Perhaps the younger generations don’t recall the phrase “You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream,” but most of us do. Today, ice cream is ubiquitous and you can pick up whatever flavor you like just about anywhere. You can even pick up some that I don’t know how anybody likes – like some with turmeric and other things that are supposed to be good for you. How they taste is another matter. The Blond and I are from the generation that recalls if you wanted a bunch of different flavors your best bet was to find a Howard Johnson’s. As a kid, it was rather easy as all you had to do was get on the Pennsylvania Turnpike as all the restaurants were Howard Johnson’s.
Ice cream has been around for centuries, but it’s easier to get now. Back in the 1800’s New York City Vendors used to sell a Neapolitan like product called hokey pokeys or penny licks. We all know that hokey pokeys became a dance where you stuck your right foot out and shook it all about. Folks did the same thing with the left foot – after they put the right one down, of course. It was good exercise! However, as an ice cream dish along with the penny lick, someone savoring such a dish would hand a vendor a penny. He/she would receive a glass dish with ice cream which he/she would lick clean. The dish would be given back to the vendor who would swirl the dish in water so it could be used for the next patron. Things were so much simpler back in the real old days.
Then someone got the idea of taking ice cream to the public. A gentleman by the name of Harry Burt in 1920 who lived in Youngstown, Ohio froze ice cream with a chocolate covering on a stick. He called it a Good Humor Bar. This also went over big – and you didn’t have to give back the stick for the next customer either. Harry decided after inventing the Good Humor Bar to have a truck take the bars around with a bell ringing to attract folks. Naturally other people jumped on the bandwagon and someone invented a method to play music as the trucks went around the neighborhoods. The first big tune was “Stodak Pumpa” which I imagine some people can whistle even today. Apparently, 43 different songs were used to attract the ice cream hungry folks. I doubt that anyone recalls them all – unless they ate a lot of ice cream from trucks over several years.
Now when I was a small lad there was a store called Vengold’s where you could get a cone provided you liked either vanilla or chocolate. It was the same if you wanted a milkshake. A chocolate shake was made with chocolate milk, and a vanilla one used regular milk. Then the town took a step forward when someone opened an Isalys’. They not only had more flavors, but they had special dipping scoops that turned the cone into the shape of a pine tree. There was no pine, but the ice cream was great. However, Isalys’ also took on the Good Humor Bar and the Eskimo Pie bar when they produced the Klondike. You can buy its chocolate covered goodness at just about any supermarket even today. Not at Isalys’ though as they have passed on into the fond remembrance stage.
It is my hope that after reading this that not too many people put on weight!
Barry Evans is a columnist for Villages-News.com.
