The long, hot summer of 1968, between my freshman and sophomore years of college, was my last living at home with my family in West Hartford, Connecticut. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
By then, the cultural gap between a child of the sixties—yours truly—and my parents, two Jewish survivors of the Depression and World War II, was glaring. When I returned from my freshman year, my long hair sparked conflict. I wasn't alone; many fellow baby boomers were experiencing similar clashes.
My parents dreamed I’d become a doctor or lawyer, the classic aspirations of Jewish families, and were concerned about my decision to pursue filmmaking. "How are you going to make a living?" became a daily refrain in the Primack household. Truthfully, I had no clear plan for finding work in film or television, but my passion for creativity was surging, and having fallen in love with filmmaking a few years earlier, I was certain it was my path.
In my late teens, I thought I had all the answers. I had no idea just how much I didn't know. I was anxious to escape suburbia and spend my life making movies in New York or LA. NYU Film School, one of the top programs at the time, seemed the perfect place to learn the fundamentals and network with other budding filmmakers. But first, I had to survive the summer. Lacking marketable skills, I must have applied for twenty different jobs. A friend who was a jazz DJ on a local radio station set up an audition for me. Working in radio would have been fantastic, but I had no idea what I was doing and didn’t get called back for an interview.
The only job I could find was as a Good Humor man. Wearing a white uniform and hat, I became a driver and vendor of their ice cream products, sold from specially equipped trucks. Good Humor was a well-known American brand of ice cream, famous for its ice cream bars on a stick.
As the Good Humor man, I drove through various neighborhoods, ringing a distinctive bell to attract customers, particularly children eager for treats. To children, I was a hero; to their parents, especially if I drove through their neighbordhood around dinner time, I was greeted with scorn.
My route covered a mix of suburbs, lakefront towns, and tobacco farms staffed by migrant Puerto Ricans. The work was enjoyable—driving and selling ice cream to happy children wasn’t hard—but it was a twelve-hour day. Nevertheless, I was glad to be making spending money for college and get out of the house.
I’ve always loved ice cream and eating whatever I wanted turned out to be a real perk. I’d start the day with a plain vanilla cup, continued with a Toasted Almond bar a few hours later, then a late afternoon Orange Vanilla Creamsicle, and finally, an after dinner Banana Split Sundae Supreme.
Covering diverse neighborhoods, I encountered various economic situations. One working-class neighborhood with tough kids was challenging. While I was driving, these early teens would climb on the truck and open the back freezer door, tossing out popsicles and ice cream bars to their bike-riding friends following the truck.
Whenever I discovered their theft, I’d stop the truck, and within seconds they’d disappear, only to wave at me from a distance. One day, I caught them in the act and, before they got away, I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Who stole my money?" That stopped them cold. I ranted about a hundred dollars in bills and change in a paper bag that was missing. Suddenly, they were my best friends, helping me search for the nonexistent money. After that, they were more respectful, concerned about my fake loss.
The most interesting customers were the Puerto Ricans working on the tobacco farms near the Massachusetts border. They spoke no English but somehow, with my rudimentary high school Spanish, we communicated. Tobacco farming was grueling, especially during a hot, humid summer. Even so, their enthusiasm and joyful nature were a welcome relief from suburban monotony.
After long days on the road, I’d hang out with newfound friends at the depot. By then, there were two groups: the straight kids and the freaks, or hippies, as the media called us. I tried cannabis a few times during my freshman year but rarely got high. Of course that changed dramatically the next year when I became a real cannabis enthusiast and began experimenting with hallucinogenics.
I fondly remember my first LSD trip that fall. I’d heard so much about acid and its effects, as illuminated by Dr. Timothy Leary and the Roger Corman film "The Trip." I couldn’t wait to try it, and in my NYU dorm, the Brittany, a former hotel on 55 East Tenth Street, there was no shortage of opportunities. One night,I had a ticket for a concert at the Fillmore that Friday night, featuring Richie Havens, Rick Derringer, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service. That seemed like the perfect setting for my first trip.
My friend Jim dropped the acid first so I could observe what might happen, and half an hour later, I joined him. Before the concert, we decided to get something to eat at Chock Full of Nuts, whose hot dogs were served with mustard and relish in tiny paper containers. Jim started laughing uncontrollably at the sight of the mustard and relish, drawing stares from others. Then the acid started to kick in, and I noticed a building change in my sensory responses. When I looked down at the relish, there seemed to be tiny eyes in there staring back at me. My first halucination! At the Fillmore, in the lobby, I couldn’t distinguish men from women; their faces seemed a blend of both sexes.
The music was fantastic and the last group, Quicksilver Messenger Service, recorded their performance that night. Much of it was later released on their album "Happy Trails."
Of course, all the drugs I found so interesting were illegal. One night after my shift at Good Humor, at the suggestion of some high school buddies, I bought some low-grade weed for $15 a lid from a fellow Good Humor man who did a little dealing on the side.
On the way to a friend’s house to sample my purchase, we crossed a bridge and were stopped by the Connecticut State Police for a routine inspection. My friend, whose grandfather was a Ford dealer, was driving a Thunderbird convertible. The police looked us over, and my heart was pounding. The idea of getting busted for possession was terrifying. I was holding the marijuana in a paper bag on my lap. Oh my God.
But it wasn’t my time. Even though my friend couldn’t find the car’s registration or insurance card, the state policeman, seeing a long line of cars behind us, decided to let us go.
What a relief. But a few days later, I wasn’t so lucky when I had another unexpected run-in with the cops.
One afternoon, I made a wrong turn and, unbeknownst to me, had driven over the Connecticut-Massachusetts border into a well-heeled suburb, Longmeadow, Massachusetts. While I tried to figure out where I was going, a group of kids, delighted to see me, stopped the truck. Of course, I had to sell them the ice cream they wanted. That was my job.
In the middle of the transaction, a police car pulled up. I thought he was there to buy ice cream.
“Can I see your vending permit?”
“My vending permit?”
“Are you licensed to sell ice cream in the state of Massachusetts?”
“No. I’m a little lost. I’m from Connecticut.”
“Well, you’re under arrest.”
“For what?”
“For selling ice cream without a license.”
Talk about an attitude. You’d think I’d assassinated the Pope or something. This was obviously a culture clash—me being the hippy, the policeman a lifer who thought all teenagers were juvenile delinquents. But for whatever reason, he didn’t search my truck. The only thing I was holding was ice cream and at that time, possession of ice cream was not a crime. (However, the way things are going in the United States, that might soon change.)
He wrote me a ticket and told me to report to court the following Monday. Rather than jail me until then, he explained that since my crime wasn’t a felony, I was free to go. But if I didn’t show up in court, there would be a warrant for my arrest and I would certainly go to jail. Really?
When I got back to the depot and reported the incident, the company manager was livid. He screamed at me so angrily, I thought he was going to have a heart attack.
“You goddamn hippies, you don’t know the difference between right and wrong. Most of you probably haven’t showered in weeks.”
My “associates” found this quite funny and could barely contain their laughter. The idea of getting busted for selling ice cream without a license was rather amusing. But I still had to go to court, and my manager insisted I cut my hair before my appearance. That was upsetting.
In court, the district attorney told the judge that although I didn’t have a previous record, I was obviously a troubled rebel. According to the DA, this was clearly an act of revolt against the establishment. I had obviously made some very poor choices that would probably put me on the road to incarceration sooner or later.
Of course the only wrong choice I made was turning right instead of left at the border.
The judge looked at me, shook his head, and my punishment was a $150 fine, which the Good Humor company paid. Back in 1969, that was a rather hefty sum, equivalent to around $1,500 today.
As we returned to the depot for another day of Good Humoring, my manager was still fuming.
“I certainly hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
“Lesson?”
“You’re lucky to still have a job.”
“Thank you, sir. I won’t do it again.”
A few weeks later, I went back to NYU, happy to live in Manhattan amongst “my people.”
The next summer, I went to Woodstock. The summer after that, in 1970, I hitchhiked from New York to San Francisco.
A state trooper stopped me in Colorado and said, “I don’t care if you’re Johnny Cash or Tiny Tim, you can’t hitchhike in the state of Colorado.” But after he drove away, I did just that. I certainly wasn’t going to walk to California from the middle of Colorado.
I did have shoulder-length hair for a few years back then but in my early twenties, I started to lose my hair, which I expected since my father and grandfathers were all bald Jews.
Somewhere in some file, now digital, I still have a police record in the great state of Massachusetts for selling ice cream without a license.
The Good Humor criminal! Never heard this one before. Fantastic story straight from the crypt.
Good to know that you have not lost your good humor!
H the M
That's a dilly! No, a Dilly Bar! No, that's Carvel. At last, I'm on the right track....
I've always thought an oral history of great drug experiences, good and bad, would be enjoyable for those of us who haven't repressed their memories of fun times of long ago. I have many!