Set during the Great Depression, the narrator describes his grandfather as a radical anarchist "without a bomb." While his mother works at Snow-White Laundry, the narrator listens to his grandfather and other men talk politics on the family's porch on Monday nights. On other evenings, he and his mother read from The American Speaker book. He is under the impression that his grandfather dislikes him and his mother. One day, he catches his grandfather snarling at his mother, living with her head in the clouds, and defensively yells back at his grandfather. His father then loses his job at the glass factory and tries selling groceries soon after with little success. To help out, the narrator decides to sell ice cream to the workers at Snow White Laundry. After picking up the ice cream in bulk, the narrator enters the Laundry and nervously makes his first sales pitch. The workers are not interested, so his mother becomes his first customer. Chaos ensues when a worker named Pearl buys an Eskimo Pie and gets her arm stuck in a shirt-pressing machine. Pearl screams, people try to help, and the narrator’s mother sends the narrator home. Unable to think clearly and unwilling to run into his grandfather, the narrator wanders around the nearby playfield and lets his Eskimo Pies out in the sun to melt. Later, at home, the narrator's family has a tense supper, and he cannot concentrate on his mother's reading from her book.