A nostalgic look at the sweet sound of summer—and the Kansas City invention that made it even cooler

It’s like a dream. You’re playing with your friends, running around someone’s backyard on a perfect summer day. The sun gives life. The grass is soft. Suddenly, you hear a sound. The synthesized chimes of “The Entertainer,” perhaps, or “Pop Goes The Weasel” come wafting through the warm, thick air. Sheer joy strikes. A Pavlovian reaction. The ice cream man cometh. 

They are, after all, the first food truck. Way back in the 1920s, long before we bought bespoke shawarma or Korean barbeque from restaurants on wheels, Harry Burt of Youngstown, Ohio, was among the first to sell ice cream from a truck.

The story goes that Burt’s daughter, Ruth, thought the then-new (and problematically named) Eskimo Pie was too messy. Burt’s son suggested using a wooden stick as a handle. Genius. Suddenly, kids could eat ice cream without getting sticky fingers. Burt, seeing opportunity, outfitted 12 street vending trucks with rudimentary freezers to sell the new confection. Soon to be known as the Good Humor Bar, sold by the Good Humor Man, the business would become iconic for drivers in crisp, all-white uniforms.

Those earliest trucks, however, were not like the ones we see today. They were modified Ford Model Ts, more like pickups with bed-mounted refrigeration units. To make a sale, the driver had to step out of the cab and walk to the back of the truck. 

The ice cream truck as we know it—the converted step van selling from a side window—owes much of its popularity to Mister Softee. Founded in 1956 by the Conway brothers in Philadelphia, Mister Softee also gave us the music box jingle as a way to announce the trucks’ presence. (Good Humor famously used bells.) Their famed jingle even figured as plot point in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. 

Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t the only example of ice cream trucks in pop culture. “Ice Cream Man,” a double entendre-filled blues tune written by John Brim in 1953, was famously recorded by Van Halen on their debut record. In Nice Dreams, the 1981 Cheech and Chong film, the boys sell more than just ice cream from a van. 

While the ice cream truck has its place in our childhoods and pop culture, our own City of Fountains was pivotal in creating one of the most iconic treats to ever be served from an ice cream truck: the red, white and blue Bomb Pop. Born right here in Kansas City, the Bomb Pop was created in 1955 by a pair of local inventors at the Merritt Foods plant during the height of the Cold War. It was more than just a frozen treat. It was patriotic branding on a stick.

Today, ice cream trucks are rare, probably because suburbs don’t have the population density to support them. Air conditioning hurts, too. People now stay inside when it’s hot. And grocery stores carry the Creamsicles and Choco Tacos that were once available only on the street. 

But grocery stores don’t have magic. Ice cream trucks are not just Pavlovian, but Proustian, too; the sound, colors and taste create an indelible sensory memory. To see one is to recall those moments of childhood purity and innocence—a time when the biggest problem in your life was dropping a Bomb Pop or having chocolate on your face. You can’t buy magic like that at the store.

The post A nostalgic look at the sweet sound of summer—and the Kansas City invention that made it even cooler appeared first on Kansas City Magazine.