Good Humor, Part 4

Now, why would a lovely teenage girl with a delicious Good Humor be staring angrily at her friendly Good Humor Man?

I don’t know. I’m just putting the question out there.

The two of them look like they want to punch each other. And surely fistfights were a rare thing in proximity to Good Humor trucks.

That’s not a movie still. It’s some kind of news or promotional photo. If only we had a caption; something like “Even Juvenile Delinquents love Good Humors” would explain things.

Of course, if this was Glasgow instead of suburban America, and it was the 1980’s instead of the 1940’s, we’d know that the Glasgow Ice Cream Truck Turf Wars were to blame. But this probably does not represent a drug deal gone bad.

More likely, the teen-ager is simply fed up with all the damn advice the Good Humor Man is dispensing with his ice cream.

I’m guessing that The Good Humor Safety Club, which issued the pinbacks at right, was created in response to ice cream truck-related injuries and deaths. It’s a battle that’s still being fought: there’s a vocal group of anti-ice cream truck people out there who want to banish this already-vanishing summer tradition.

And not all of them are concerned about the potential for accidents. Some of them just hate the music, like the grouches in Vancouver, who don’t seem to realize that “…the chimes are the only way we have of knowing that the the [sic] ice cream man is in the neighbourhood.”

The petition suggests that the silent majority have no objection to the chimes and that the bylaw changes suggested by the city council would “…put us out of business!”

Doubtless they are supported in this assertion by industry rags like The National Dipper, the magazine for frozen dessert retailers, and the “strong united voice” of The International Association of Ice Cream Vendors.

But I beg to differ.

Good Humor once provided, to any customer who made a request, a giant placard sporting a huge letter “G.”

All you’d have to do would be to place the placard in the window of your home, and your friendly local Good Humor man would know to stop and stock your home freezer. (Few of these placards have survived, which explains why the IAICV is ignorant of this alternate business model… and why the example shown here looks kinda grungy).

But wait. If we put the industry back on the placard business model, we would lose those lovely chimes!

No.

In fact, if you want to hear ice cream music, you have other options. You can listen to ice cream music 24/7, if that’s your desire, thanks to a couple of CD’s that push the musical genre beyond its traditional limits.

Songs for Ice Cream Trucks is a CD released this year – that would be 2007 – by a very talented guy named Michael Hearst. Here’s the solution for all of those disgruntled people in Vancouver: buy this CD, and then… don’t play it.

I love this CD and highly recommend it, but then again, I’ve been writing about ice cream trucks for four days. But there’s at least one person out there as interested as I am. Check out the trailer for the documentary! (Thanks, MH!)

Actually, make that two, because we’ve also got the incredible music of John Charles Alder, who has released Ice Cream Truckin’, another CD of tunes (many of them using toy piano) that would sound just great anywhere. Even in Vancouver. His band is called Twink, and I also recommend checking out Broken Record, another Twink CD that samples old kiddie records in wonderful and hilarious ways.

You can listen to samples from each CD at the respective sites linked above.

If you want to watch ice cream trucks, rather than just listen, you have to hope that The Good Humor Man is released to DVD sometime soon. It’s a wild live-action cartoon from Frank Tashlin, the man who first won our hearts with his fabulous Porky Pig shorts of the late 1930’s.

Are Good Humor trucks dangerous places? Watch what happens to Jack Carson.