It's hot...really freaking hot...so damned hot...
Fortunately, I have air conditioning and never have to leave my house.
Except when I hear the sweet melodious sounds of the Mister Softee truck.
Mmmmm...butterscotch-dipped cone with jimmies.
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I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream…: Americans love ice cream. According to the International Dairy Foods Association website, 1.6 billion gallons of ice cream were produced in 2004 and it’s “enjoyed by a full 90% of the nation’s population.” President Ronald Reagan designated July as “national ice cream month” in 1984, so it’s a perfect time for a banana split. Mmmmm….banana split…but when it’s so humid and sticky outside, who wants to get up out of the hammock and drive all the way to Baskin-Robbins? Listen closely…hear that? It’s the carousel sounds of the ice cream truck rolling down the block, so bribe your kid with a free dip cone to bring dessert back to you. The ice cream truck (or van, throughout Europe) evolved from “hokey-pokey” men, Italian immigrants who roamed the streets ringing a bell and delivering frozen treats from carts propelled by hand, horse, bicycle or electricity.
Keep on Truckin’: In America, ice cream trucks are typically owned and operated as a franchise of a manufacturer that sells the goodies wholesale to the driver (we won’t mention that it often leads to violent turf wars among men peddling Popsicles). It wasn’t that way in 1920 when Harry Burt of Youngstown, Ohio sent 12 chauffeur-driven trucks outfitted with bells into family neighborhoods to sell his new chocolate-coated- vanilla-ice-cream-on-a- stick delicacy. The “Good Humor Men” –-all decked out in white suits and bow ties,-- were operating 200 trucks by 1961 before the company-owned vehicles stop bringing joy in the mid-1970’s.
Nothing but a Big Softee: Ice cream truck franchises remain popular summertime investments, however, and one of the entrepreneurial icons is good ole’ Mister Softee. Started by brothers William and James Conway in Philadelphia, PA. on St. Paddy’s Day, 1956 (they gave away free green ice cream), Mister Softee now has 600 trucks in 15 states and its own theme song. That repetitive circusy clown car music that gets embedded in your brain every summer is an actual tune complete with lyrics that manage to mention the company seven times in nine lines. Maestro, cue the jack-in-the-box jingle. Everybody now, “Lis-ten for my store on wheels ding-a-ling down the street, the cream-i-est, dream-i-est, soft ice cream you get from Mis-ter Soft-ee…”
(Illustration by Julia Rothman.)
(City, July 2006)
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