Yeah, it's almost September, but still, let's hear it for the Good Humor Man!

It's the Good Humor Man, c1950 -- practically a religious figure, or maybe a better-than-religious figure, depending on your perspective.

by Ken

Like the good folks at Inside the Apple, with their "Postcard Thursday," the folks at the Brooklyn Historical Society send out a weekly photo, in their case drawing on the august BHS photo archives. And while it seems as if there were some mighty hot times over the last couple of months when we could more specifically have thrilled to the magic of ice cream, in these precincts ice cream is something like a free pass -- it's good for anything and everything. And, as it happens, in my childhood the Good Humor Man was just this side of a religious icon. Actually, if I'd had the temerity then to feel about religion the way I've come to feel about, I would have rated the Good Humor Man a better-than-divine figure.

Come on, if you could shake some money out of your parents, the Good Humor Man gave you ice cream.

Here's BHS digitalization associate Tess Colwell on this week's photo:

I rarely see an ice cream truck around Brooklyn that isn’t Mr. Softee, so it was a pleasant surprise to come across this photograph from the Harry Kalmus collection. In this photo of the week, children are getting ice cream from a Good Humor truck, sometime around 1950. I love the moment in this photograph—all the children lined up along the curb with ice cream in hand, and one child carefully deciding from the list of options pictured on the truck.

This photograph comes from the Harry Kalmus photographs collection that features over 13,000 photographs taken by Kalmus from 1938-1987. Kalmus was a long time Brooklynite and professional photographer, documenting primarily weddings and bar mitzvahs in Brooklyn. Most of Kalmus’s photographs are not digitized, but if you visit the Othmer Library, you can see our online catalogue that showcases thousands of his photographs.

Visit the BHS website here.

The ice cream truck is not just for kids!

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