(Roughly) Daily

Under the general heading of once and (we hope) future pleasures…

Delicious, but too messy to handle,” was how Ruth Burt described the new ice cream treat her father, Harry Burt, concocted in 1920—a brick of vanilla ice cream encased in chocolate. So her brother, Harry Jr., offered a suggestion: Why not give it a handle? The idea was hardly revolutionary in the world of sweets, of course. Harry Burt Sr. himself, a confectioner based in Youngstown, Ohio, had previously developed what he called the Jolly Boy, a hard-candy lollipop on a wooden stick. But ice cream on a stick was so novel that the process of making it earned Burt two U.S. patents, thus launching his invention, the Good Humor bar, into an epic battle against the previously developed I Scream bar, a.k.a. the Eskimo Pie, a worthy rival to this day.

Burt’s contribution to the culture was bigger than a sliver of wood. When he became the first ice cream vendor to move from pushcarts to motorized trucks, giving his salesmen the freedom to roam the streets, his firm greatly expanded his business (and those of his many imitators) and would change how countless Americans eat—and how they experience summer…

As innovations go, the Good Humor vehicle is as sweet as it gets: “How the Ice Cream Truck Made Summer Cool.”

* Wallace Stevens, “The Emperor of Ice Cream”

###

As we hit the road, we might recall that it was on this date in 1936 that Carl Mayer, Oscar’s nephew, created the first Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.  There is now a fleet of six traversing the nation.

source