy man, and he had a bit
of a dilemma because his daughter, like many kids, loved desserts,
(18:18):
loved treats. And when Harry Burt invented a chocolate coating
that could encase ice cream, his daughter loved it, but
she said, I the one His daughter, apparently sounds like
Larry David said, I love the taste, but I don't
love the mess that comes with eating it. And her
name was Ruth Burt. She says, delicious, too messy to handle,
(18:41):
and so her brother offers a suggestion to their dear
old dad said, why not give it a handle? Yeah,
it's too messy to handle, give it a handle. Too
hot to handle, too cold to hold. Ye, popsicle sticks
are in control. Stick. Everything goes on a stick. Everything
gets a stick. It's the advent of the everything shoved
(19:02):
on a stick era. And actually, you know this wasn't
the first X on a stick you know thing, this,
this had been done before. Harry Bert Senior, in fact,
had previously developed a treat called the Jolly Boy. It
just sounds delightful, essentially a lollipop, you know, the Jolly Boy. Um.
But ice cream was such a cutting edge, trendy, you know,
(19:24):
confection that this was a big deal. And because he
was combining something old with something new, it actually earned
him two US patents, therefore also launching the ice cream empire.
That was good humor, m yeah, and a great name,
not bad holds up. It feels you know, very mister Rogers,
(19:47):
very mid. It's not making crazy claims. It's not saying
great humor or the funniest thing ever. I like reasonableness
in advertising. And then these other comp editors enter the fray.
You know you've got things like the Klondike Bar, the
ice cream bar spelled I space Scream like the film franchise.
(20:08):
And then Bert's contribution doesn't stop there. He is the
first guy that we know of who moved from just
a pushing cart kind of like a hot dog cart,
to a motorized truck. So now his entire salesforce can
roam the streets. He expands his business. Other people, of course,
instantly find out about this and do the same. And
(20:30):
this is where the nostalgia begins from modern America. This
is where the ice cream truck becomes a thing. You know, Ben,
I gotta ask. Another popular brand of the time was
the Eskimo pie. I kind of feel like that's fallen
out of political correctness. What would you say? Yeah, a
pejorative term, right, but the idea that like all you know,
(20:53):
Inuit people they eat frozen things all the time. It's
sort of like inherently, you know, stereotypical. Yeah, I believe.
Now it's called the d's pie ed y apostrophe s.
I think you're damn rous. It's still the same thing,
but they thankfully changed the name. And it's it's interesting too,
because we we were talking about the confection that that
(21:14):
that hair that burt Um presented his daughter Ruth, that
was like essentially an ice cream rap, you know, wrapped
in a presumably hard chocolate coating, but that it was
too messy. I gotta wonder why, because the Klondike bar,
you know, and the D's Pie or whatever it's called today,
essentially the same thing. It doesn't have a stick. You
(21:36):
just handle it, you know, on the chocolate, get the wrapper.
Though maybe I think that's a good point. That's a
good point. You know what. This reminds me of a
while back, and it's probably still around now. I think
it was Hershey's chocolate syrup came out with the hardening syrup,
which do you get chocolate magic shell? The magic shell
that's the name. Yeah, you're right, And I remember try
(22:01):
like trying that, and uh my mother at the time,
this was her idea of a prank. I tried it
and was hardening, and no one told me, and I
thought that was just how chocolate syrup worked, and I
had to eat it more quickly. It's like it's the
equivalent of those birthday candles that re light when you
believe everybody loves those said nobody ever. I think they're fun.
(22:23):
I know, I feel like maybe you had a bad experience.
I don't even know who hurt me, but somebody so
good to good to know. We're celebrating our birthdays, which
are I was in a few months. Oh my god,
you're right, yeah, I can't, but God, another year around
the sun. God time is weird. So we talked about
Good Humor, and it really truly was an empire. I mean,
(22:45):
we think of them as one of the kind of
og vintage ice cream brands um and some of their
most popular offerings are still just as popular today as
they were. Let's let's talk about what led to this
this this brand, this come and he kind of taking
over the world of ice cream. Oh well, first off, distribution, right,
he's got the truck fleet. He had twelve refrigerated trucks
(23:09):
at this time. He equipped them with bells and they
only sold Good Humor. So next, he's got exclusivity. And
then I would say one of the big things to
our question about the container is his ice cream because
it all came with a stick. Didn't need a bowl
or a cone or god forbid, a penny licked glass.
(23:29):
Somebody gave you the money, and you just gave them
the ice cream and then go with God, you know.
And people dig this because it seems like a more fancy,
more reliable solution to the street ice cream of the time.
That stuff didn't have the best reputation. People said, look,
(23:52):
we're just saying the ingredients may not be the highest quality.
They're out in hot streets all day during summer, and
it's not uncommon for people to get food poisting from
these things. It was it was a known fact. And
if you can, dairy does turn right, right, so good
humor trucks when they first come out, they're kind of
(24:14):
like the Apple Store versus Circuit City. It's true. They
built that reputation on being unimpeachably clean and Christine these like,
you know, shiny, brand new white trucks. The drivers wearing
these like lab coats, you know, white presss, you know,
(24:35):
dress whites. I guess you'd call them almost like a
military uniform, you know. Or it's veryly maybe conjuring images
of the milkman, right, or like chef whites or a doctor.
Maybe like they knew what they were doing and this
was this is a fun thing. We found their training
manuals from back in the day even included uh, some
(24:57):
kind of personal lifestyle advice. If you work for Good Humor,
you're supposed to get a proper amount of rest. You
are supposed to eat healthy, always be clean shaven, and
always have a nice haircut. Look like you can sell
bibles door to door as I say, whatever, I get
a haircut. You know, it's funny this this iconic kind
of image of the Good Humor ice cream truck man
(25:18):
was has been sort of not lampoo mean well maybe lampoo,
but like definitely like a sort of used in various
pop cultural kind of you know images throughout the years.
Like if you think of the Smashing Pumpkins video for
the song Today off of Siamese Dream, Billy Corgan is
seen kind of like as this sort of wandering ice
cream man, like in a art film, and then in
(25:41):
the end, his his clean you know, Good Humor uniform
gets splattered in like psychedelic paint. And then there's a
really funny kind of new metal band from the early
two thousands called Coal Chamber and they had a song
called Loco and in the video there's like a crazy
ice cream man who he's crazy and he's coming to
(26:01):
get your children. And then you may also recall the
series of schlocky. Maybe only one horror movie he literally
called The ice Cream Man, starring Ron Howard's kind of
odd looking brother. Yeah, the same I'm forgetting, and he's like,
you know, a murderous ice cream Man. Clint Howard, Clint,
I gotta jump in here because that's the Star Trek
reference right there. Clint Howard has been in Star Trek
(26:23):
basically as long as anyone. Yes, he is the Baby's Baby,
and he's in DS nine and most recently he was
in Discovery. Oh okay, I think he might have showed
up somewhere else. I can't remember, but I know he's
in Discovery as well. He's in Ariyon in Discovery. Clint. Yeah. Yeah,
he's got a very he's got a very memorable vibe.
(26:43):
Yes he does. I also want to shout out a
an amazing, quite surreal and very dark comics series called
ice Cream Man. It is an anthology that's like the
Twilight Zone when Rod Serling is having a bad day.
Do we check it out? It's beautiful, but again it's
(27:04):
very dark. I think it's because good humor had this
appearance of safety and you know, very controlled delight. I
think again, American culture being so reactionary and recursive, I
think it's natural that that becomes something sinister, you know,
(27:24):
just like clouds. Look, this guy is making so much money,
and terrible things that happen in history all kind of
help good humor. And we're not saying they caused prohibition
nor the Great Depression. We're not saying they didn't though were.
We are saying they made a lot of money as
a result of those two things. Like prohibition happens people
(27:47):
who would have spent their money on vices like alcohol,
instead they spend their money on treats that won't get
them in jail. So ice cream consumption rises by forty
percent during the nineteen twenties. And then let's see what
happens when we go to the Great Depression. Well, in
nineteen thirty two and the Great Depression kicked in, Good
(28:10):
Humor bars were absolutely flying off the shelves or out
of the refrigerated bins or what have you. Fourteen million
of them were sold in New York and Chicago alone.
And in those days, if you had a job working
for Good Humor, you were making commission. Baby, you were
(28:32):
clear in bank. Oh yeah, you were making you were
making one hundred dollars a week. That would be something
like two one hundred dollars per week, which kind of
makes you the richest guy in the neighborhood if you
if you just do the math on a monthly basis.
Drivers are like the earlier example you mentioned about a milkman.
(28:58):
They're an established neighborhood presence, similar to the mail carrier.
And because the Good Humor truck had no door on
the passenger side, the driver could pull up to a
curb hop on the sidewalk, hand out the treats from
the freezer in the back. And then the next question
is how how do we make sure people know we're there.
(29:19):
That's where Bert's idea about the bell comes in, and
this is the origin of the ice cream jingle. As
soon as people hear the bell, you know, shout out
to Pavlov, they start thinking of ice cream instantly, because
that's the main time they hear this bell. And consumers
loved that there was a bell, so people would wait
(29:39):
during summer, they would wait until they heard that, you know,
the ring ding ding ringing ding ding, ring ding ding
and they would drop everything and running catch the truck. Well,
this is before the advent of whatever technology allows those
bells to play little tunes, So at this point it
really was just to ding ding, But then, of course
we saw an evolution of that. But this was it
(30:01):
really kind of became a spreading of good cheer, good
humor if you will, you know, I mean, in a
time when people were really needing something positive to glom onto,
hearing that bell put a smile on your face. The
kids came a run in, you know. It was excellent
branding on the part of the Good Humor Company. A
(30:22):
journalist in New York, Joan S. Lewis, had this to
say in a nineteen seventy nine essay, a quote new
friends were made while purchasing that delicious ice cream, while sleepovers,
birthday parties, and picnics were often planned right at the
truck's wheels. So it kind of became this like rallying points. Yeah, time,
like the town square water cooler kind of situation. One
(30:44):
hundred percent. Now, the ice cream industry had its ups
and downs, and one of those downs occurred, you know,
during World War Two, because there was rationing. The rationing
included restricting the amount of dairy people and companies could
consume stuff. I had to go to the war effort. Luckily,
the industry survived, and there was this huge boom in
(31:05):
ice cream consumption after World War Two. Now, the post
World War two boom was huge for the United States
in general. But now all of a sudden, people could
eat as much ice cream as they wanted, and statistics
would later show that what the average American wanted was
about twenty quarts of ice cream per person per year,
(31:26):
or more than that. In nineteen forty six, people were
eating a lot of ice cream, and good Humor was
right there with them. Just one on to point out
real quick. I mentioned earlier that I went to the
Museum of ice Cream in New York, very popular attraction.
(31:47):
You gotta kind of book your tickets in advance, but
with the entry fee comes unlimited free ice cream. There
are little stops throughout the experience, I guess you call
it where you get little ice cream treats and you
can go through as many times as you want. There's
a giant ball pit made of like sprinkles and stuff.
It's it's it's kind of fun. It's a little goofy.
(32:07):
You might relate it to something like candy Topia, if
you've ever heard of that experience, Like I think that
the travels the country or maybe it's in Atlanta only,
But anyway, it's it's worth, it's it's worth. Look, I
enjoyed it. So ice cream consumption is absolutely booming, as
you said, around World War Two, especially after dairy rations
were lifted. We know, along with these kinds of conflicts
(32:29):
comes factories. Perhaps the ones created one thing that are
then converted into creating things for the war effort. Certain
you know, ingredients perhaps that were a staple of home
cooking get rationed. So in the nineteen fifties, the company's
fleet of ice cream trucks had hit a whopping two
thousands because of that increase in demand due to the
(32:53):
lifting of the rationing. So it also led to other
you know players entering the game. Yeah, of course, right,
because other people see that there is an opportunity and
they think they want to get in on it as well.
So this is where we see a new challenger entering
(33:15):
the field or entering the fray. It's mister Softie s
o ftee. Started by two brothers, Willie and James Conway.
I don't know if he likes to be called Willie.
He probably was a will or a William. And they're
in Philly in the nineteen fifties and they were working
for an ice cream machine manufacturer and they said, hey,
(33:37):
you know what, Willie and James look at each other
and they say, we're getting more and more request for
ice cream machines that could be installed in trucks. Huh.
And then they said, there's a problem because our machines
are designed to be stationary, right, They're going into kitchens,
they're going into soda pop counters and stuff like that.
(34:00):
So we have to sort of reverse engineer these injury
riggum and eventually they break down because they're not purposely
they're not designed to be in trucks, and they were
just being bolted to the truck and they didn't have
shock absorbers. They couldn't the machines couldn't stay cool all
the time, right, because let's remember not all these trucks
(34:23):
had air conditioning necessarily, right. And if we're talking about
we're talking about the crank style of ice cream creation, right,
I mean not not not the hand crank style, but
they like the salt style that would make you know,
the scupa bowl kind of ice cream. Yeah. So the
machines here work just fine when they're bolted to the
(34:45):
ground of say a kitchen, but when you're on something
that's rolling, possibly through pretty heated weather, it's going to
mess up. It's taken all sorts of bumps, you know,
along the way. So they said, we need to build
a new kind of truck. It's like that. It's like
the intro to that old TV show The two thousand
Dollars or Bionic Man. What was it called, remember fifth
(35:08):
the ten million dollars ten million dollars Man. They look
at this ice cream truck and they're like, we can build,
rebuild it better, faster, stronger. Think about if you ever
had a dryer where the drying basket or whatever it's
called gets out of balance because of like maybe the
floor's not level or there's a something, it starts to
(35:31):
go good junk good, chunk good, junk good, chunk good.
That's probably what would have happened with these traditional ice
cream machines. If the trucks say, we're going up a slope,
you know, or hit a bump or whatever, So they
really needed to kind of reinvent the wheel, create a
process that could be you know, reliably replicated while on
the go. Yeah, exactly. And the Conways said they went
(35:55):
to their boss. They said, hey, we've got this idea,
and their boss said, Ah, that's a lot of time
and that's a lot of money. I don't know if
it's worth it for us to make these purpose built
ice cream trucks. So the brothers said, we're going to
do it ourselves. And their machine was designed to create
perfectly soft, smooth ice cream, hence the name mister Softy
(36:17):
from the back of a moving truck. And they started
adding more and more trucks to their fleet, and then
they said, hang on, you know what we could be doing.
We could just sell these trucks as franchises. And they
did it for like they were doing Gangbusters business, folks.
From nineteen fifty five to nineteen seventy, mister Softy franchises
(36:40):
grew by three thousand, six hundred percent, which doesn't even
sound like a real number, does it. Yeah. And as
many you know, New Yorkers out there might know who
grew up, you know, around here, mister Softy was kind
of more of a regional affair. It didn't really reach
the same you know, heights in terms of like expansion
(37:01):
that Good Humor did. They kind of stuck to sort
of more of like a territory, right, Yeah, yeah, because
you know, with a franchise, you want to guarantee of
some sort of exclusivity unless your mattress firm. So Good
Humor is still doing their thing, they're doing just fine.
By the nineteen sixties, they have not only expanded their
(37:22):
fleet again, but they have expanded their ice cream, their treats.
They have eighty five different types of ice cream based confections.
But they're starting to think we might not be able
to keep the trucks going forever because in nineteen seventy five,
New York City authorities came calling. They charged Good Humor
(37:44):
with almost two hundred and fifty counts of falsifying records
to cover up evidence of bacteria in their ice cream treats. Wow, yeah,
it was. It's pretty significant too. About ten percent of
all Good Humor ice cream bars sold between nineteen seventy
two and nineteen seventy five were found to have been
(38:08):
tainted by these these these bacteria and products from the
company's Queens, New York factory, according to the authorities, were
quote not securely protected from dirt, dust, insects, parts thereof you,
and from all injurious contamination. Company got hit with an
(38:31):
eighty five grand fine in nineteen seventy something dollars nineteen
seventy five dollars, which was you know, I would I'm
gonna guestimate, Yeah, it would be around maybe two hundred
thousand roughly, so not insane, not like a company, you know,
breaking fine, but you know, not insignificant. And it forced
(38:54):
them and their competition to modernize quality control. It is
a good m of course. Yeah. And they also said, look,
let's go straight to grocery stores. We don't have to
be on the trucks anymore. And you know, reminds me
a little bit of how the dream of a lot
of pop up food operations is to eventually open their
(39:16):
own store. Right. So this seems like a good evolution
for everybody involved. But some of the Good Humor drivers
are die hards, and they say, I'm gonna keep making
my rounds. The most famous, probably guy named Joseph Valardi
in White Plains, New York. He got his Good Humor
truck in nineteen seventy six, and he owned it, and
(39:37):
he kept the same route he'd had since the early
nineteen fifties. And he was so consistent in the town
that when he tragically passed away in twenty twelve, the
town declared August six, twenty twelve, good humor, Joe Day, Oh,
good old good humor. Sounds like he was a good dude.
It does sound like that. And you know it's interesting
(39:57):
now is I mean, there are probably, you know, franchised
ice cream truck operations, but mostly you see them as
being kind of sole proprietors or folks that like, you know,
buy the stuff in bulk, get themselves a truck and
kind of refirm it and create themselves a little ice
cream delivery business. Oh yeah, yeah, And there are some
(40:18):
sketch ice cream trucks out there. You know, there is regulation,
but people get around it sometimes. And we'll get to
some of the sketchier ways that ice cream trucks have
been employed in the modern day. But right now, let's
talk about the the sad fact that ice cream trucks
may be encountering another down period. We don't know if
(40:42):
they're going to go away or if they're going to
bounce back. But according to folks like Steve Christensen, the
executive director of the North American ice Cream Association, the
ice cream truck may be a thing of the past.
It costs more to operate the truck. Gas prices are
growing up, the cost of making ice cream is going up,
and you have to have your permits from the city
(41:05):
or the community to be a vendor. It's just less
and less profitable to operate one of these ice cream
trucks or ice cream vans as they're called in the
United Kingdom. It's true. I mean, we we've we've really
probably seen them more replaced by food trucks, you know,
taco trucks and stuff that often you know, they're not
making the rounds. They're kind of posting up their mobile
(41:27):
and then. But you know that that's also true of
ice cream trucks in more urban settings. You'll see them,
mister softy trucks in New York, for example, at like
street fairs. But they're not just rolling around. They're like
sitting on a particular corner. They go to a lot
of events now, weddings, you know, festivals, get togethers of
any sort, block parties, and that's helpful for them because
then they know they will definitely have customers. It's way
(41:51):
less risky than just rolling through a suburb and hoping
people hear the song. Right. There's also this idea that
ice cream trucks and the in the concept of the
mobile refrigeration unit really launched a thousand carts. You know,
because Harry Burt with his idea of bringing the treats
(42:14):
to the people. Uh, he probably inspired the food truck industry, right,
like to that point. You know, food trucks are carrying
all kinds of crazy stuff, some of its very very
high end as well. And the idea of combining the convenience,
the mobility, the instant gratification, it's all. It's all very
(42:36):
very American, which means there's a there's a dark side. Yeah,
there's a bit of a dark side. Let's talk about
let's talk about some of those those things, huh, because
not trucks are necessarily selling ice cream, and then I know.
The San Jose Mercury News on August twenty six, two eighteen,
(42:57):
reported story about quote, two men arrested in North Long
Beach over the weekend on suspicion of dealing drugs out
of an ice cream truck after detectives found methamphetamine, marijuana,
and a revolver in the vehicle. Yeah, that's not your
typical good humor menu. We also we also know that Max,
(43:20):
you found this one. Earlier this year, March of twenty
twenty three, New Orleans police arrested a woman and impounded
her ice cream truck because it was carrying meth and
ice Cream trucks have been used in the past and
probably will be used again in the future as a
drug distribution front. However, that front is becoming less and
(43:43):
less viable because there are fewer and fewer actual ice
cream trucks out there. Right, They can't really blend in anymore,
can they? Right? Yeah, they stick out. You know what
they need to do is use uber I guess I
guess so. But but okay, So we started with the music,
how about we, there, guys, the classic ice cream jingle.
(44:06):
As you pointed out at the top, there are various
iterations of this, various different songs, each of which has
become kind of iconic. But it turns out the ice
cream jingle itself is influenced by some dark, dark things
in America's past. You know, it's funny, of all the
ones that we named at the top of the show,
(44:26):
this was not the one that we came to. It
is because it's sort of an amalgam of different sort
of popular tunes. But the classic ice cream truck jingle
really is based off a nineteenth century folk song called
Turkey and the Straw, which was itself based on an
even older British folk tune called the Old Rose Tree.
(44:47):
And like many things in the eighteen hundreds, it was
sort of revamped to have a overtly racist message and
incorporated into a lot of the traveling minstrel shows that
we know and despise. Yeah, and this is something that
a lot of people didn't know, and they wouldn't be
(45:09):
so excited about the song if they knew its full history.
And you know, we don't have any evidence that the
ice cream men of ages past were super duper neo
Nazis or something. They were just going for a song
that was very familiar to everyone, and Good Humor wanted
to make this right. They wanted to change things, so
(45:30):
they did something that I love. Yeah. Yeah, they they
talked with Rizza, the legendary Yeah, the producer behind WU
Tang's most massive hits, the legendary Rapper, and they came
to Rizza and they gave him a pitch that I
just know Riza must have loved. They said, Hey, we
found out the ice cream song is racist. Can you
(45:53):
help us make a new ice cream truck jingle? And
he did because he's a cool guy. And now this
song is available to drivers across the country for free. Boom.
I want to sample it. I've not heard of this
until we until Max's research on the topic, so I
want to look into that a little bit myself. Ben,
thank you for taking this ice cream truck ride with
(46:15):
us today. Is that what you call it? Yeah? Thank
you for riding with us the weird ice cream truck
that is our podcast Ridiculous History. Thanks also to super
producer mister Max Williams. Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed
the jingle that we use every time we do this show.
Who else? Who else? Oh Man Jonathan Strickland, the quister who,
(46:37):
by the way, gave me a fabulous Broadway show recommendation
that I think he mentioned to you as well when
we were playing miniature golf with him at the Peter
Pan Mini Golf course in Austin day and I went
and saw Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which is a Monty
Python esque kind of send up of the popular Peter
Pan the musical where literally everything goes wrong. So thanks,
(47:00):
thank you Quister for your your nefarious recommendation of a
Broadway show. Thank you also to Christop Raciotis. Thank you
to Eaves, Jeff Coach, thanks for a pal. Gabe Louisier,
who started as a research associate here now as his
own show This Day in History Class. Do check it out.
And I can't wait to hear what jingle is gonna play.
(47:22):
I know Max will do something Jingle Jangle, Morning Baby.
Let's see you next time. For more podcasts from my
(47:52):
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
(00:27):
the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. What's that familiar jingle you might be hearing, Well,
it's the sound of our super producer, mister Max Williams.
I am the ice cream man, y'all, I am I cream?
Do you make the ice cream? It's dump a dump
(00:49):
do you know? We'll probably talk about it a little bit,
but like this is normal by the way. Um, there's
like a couple of of iconic ice cream truck jingles.
There's that one that I was just humming, the Daisy days,
the bicycle built for two, you've got, um, let's see
do do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do
(01:09):
DoD d dude, like the Beanie and cecil theme, I guess,
and then just the classic uh, well, what's another one?
Goodness gracious, there has to be another one that I'm
totally missing. You guys have any other iconic ice cream songs? Oh?
I'm ben um and I had I had a storied
history with a with an ice cream truck in our
neighborhood that was playing some very off the books kind
(01:32):
of ice cream jingles. It was. It was the driver's
kind of creative expression, and that's fine. He used to
play his mixtapes. Uh. He called himself the ice cream Man,
and his mixtapes were pretty good, actually awesome. My my,
my girlfriend, who is in this tiny hotel room with me,
just and pointed out that also do your ears, saying low, dude,
they wobble do. That's another iconic ice cream jingle. I
(01:56):
heard the version of it growing up. I heard the
version of that song with um balls. Yeah, yeah, everything
everything about the song, but without the years yet. Ice
cream trucks, though they're a um I think they're a
huge well of nostalgia for a lot of people in
the United States, and it is not uncommon for an
(02:19):
ice cream truck to roll through a lot of I
think they're associated often with suburbia nowadays, and it's weird
because when you look at the inside of an ice
cream truck, you see that there's a lot more going
on beneath the surface than people might assume. We want
to give a shout out to our research associate, Max Williams,
(02:41):
who brought us some awesome man brought us some awesome
articles from Mental Floss Smithsonian. Even TRIPLEA dot Com gets
in the conversation here. Uh maybe yeah, Like the song
is such a great entry point. We'd love to hear
your favorite ice cream jingles or ones that you have written.
(03:03):
And today we wanted to talk about the history of
ice cream trucks, which means I guess we need to
start with the history of ice cream. It's so serendipitous
that we're doing this episode today. I'm actually mentioned being
in a tiny hotel room. I'm in New York for
a friend's wedding and my girlfriend day and I went
to the Museum of ice Cream in New York, which
(03:25):
is a thing. It's sort of like an installation where
there's like lots of hands on fun ice cream related
sort of like you know, activities, but also some really
cool exhibits on early ice cream and like refrigeration and
all of that. And one of the things that it
discussed was, you know, ice cream dating much further back
than we might believe, you know, much further back than
(03:48):
things like Klondike bars and you know, Sunday cones and
all of that stuff. This is actually a global phenomenon.
There are certainly what we would call parallel thinking kind
of moments attached to ice cream. You had, you know,
very very powerful people in countries like Turkey and India
and Arabia that were creating flavored ice desserts to really
(04:11):
create a sense of opulence at banquets, because as we know,
the history of ice is also something that is associated
with opulence. People could only have ice if they could
keep it cold, and that was something that only the
very wealthy folks could do. But these early you know,
Turkish and Indian and Arabian versions of the treat were
(04:31):
flavored with things like fruit, pulp and syrups and even
flowers and herbs and kind of spices that you might
associate with like maybe chai or you know, more kind
of savory spices. Yeah. Yeah, rosewater would be another great
ice cream flavoring or ice flavoring at this point. You know,
(04:53):
years and years back, I heard this wonderful description of innovation.
I think it was at a commenced speech. There was
there was this speaker and I'll have to look for
the details who talked about the old business up in
the northeast of running ice from Canada and when refrigerators
came out, these ice truck empires. They didn't get into
(05:17):
the new technology. They doubled down on faster trucks, on
more absorbent hay because they would drive up to Canada,
knockout chunks of ice, cover it with hay or straw,
and then drive down as fast as they could to
the you know, the well healed consumers there in New York.
And it shows us. I don't know, ice cream is
(05:40):
such an interesting way to look at technology and how
people deal with it. And this is nuts when we
talk about the idea of an ice cream renaissance. But
it's it's a real thing, right, oh totally. And I mean,
you know, we're talking about sort of frozen ice desserts now,
the very early versions that were kind of used to
(06:01):
wow guests of these feasts. But it wasn't until the
sixteenth century during the Mughal era in India or something
called coalfie was invented, which was which was essentially the
first frozen dairy dessert that was flavored with some of
those things that we talked about, like rose, right, mango, cardamom, saffron, strawberry, peanut,
(06:24):
and even avocado and u Coalfie isn't a churned ice
cream the dessert. It is not whipped, which gives it
a more solid kind of frozen custard kind of vibe.
And it is actually a frozen in molds rather than scooped,
you know, onto cone, so it looks more like kind
of a creamy popsicle. And it's very, very popular still
(06:47):
to this day. But it wasn't until the advent of
mixing a bucket of snow with something called saltpeter that
the real kind of like ice cream renaissance as we
know it began over in Italy in the mid sixteenth century.
M And I'm glad that you mentioned the Mughal era
(07:08):
and that innovation because you can see other versions of
ice cream throughout history. It makes me think of don Derma,
which is a Turkish ice cream like analog. And if
you ever want a little bit of eye bleach or
want to give yourself a giggle on a tough day,
then go to YouTube and check out Turkish ice cream vendors.
(07:32):
They're for the different they do. They're infamous for the
parkour that they use when they they never just give
you the ice cream if they think you're cool, and
it's it's just magic. It's almost like up close magic.
They kind of like, yeah, it's really, really really I
completely that's a really good recommendation. There's some funny videos
out there. And that is a tradition carried over from
(07:55):
you know, the beginning of the time that we're talking
about here, and they are these certain little outfits and
have these certain little kind of trolleys. They also, yeah,
they have carts. So let's go back to this kind
of European renaissance of ice cream. It becomes this cold
creamy treat, becomes the hottest thing amongst the elite European
(08:16):
courts love it. If you are a royal chef, then
some aristocrat is coming up to you and saying like, hey,
the chef at the other place makes ice cream, what
are you doing? And so they start putting ice in
everything the way that every so often restaurants in the
US will go through this phase where they put truffles
and everything. They put ice in red wine, and they
(08:37):
made the icy custers you mentioned earlier. They made like
nut flavored confections. Almond's creams were very popular. They loved
a sorbet. Who doesn't love a sorbet? And they just
started they were throwing everything in there to see what
would work, what would click. And while people loved this stuff,
(08:58):
it was thought to be food of the elite. Right like,
if you were the average person in Western Europe or
even in Italy, you're not eating ice cream for quite
some time, just because the technology to preserve it wasn't there. No,
that's right, And it wasn't until it kind of came
to America with the first colonists that the sort of
(09:19):
you know, ice cream for the people movement kind of began.
A little bit didn't happen right away, but British settlers
brought these recipes with them, and you actually saw some
supporters of this in the found Among the Founding fathers.
George Washington was a huge fan. Thomas Jefferson was a
huge fan, and he actually studied how to make the
stuff in France when he was abroad and came back
(09:42):
with a machine that he was able to install at
his you know, famous estate at Monticello. So you know,
it was the idea of these Founding Fathers being sort
of like the figureheads for separation from the elite, even
though of course they were really their own forging their
own new elite class. That it did become something that
(10:05):
needed to be available, you know, kind of to the people.
It was like, you know, the people's treat. But it
wasn't until we started to see refrigeration kind of take
hold that the stuff could be delivered and by the stuff.
At this point, I'm literally just referring to ice, because
it wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that folks, you know,
(10:27):
who weren't super wealthy and could afford their own ice
houses and all of that stuff could get just plain
old ice. Yeah. Yeah, And this is the industry I
was I was referring to earlier from that commencement speech.
So this whole aggloberation of companies. Really they start harvesting
ice whatever rivers freeze, and because they reached an economy
(10:49):
of scale, they were able to ship enough ice to
make this kind of affordable, you know what I mean.
It's no longer just for the emperors of the world.
And then another innovation comes along, hand crank ice cream.
Hand crank ice cream. And I don't want to ruffle
any feathers here or upset any sorbet trays, but hand
(11:12):
crank ice cream is a fun thing to do, like
once or twice as a kid. But otherwise, you know,
I don't even I don't know anybody who regularly hand
cranks ice cream these days. But back in this era,
it was the most affordable way to create your own stuff,
(11:33):
and people started making Sundays at home. It became for
quite some time, starting around the eighteen thirties, it became
the like notable treat for Independence Day, kind of the
way turkey at Thanksgiving. Well, and again it really did.
It was I think as a result of I mean again,
maybe I'm reading too much into this, but it makes
(11:53):
sense to me that what once was a treat of
only the super wealthy and like you know, the kind
of uh colonizers and all of that stuff, and the
folks that you know, the US were trying to separate
themselves from both both you know, governmentally and in terms
of image. You know, we have no kings and all
of that that they would want to attach this formerly
(12:14):
only for the super opulent treat to an average people's
you know, celebration of a holiday light July fourth. But
still there were some folks that couldn't afford to make
their own ice cream at home. So, uh, what's what's
what's what's the what's the line from Hamilton immigrants, we
get the job done or something like that. Yeah, they
(12:35):
came to the rescue and in the form of street vendors,
which really, if you think about it, is the kind
of advent of the ice cream truck. Even if they're
were motorized, yet they were portable, and that was sort
of the point. They could come to where the need was,
they could come to where the demand was in the
in the US, it's definitely the beginning of the ice
cream truck. And a lot of these immigrants were channeling
(12:57):
their earlier experience in Europe where they saw ice cream carts, right,
something like that. So this idea comes to the rescue
for what we would call the middle class and the
working class. And if you were in New York in
this time, then one of your favorite street foods is
(13:17):
the tragically named penny lick. This one's really gross. As
a guy who literally has physical problems touching metal, penny
lick sounds like a federal level punishment. Well, you're not.
(13:40):
You're not licking pennies, but you are licking something that's
been handled by various and sundry others. This this is
before the advent of disposable you know, cups or waffle
cones or certainly waffle cones, and they would just kind
of have like one glass per vendor, maybe a couple.
The customer would come and like, you know, eat the
(14:01):
ice cream or literally lick the glass clean and then
give it back to the vendor, who would quote unquote
sanitize it. Yeah, in the form of what like they
swish it in a pale you know, cool super sanitary,
which led one of our favorite authors for this episode,
Laura B. Weiss, author of ice Cream of Global History,
(14:24):
led Laura to say the mixins were bacteria, not chocolate chips.
Unfortunately true. That is not chocolate chips on the chuck
E cheese plate right there. I mean, I gotta say,
like the worst part is together think they weren't changing
out that pale water very so you're getting people before
This is also before the advent of like disinfectants really too, right,
(14:47):
so there wouldn't have even been maybe there would have
been something like wet bleach. They would they would have
known that would have affected the taste as well, and
they didn't. They probably didn't have time to give it
a hot wash and then dry it. If you are
interested in other unsanitary street or carnival foods, check out
(15:08):
our two part episode on the history of lemonade pink
lemonade in particular, cut clown pants. Let us leave it
at that. Yeah, called it the Rise of clown pants
because we're adults. So here's the moment you've all been
waiting for. He says to maybe twelve people, maxt oh,
(15:28):
thanks man, can we get a drum roll? Perfect, We
proudly present you the ice cream sandwich, the ice cream
confection that melted social boundaries. White collar workers, blue collar workers,
the rich and the poor alike loved these sandwiches. People
(15:48):
just generally dig stuff in sandwich form. And there's this
great article that comes out on August nineteenth, nineteen hundred
in the Sun, and it's all about Wall Street brokers
buying ice cream sandwiches and eating them side by side
with like the couriers, the office gophers. You know, is
(16:11):
the ice cream set at least that's what the Sun
would have us totally. Yeah, you gotta have an angle
of the sun. Yeah. Can you imagine how sticky those
ticker tapes must have been, you know, the sticky ice
cream fingies I mean it got of course it's the US.
So things are there's a recursive cycle, right of something
becoming popular and then they're being a backlash. Ice Cream
(16:33):
became so popular that philosophers, authors, thinkers of the day
like Ralph Waldo Emerson said, hey, we're going too far,
like ice cream is uh is a ice cream is
a cobblestone on the road to hell sort of. They
said it it's making America more materialistic, more gluttonous. And
(16:55):
he was like, and you could see it on street
corners across the country. The devil smoothie. I don't know,
he didn't say that part. I don't know if he
said it. Smoothie wasn't a word, no, no, no. That
came later. That's when they started to try to rebrand
ice cream in a healthy light. The smoothie. No but
I but ice cream was hugely popular. You know, these
(17:15):
vendors were dealing with, you know, unhinged crowds of folks
clamoring to get their hands on one of these ice
cream sandwiches or you know, one of these disgusting penny licks.
So you know, ice cream really was a street food.
It was it was walking around food, you know, it
was something that you could it was self contained, specifically
(17:36):
the ice cream sandwich. And again you got to think
about the what made the ice cream sandwich unique was
it was its own packaging, It was its own kind
of vessel, you know, that you could also eat. And
this is before the ice cream cone. We're gonna get
into that a little bit too. Yeah, let's fast forward
to nineteen twenty, give ourselves a few decades. We'll travel
(17:57):
to Youngstown, Ohio. It was recently in that area. Youngstown,
Ohio was home to a confectioner, a guy named Harry Burt.
Just like our pal Max Williams. He's a real life
ice cream man, candy man, and he had a bit
of a dilemma because his daughter, like many kids, loved desserts,
(18:18):
loved treats. And when Harry Burt invented a chocolate coating
that could encase ice cream, his daughter loved it, but
she said, I the one His daughter, apparently sounds like
Larry David said, I love the taste, but I don't
love the mess that comes with eating it. And her
name was Ruth Burt. She says, delicious, too messy to handle,
(18:41):
and so her brother offers a suggestion to their dear
old dad said, why not give it a handle? Yeah,
it's too messy to handle, give it a handle. Too
hot to handle, too cold to hold. Ye, popsicle sticks
are in control. Stick. Everything goes on a stick. Everything
gets a stick. It's the advent of the everything shoved
(19:02):
on a stick era. And actually, you know this wasn't
the first X on a stick you know thing, this,
this had been done before. Harry Bert Senior, in fact,
had previously developed a treat called the Jolly Boy. It
just sounds delightful, essentially a lollipop, you know, the Jolly Boy. Um.
But ice cream was such a cutting edge, trendy, you know,
(19:24):
confection that this was a big deal. And because he
was combining something old with something new, it actually earned
him two US patents, therefore also launching the ice cream empire.
That was good humor, m yeah, and a great name,
not bad holds up. It feels you know, very mister Rogers,
(19:47):
very mid. It's not making crazy claims. It's not saying
great humor or the funniest thing ever. I like reasonableness
in advertising. And then these other comp editors enter the fray.
You know you've got things like the Klondike Bar, the
ice cream bar spelled I space Scream like the film franchise.
(20:08):
And then Bert's contribution doesn't stop there. He is the
first guy that we know of who moved from just
a pushing cart kind of like a hot dog cart,
to a motorized truck. So now his entire salesforce can
roam the streets. He expands his business. Other people, of course,
instantly find out about this and do the same. And
(20:30):
this is where the nostalgia begins from modern America. This
is where the ice cream truck becomes a thing. You know, Ben,
I gotta ask. Another popular brand of the time was
the Eskimo pie. I kind of feel like that's fallen
out of political correctness. What would you say? Yeah, a
pejorative term, right, but the idea that like all you know,
(20:53):
Inuit people they eat frozen things all the time. It's
sort of like inherently, you know, stereotypical. Yeah, I believe.
Now it's called the d's pie ed y apostrophe s.
I think you're damn rous. It's still the same thing,
but they thankfully changed the name. And it's it's interesting too,
because we we were talking about the confection that that
(21:14):
that hair that burt Um presented his daughter Ruth, that
was like essentially an ice cream rap, you know, wrapped
in a presumably hard chocolate coating, but that it was
too messy. I gotta wonder why, because the Klondike bar,
you know, and the D's Pie or whatever it's called today,
essentially the same thing. It doesn't have a stick. You
(21:36):
just handle it, you know, on the chocolate, get the wrapper.
Though maybe I think that's a good point. That's a
good point. You know what. This reminds me of a
while back, and it's probably still around now. I think
it was Hershey's chocolate syrup came out with the hardening syrup,
which do you get chocolate magic shell? The magic shell
that's the name. Yeah, you're right, And I remember try
(22:01):
like trying that, and uh my mother at the time,
this was her idea of a prank. I tried it
and was hardening, and no one told me, and I
thought that was just how chocolate syrup worked, and I
had to eat it more quickly. It's like it's the
equivalent of those birthday candles that re light when you
believe everybody loves those said nobody ever. I think they're fun.
(22:23):
I know, I feel like maybe you had a bad experience.
I don't even know who hurt me, but somebody so
good to good to know. We're celebrating our birthdays, which
are I was in a few months. Oh my god,
you're right, yeah, I can't, but God, another year around
the sun. God time is weird. So we talked about
Good Humor, and it really truly was an empire. I mean,
(22:45):
we think of them as one of the kind of
og vintage ice cream brands um and some of their
most popular offerings are still just as popular today as
they were. Let's let's talk about what led to this
this this brand, this come and he kind of taking
over the world of ice cream. Oh well, first off, distribution, right,
he's got the truck fleet. He had twelve refrigerated trucks
(23:09):
at this time. He equipped them with bells and they
only sold Good Humor. So next, he's got exclusivity. And
then I would say one of the big things to
our question about the container is his ice cream because
it all came with a stick. Didn't need a bowl
or a cone or god forbid, a penny licked glass.
(23:29):
Somebody gave you the money, and you just gave them
the ice cream and then go with God, you know.
And people dig this because it seems like a more fancy,
more reliable solution to the street ice cream of the time.
That stuff didn't have the best reputation. People said, look,
(23:52):
we're just saying the ingredients may not be the highest quality.
They're out in hot streets all day during summer, and
it's not uncommon for people to get food poisting from
these things. It was it was a known fact. And
if you can, dairy does turn right, right, so good
humor trucks when they first come out, they're kind of
(24:14):
like the Apple Store versus Circuit City. It's true. They
built that reputation on being unimpeachably clean and Christine these like,
you know, shiny, brand new white trucks. The drivers wearing
these like lab coats, you know, white presss, you know,
(24:35):
dress whites. I guess you'd call them almost like a
military uniform, you know. Or it's veryly maybe conjuring images
of the milkman, right, or like chef whites or a doctor.
Maybe like they knew what they were doing and this
was this is a fun thing. We found their training
manuals from back in the day even included uh, some
(24:57):
kind of personal lifestyle advice. If you work for Good Humor,
you're supposed to get a proper amount of rest. You
are supposed to eat healthy, always be clean shaven, and
always have a nice haircut. Look like you can sell
bibles door to door as I say, whatever, I get
a haircut. You know, it's funny this this iconic kind
of image of the Good Humor ice cream truck man
(25:18):
was has been sort of not lampoo mean well maybe lampoo,
but like definitely like a sort of used in various
pop cultural kind of you know images throughout the years.
Like if you think of the Smashing Pumpkins video for
the song Today off of Siamese Dream, Billy Corgan is
seen kind of like as this sort of wandering ice
cream man, like in a art film, and then in
(25:41):
the end, his his clean you know, Good Humor uniform
gets splattered in like psychedelic paint. And then there's a
really funny kind of new metal band from the early
two thousands called Coal Chamber and they had a song
called Loco and in the video there's like a crazy
ice cream man who he's crazy and he's coming to
(26:01):
get your children. And then you may also recall the
series of schlocky. Maybe only one horror movie he literally
called The ice Cream Man, starring Ron Howard's kind of
odd looking brother. Yeah, the same I'm forgetting, and he's like,
you know, a murderous ice cream Man. Clint Howard, Clint,
I gotta jump in here because that's the Star Trek
reference right there. Clint Howard has been in Star Trek
(26:23):
basically as long as anyone. Yes, he is the Baby's Baby,
and he's in DS nine and most recently he was
in Discovery. Oh okay, I think he might have showed
up somewhere else. I can't remember, but I know he's
in Discovery as well. He's in Ariyon in Discovery. Clint. Yeah. Yeah,
he's got a very he's got a very memorable vibe.
(26:43):
Yes he does. I also want to shout out a
an amazing, quite surreal and very dark comics series called
ice Cream Man. It is an anthology that's like the
Twilight Zone when Rod Serling is having a bad day.
Do we check it out? It's beautiful, but again it's
(27:04):
very dark. I think it's because good humor had this
appearance of safety and you know, very controlled delight. I
think again, American culture being so reactionary and recursive, I
think it's natural that that becomes something sinister, you know,
(27:24):
just like clouds. Look, this guy is making so much money,
and terrible things that happen in history all kind of
help good humor. And we're not saying they caused prohibition
nor the Great Depression. We're not saying they didn't though were.
We are saying they made a lot of money as
a result of those two things. Like prohibition happens people
(27:47):
who would have spent their money on vices like alcohol,
instead they spend their money on treats that won't get
them in jail. So ice cream consumption rises by forty
percent during the nineteen twenties. And then let's see what
happens when we go to the Great Depression. Well, in
nineteen thirty two and the Great Depression kicked in, Good
(28:10):
Humor bars were absolutely flying off the shelves or out
of the refrigerated bins or what have you. Fourteen million
of them were sold in New York and Chicago alone.
And in those days, if you had a job working
for Good Humor, you were making commission. Baby, you were
(28:32):
clear in bank. Oh yeah, you were making you were
making one hundred dollars a week. That would be something
like two one hundred dollars per week, which kind of
makes you the richest guy in the neighborhood if you
if you just do the math on a monthly basis.
Drivers are like the earlier example you mentioned about a milkman.
(28:58):
They're an established neighborhood presence, similar to the mail carrier.
And because the Good Humor truck had no door on
the passenger side, the driver could pull up to a
curb hop on the sidewalk, hand out the treats from
the freezer in the back. And then the next question
is how how do we make sure people know we're there.
(29:19):
That's where Bert's idea about the bell comes in, and
this is the origin of the ice cream jingle. As
soon as people hear the bell, you know, shout out
to Pavlov, they start thinking of ice cream instantly, because
that's the main time they hear this bell. And consumers
loved that there was a bell, so people would wait
(29:39):
during summer, they would wait until they heard that, you know,
the ring ding ding ringing ding ding, ring ding ding
and they would drop everything and running catch the truck. Well,
this is before the advent of whatever technology allows those
bells to play little tunes, So at this point it
really was just to ding ding, But then, of course
we saw an evolution of that. But this was it
(30:01):
really kind of became a spreading of good cheer, good
humor if you will, you know, I mean, in a
time when people were really needing something positive to glom onto,
hearing that bell put a smile on your face. The
kids came a run in, you know. It was excellent
branding on the part of the Good Humor Company. A
(30:22):
journalist in New York, Joan S. Lewis, had this to
say in a nineteen seventy nine essay, a quote new
friends were made while purchasing that delicious ice cream, while sleepovers,
birthday parties, and picnics were often planned right at the
truck's wheels. So it kind of became this like rallying points. Yeah, time,
like the town square water cooler kind of situation. One
(30:44):
hundred percent. Now, the ice cream industry had its ups
and downs, and one of those downs occurred, you know,
during World War Two, because there was rationing. The rationing
included restricting the amount of dairy people and companies could
consume stuff. I had to go to the war effort. Luckily,
the industry survived, and there was this huge boom in
(31:05):
ice cream consumption after World War Two. Now, the post
World War two boom was huge for the United States
in general. But now all of a sudden, people could
eat as much ice cream as they wanted, and statistics
would later show that what the average American wanted was
about twenty quarts of ice cream per person per year,
(31:26):
or more than that. In nineteen forty six, people were
eating a lot of ice cream, and good Humor was
right there with them. Just one on to point out
real quick. I mentioned earlier that I went to the
Museum of ice Cream in New York, very popular attraction.
(31:47):
You gotta kind of book your tickets in advance, but
with the entry fee comes unlimited free ice cream. There
are little stops throughout the experience, I guess you call
it where you get little ice cream treats and you
can go through as many times as you want. There's
a giant ball pit made of like sprinkles and stuff.
It's it's it's kind of fun. It's a little goofy.
(32:07):
You might relate it to something like candy Topia, if
you've ever heard of that experience, Like I think that
the travels the country or maybe it's in Atlanta only,
But anyway, it's it's worth, it's it's worth. Look, I
enjoyed it. So ice cream consumption is absolutely booming, as
you said, around World War Two, especially after dairy rations
were lifted. We know, along with these kinds of conflicts
(32:29):
comes factories. Perhaps the ones created one thing that are
then converted into creating things for the war effort. Certain
you know, ingredients perhaps that were a staple of home
cooking get rationed. So in the nineteen fifties, the company's
fleet of ice cream trucks had hit a whopping two
thousands because of that increase in demand due to the
(32:53):
lifting of the rationing. So it also led to other
you know players entering the game. Yeah, of course, right,
because other people see that there is an opportunity and
they think they want to get in on it as well.
So this is where we see a new challenger entering
(33:15):
the field or entering the fray. It's mister Softie s
o ftee. Started by two brothers, Willie and James Conway.
I don't know if he likes to be called Willie.
He probably was a will or a William. And they're
in Philly in the nineteen fifties and they were working
for an ice cream machine manufacturer and they said, hey,
(33:37):
you know what, Willie and James look at each other
and they say, we're getting more and more request for
ice cream machines that could be installed in trucks. Huh.
And then they said, there's a problem because our machines
are designed to be stationary, right, They're going into kitchens,
they're going into soda pop counters and stuff like that.
(34:00):
So we have to sort of reverse engineer these injury
riggum and eventually they break down because they're not purposely
they're not designed to be in trucks, and they were
just being bolted to the truck and they didn't have
shock absorbers. They couldn't the machines couldn't stay cool all
the time, right, because let's remember not all these trucks
(34:23):
had air conditioning necessarily, right. And if we're talking about
we're talking about the crank style of ice cream creation, right,
I mean not not not the hand crank style, but
they like the salt style that would make you know,
the scupa bowl kind of ice cream. Yeah. So the
machines here work just fine when they're bolted to the
(34:45):
ground of say a kitchen, but when you're on something
that's rolling, possibly through pretty heated weather, it's going to
mess up. It's taken all sorts of bumps, you know,
along the way. So they said, we need to build
a new kind of truck. It's like that. It's like
the intro to that old TV show The two thousand
Dollars or Bionic Man. What was it called, remember fifth
(35:08):
the ten million dollars ten million dollars Man. They look
at this ice cream truck and they're like, we can build,
rebuild it better, faster, stronger. Think about if you ever
had a dryer where the drying basket or whatever it's
called gets out of balance because of like maybe the
floor's not level or there's a something, it starts to
(35:31):
go good junk good, chunk good, junk good, chunk good.
That's probably what would have happened with these traditional ice
cream machines. If the trucks say, we're going up a slope,
you know, or hit a bump or whatever, So they
really needed to kind of reinvent the wheel, create a
process that could be you know, reliably replicated while on
the go. Yeah, exactly. And the Conways said they went
(35:55):
to their boss. They said, hey, we've got this idea,
and their boss said, Ah, that's a lot of time
and that's a lot of money. I don't know if
it's worth it for us to make these purpose built
ice cream trucks. So the brothers said, we're going to
do it ourselves. And their machine was designed to create
perfectly soft, smooth ice cream, hence the name mister Softy
(36:17):
from the back of a moving truck. And they started
adding more and more trucks to their fleet, and then
they said, hang on, you know what we could be doing.
We could just sell these trucks as franchises. And they
did it for like they were doing Gangbusters business, folks.
From nineteen fifty five to nineteen seventy, mister Softy franchises
(36:40):
grew by three thousand, six hundred percent, which doesn't even
sound like a real number, does it. Yeah. And as
many you know, New Yorkers out there might know who
grew up, you know, around here, mister Softy was kind
of more of a regional affair. It didn't really reach
the same you know, heights in terms of like expansion
(37:01):
that Good Humor did. They kind of stuck to sort
of more of like a territory, right, Yeah, yeah, because
you know, with a franchise, you want to guarantee of
some sort of exclusivity unless your mattress firm. So Good
Humor is still doing their thing, they're doing just fine.
By the nineteen sixties, they have not only expanded their
(37:22):
fleet again, but they have expanded their ice cream, their treats.
They have eighty five different types of ice cream based confections.
But they're starting to think we might not be able
to keep the trucks going forever because in nineteen seventy five,
New York City authorities came calling. They charged Good Humor
(37:44):
with almost two hundred and fifty counts of falsifying records
to cover up evidence of bacteria in their ice cream treats. Wow, yeah,
it was. It's pretty significant too. About ten percent of
all Good Humor ice cream bars sold between nineteen seventy
two and nineteen seventy five were found to have been
(38:08):
tainted by these these these bacteria and products from the
company's Queens, New York factory, according to the authorities, were
quote not securely protected from dirt, dust, insects, parts thereof you,
and from all injurious contamination. Company got hit with an
(38:31):
eighty five grand fine in nineteen seventy something dollars nineteen
seventy five dollars, which was you know, I would I'm
gonna guestimate, Yeah, it would be around maybe two hundred
thousand roughly, so not insane, not like a company, you know,
breaking fine, but you know, not insignificant. And it forced
(38:54):
them and their competition to modernize quality control. It is
a good m of course. Yeah. And they also said, look,
let's go straight to grocery stores. We don't have to
be on the trucks anymore. And you know, reminds me
a little bit of how the dream of a lot
of pop up food operations is to eventually open their
(39:16):
own store. Right. So this seems like a good evolution
for everybody involved. But some of the Good Humor drivers
are die hards, and they say, I'm gonna keep making
my rounds. The most famous, probably guy named Joseph Valardi
in White Plains, New York. He got his Good Humor
truck in nineteen seventy six, and he owned it, and
(39:37):
he kept the same route he'd had since the early
nineteen fifties. And he was so consistent in the town
that when he tragically passed away in twenty twelve, the
town declared August six, twenty twelve, good humor, Joe Day, Oh,
good old good humor. Sounds like he was a good dude.
It does sound like that. And you know it's interesting
(39:57):
now is I mean, there are probably, you know, franchised
ice cream truck operations, but mostly you see them as
being kind of sole proprietors or folks that like, you know,
buy the stuff in bulk, get themselves a truck and
kind of refirm it and create themselves a little ice
cream delivery business. Oh yeah, yeah, And there are some
(40:18):
sketch ice cream trucks out there. You know, there is regulation,
but people get around it sometimes. And we'll get to
some of the sketchier ways that ice cream trucks have
been employed in the modern day. But right now, let's
talk about the the sad fact that ice cream trucks
may be encountering another down period. We don't know if
(40:42):
they're going to go away or if they're going to
bounce back. But according to folks like Steve Christensen, the
executive director of the North American ice Cream Association, the
ice cream truck may be a thing of the past.
It costs more to operate the truck. Gas prices are
growing up, the cost of making ice cream is going up,
and you have to have your permits from the city
(41:05):
or the community to be a vendor. It's just less
and less profitable to operate one of these ice cream
trucks or ice cream vans as they're called in the
United Kingdom. It's true. I mean, we we've we've really
probably seen them more replaced by food trucks, you know,
taco trucks and stuff that often you know, they're not
making the rounds. They're kind of posting up their mobile
(41:27):
and then. But you know that that's also true of
ice cream trucks in more urban settings. You'll see them,
mister softy trucks in New York, for example, at like
street fairs. But they're not just rolling around. They're like
sitting on a particular corner. They go to a lot
of events now, weddings, you know, festivals, get togethers of
any sort, block parties, and that's helpful for them because
then they know they will definitely have customers. It's way
(41:51):
less risky than just rolling through a suburb and hoping
people hear the song. Right. There's also this idea that
ice cream trucks and the in the concept of the
mobile refrigeration unit really launched a thousand carts. You know,
because Harry Burt with his idea of bringing the treats
(42:14):
to the people. Uh, he probably inspired the food truck industry, right,
like to that point. You know, food trucks are carrying
all kinds of crazy stuff, some of its very very
high end as well. And the idea of combining the convenience,
the mobility, the instant gratification, it's all. It's all very
(42:36):
very American, which means there's a there's a dark side. Yeah,
there's a bit of a dark side. Let's talk about
let's talk about some of those those things, huh, because
not trucks are necessarily selling ice cream, and then I know.
The San Jose Mercury News on August twenty six, two eighteen,
(42:57):
reported story about quote, two men arrested in North Long
Beach over the weekend on suspicion of dealing drugs out
of an ice cream truck after detectives found methamphetamine, marijuana,
and a revolver in the vehicle. Yeah, that's not your
typical good humor menu. We also we also know that Max,
(43:20):
you found this one. Earlier this year, March of twenty
twenty three, New Orleans police arrested a woman and impounded
her ice cream truck because it was carrying meth and
ice Cream trucks have been used in the past and
probably will be used again in the future as a
drug distribution front. However, that front is becoming less and
(43:43):
less viable because there are fewer and fewer actual ice
cream trucks out there. Right, They can't really blend in anymore,
can they? Right? Yeah, they stick out. You know what
they need to do is use uber I guess I
guess so. But but okay, So we started with the music,
how about we, there, guys, the classic ice cream jingle.
(44:06):
As you pointed out at the top, there are various
iterations of this, various different songs, each of which has
become kind of iconic. But it turns out the ice
cream jingle itself is influenced by some dark, dark things
in America's past. You know, it's funny, of all the
ones that we named at the top of the show,
(44:26):
this was not the one that we came to. It
is because it's sort of an amalgam of different sort
of popular tunes. But the classic ice cream truck jingle
really is based off a nineteenth century folk song called
Turkey and the Straw, which was itself based on an
even older British folk tune called the Old Rose Tree.
(44:47):
And like many things in the eighteen hundreds, it was
sort of revamped to have a overtly racist message and
incorporated into a lot of the traveling minstrel shows that
we know and despise. Yeah, and this is something that
a lot of people didn't know, and they wouldn't be
(45:09):
so excited about the song if they knew its full history.
And you know, we don't have any evidence that the
ice cream men of ages past were super duper neo
Nazis or something. They were just going for a song
that was very familiar to everyone, and Good Humor wanted
to make this right. They wanted to change things, so
(45:30):
they did something that I love. Yeah. Yeah, they they
talked with Rizza, the legendary Yeah, the producer behind WU
Tang's most massive hits, the legendary Rapper, and they came
to Rizza and they gave him a pitch that I
just know Riza must have loved. They said, Hey, we
found out the ice cream song is racist. Can you
(45:53):
help us make a new ice cream truck jingle? And
he did because he's a cool guy. And now this
song is available to drivers across the country for free. Boom.
I want to sample it. I've not heard of this
until we until Max's research on the topic, so I
want to look into that a little bit myself. Ben,
thank you for taking this ice cream truck ride with
(46:15):
us today. Is that what you call it? Yeah? Thank
you for riding with us the weird ice cream truck
that is our podcast Ridiculous History. Thanks also to super
producer mister Max Williams. Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed
the jingle that we use every time we do this show.
Who else? Who else? Oh Man Jonathan Strickland, the quister who,
(46:37):
by the way, gave me a fabulous Broadway show recommendation
that I think he mentioned to you as well when
we were playing miniature golf with him at the Peter
Pan Mini Golf course in Austin day and I went
and saw Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which is a Monty
Python esque kind of send up of the popular Peter
Pan the musical where literally everything goes wrong. So thanks,
(47:00):
thank you Quister for your your nefarious recommendation of a
Broadway show. Thank you also to Christop Raciotis. Thank you
to Eaves, Jeff Coach, thanks for a pal. Gabe Louisier,
who started as a research associate here now as his
own show This Day in History Class. Do check it out.
And I can't wait to hear what jingle is gonna play.
(47:22):
I know Max will do something Jingle Jangle, Morning Baby.
Let's see you next time. For more podcasts from my
(47:52):
Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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The Bobby Bones Show
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