"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.
By the end of the 1920s, Good Humor settled on its signature vehicle: a gleaming white pickup truck outfitted with a refrigeration unit. Burt’s mobile freezers offered a sanitary alternative to the street ice cream sold from pushcarts, a number of which had been the source of food poisoning and were known to peddle fare of dubious quality. An 1878 article in the Confectioners’ Journal complained that street ice cream was “apt to be adulterated with ingredients which sacrifice health to cheapness.” To assuage consumer concerns, Good Humor had its drivers (all men, until 1967) dress in crisp, white uniforms reminiscent of those worn by hospital orderlies. And of course the men were taught to tip their caps to the ladies.