Grim Reviews gives Lovecraft an early birthday present by imagining a new ice-cream…

Ice cream was one of Lovecraft’s few real pleasures, along with cats and walking and looking at buildings — the small cheap or free pleasures of genteel poverty. It’s also perhaps another example of Lovecraft being subtly attracted to that which he feared — he was fearful of fainting in cold weather, but loved ice-cream.

It seems that, in Lovecraft’s time, the ice-cream trade was a fairly new thing. At least in its safe and modern form. The U.S. Association of Ice Cream Men had only been formed in 1917, following health regulations which standardised production and made eating it less likely to give one the runs. The popsicle was first invented in 1920. The first ice-cream pot-filling machines were sold in 1920, and the first automatic electric freezer was sold in 1923. So Lovecraft really was on the cusp of the commercial ice-cream revolution. The first dedicated ice-cream freezer wasn’t even on the market until 1926.

Interestingly for a horror writer, ice cream is remarkably similar (at least, when you say it with a mouthful of chocolate & vanilla) to “I scream”. Apparently Lovecraft would have heard the phrase “I Scream for Ice Cream!” from those selling it on the streets of New York. I think it was sold by young lads on tricycles with an ice-box on the front, before the advent of the big ice-cream vans in the 1950s?

The birthday is on 20th August, O Creative Ones Who Wish To Celebrate — when Lovecraft would have been 121.