That old law about no ice cream in your back pocket in Kentucky... I laughed until I actually tried it.

Honestly, I thought that law was just a joke, but last summer my buddy dared me to walk around downtown Louisville with a cone in my back pocket. I lasted maybe 10 minutes before a cop actually came up and told me to take it out, citing the old ordinance as a 'public nuisance' thing from the 1800s. I learned that weird laws often have a real reason behind them, even if they sound silly now. You guys ever get caught doing something you thought was totally legal?

3 comments

3 Comments

samflores15d agoMost Upvoted

I read an article from the Louisville Courier-Journal archives that said that ice cream back then was like a whole status symbol. Apparently in the 1880s, a single scoop could cost more than a day's wages for a factory worker. So yeah, people using it to bribe politicians or even to get a horse to stay still while they stole it makes total sense when you think about it that way. It's wild how something as simple as a cone in your pocket connects back to a time when ice cream was basically a bribe tool. Sounds like you got the modern version of that same old problem.

lily5716d ago

that article @nguyen.angela mentioned about bribes and vote buying makes so much sense the more i think about it. ice cream back then was a big deal, like super expensive and rare, so of course people would use it to get what they wanted. the horse theft thing is even crazier though, i never would have connected that to a back pocket law. it really shows how those old laws stick around even after the original problem is gone, just sitting there waiting for someone to accidentally break it.

nguyen.angela16d ago

I was actually just reading a whole article about this the other day. It turns out a bunch of those old weird laws about ice cream were aimed at stopping people from using it as a bribe or a way to buy votes back in the late 1800s, since it was a luxury item. The back pocket thing supposedly came from horse thefts where they'd use the ice cream to distract the animal while they stole it, which sounds wild but makes some kind of twisted sense. So yeah, it's not like you're getting thrown in jail, but apparently local cops have to enforce it if someone complains.