Monday, January 11, 2021

Warning: Childhood memories ahead

 

A '39 Chevy, close to my memory.
Author's note: be sure to stay for the ending in which my friend Joe May recalls his family's history in the ice business of the Great Lakes,
    
I love the noon hour on National Public Radio. First you get a quick review of national news, then local news, announcements and some other local stuff. The second half hour is usually filled out with two or three short pieces on various subjects like science, history, literature, or a myriad of other subjects. Garrison Keillor used to read a poem during that half hour.

            Today a historian went into a talk about the development of cold storage from the Pilgrims observing Native Americans cutting blocks of ice from ponds to preserve their food to the 20s and 30s when an ice-block industry sprang up in the United States. In those days the main storage for perishables in the home was an ice box. They were shaped generally like refrigerators today with one difference. Where today the upper section is the freezer portion, that compartment then held a block of ice. You had to go to an ice house every so often to buy a new block, or I believe there were delivery services as well.

     

Some ice houses were huge. This one was in
Denver.

Those trips to the ice house have been etched into my mind. When we did that, I couldn’t have been more than 5 years old but I remember those trips vividly. We had a pre-war Chevrolet four-door, black, with running boards and fenders. We had to drive quite a way or so I recall; distances seem to change with age. How I remember this, I have no idea, but we drove most of the way on the Humboldt Parkway from Kenmore south into Buffalo in New York State.

     The ice house as I recall was a huge square building maybe two stories high but only had one floor.
Inside blocks of ice in piles rose to the ceiling in some parts, other parts were being filled or emptied, I guess depending on how long the ice had been there. Workers using tongs moved the blocks around as needed, for instance, bringing one to our car. Hunting season made the trips more exciting. In addition to all the ice, deer carcasses dangled from the ceiling, apparently draining and being preserved until they could be butchered. I wonder now if there might have been deer blood in that precious ice we bought.

     With the purchase made, the workers strapped the block of ice to the Chevy’s running board and off we went. Now, Humboldt Parkway had an interesting construction. To begin with there was a wide median that held large trees. More fun for me was where the side streets entered, they had crowns in the center and those extended out into the parkway at intersections. They made for serious bumps which were wonderful things to a 4-year-old boy who almost flew out of his seat when the car lurched over them. Of course, my father hated those bumps. I suspect he may have lost a block of ice to one at some time or other.

Raggedy Andy


    Another recollection from that time was something I lost on one of those trips. I can admit this now: at 78 I have no one I need to impress with my manhood anymore. I had a doll. It was a Raggedy Andy. I suppose there was a Raggedy Ann around too, but I only wanted Andy. He went everywhere with me until one day after we arrived home from the ice house, Andy had disappeared. We searched everywhere; my father even drove a little way back. But we never saw Andy again. I don’t recall how I suffered the loss or how long that lasted, but in time I forgot about it. At that age new things come along almost daily. There was one aspect of that time that lingered a whole lot longer than the memory of the missing Andy. I don’t think my parents stopped calling refrigerators “the ice box” until well into the 1950s.



Joe May's family has a history in the ice business

     Icehouse: Mid 1800's my great grandfather immigrated from Sweden/Norway to Chicago. He found work with a company that sent him north to western Wisconsin near Green Bay. He homesteaded a wooded peninsula on the water and set up a sawmill, a great log icehouse, a deep-water dock to accommodate the company sailing ships that plied Lake Michigan and supplied Chicago with timber, horse hay, etc.

Gram, she was gone
before I was born.
     In summer they sawed lumber for export to Chicago and in winter sawed (by hand) big blocks of ice from the bay, skidded it up to the icehouse, and layered it in sawdust saved from the summer sawing. In spring, after ice-out, the ships would come in, load the hold with ice and more sawdust, and the deck with a cargo of lumber. A half dozen live-in hired men made it a beehive of industry with a bunkhouse with an enormous dining room table (old growth oak).

   
 He married a local belle, built her a magnificent three story house of old growth hardwoods and painted it snow white. It stands yet on "Gustafson's Point" near Green Bay. Grampa Gustafson died the year after I was born but I clearly remember a childhood playing in the old icehouse, on the rickety dock, and in the dilapidated warehouse with my red-headed cousins.

Treasured memories here...thanks, Tim.

— Joe May

1 comment:

  1. My mother called it the icebox her whole life, and told me stories of ice delivery. Her family was the first in her little Iowa town to get an electric model and she hated her chore of cleaning the coil atop the thing. Have to admit, I still occasionally say icebox myself. DawnB

    ReplyDelete

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Memorable quotations

The best way to know you are having an adventure is when you wish you were home talking about it." — a mechanic on the Alaska State Ferry System. Or as in my own case planning how I will be writing it on this blog.

"You can't promote principled anti-corruption without pissing off corrupt people." — George Kent

"If only the British had held on to the airports, the whole thing might have gone differently for us." — Mick Jagger

"You can do anything as long as you don't scare the horses." — a mother's favorite saying recalled by a friend

A poem is an egg with a horse inside” — anonymous fourth grader

“My children will likely turn my picture to the wall but what the hell, you only get old once." — Joe May

“Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” — Ernest Hemingway

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth. Kurt Vonnegut

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”Stephen King

The thing about ignorance is, you don't have to remain ignorant. — me again"

"It was like the aftermath of an orgasm with the wrong partner." – David Lagercrants “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”

Why worry about dying, you aren't going to live to regret it.

Never debate with someone who gets ink by the barrel" — George Hayes, former Alaska Attorney General who died recently

My dear Mr. Frost: two roads never diverge in a yellow wood. Three roads meet there. — @Shakespeare on Twitter

Normal is how somebody else thinks you should act.

"The mark of a great shiphandler is never getting into situations that require great shiphandling," Adm. Ernest King, USN

Me: Does the restaurant have cute waitresses?

My friend Gail: All waitresses are cute when you're hungry.

I'm not a writer, but sometimes I push around words to see what happens. – Scott Berry

I realized today how many of my stories start out "years ago." What's next? Once upon a time?"

“The rivers of Alaska are strewn with the bones of men who made but one mistake” - Fred McGarry, a Nushagak Trapper

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stared at walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing. – Meg Chittenden

A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity. – Franz Kafka

We are all immortal until the one day we are not. – me again

If the muse is late, start without her – Peter S. Beagle

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain Actually you could do the same thing with the word "really" as in "really cold."

If you are looking for an experience that will temper your vanity, this is it. There's no one to impress when you're alone on the trap line. – Michael Carey quoting his father's journal

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. – Benjamin Franklin

It’s nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of. – Shirley Hazzard

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence -- Bertrand Russell

You know that I always just wanted to have a small ship to take stuff from a place that had a lot of that stuff to a place that did not have a lot of that stuff and so prosper.—Jackie Faber, “The Wake of the Lorelei Lee”

If you attack the arguer instead of the argument, you lose both

If an insurance company won’t pay for damages caused by an “act of God,” shouldn’t it then have to prove the existence of God? – I said that

I used to think getting old was about vanity—but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial. – Eugene O’Neill

German General to Swiss General: “You have only 500,000 men in your army; what would you do if I invaded with 1 million men?”

Swiss General: “Well, I suppose every one of my soldiers would need to fire twice.”

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.—Gloria Steinem

Exceed your bandwidth—sign on the wall of the maintenance shop at the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Center

One thing I do know, if you keep at it, you usually wind up getting something done.—Patricia Monaghan

Do you want to know what kind of person makes the best reporter? I’ll tell you. A borderline sociopath. Someone smart, inquisitive, stubborn, disorganized, chaotic, and in a perpetual state of simmering rage at the failings of the world.—Brett Arends

It is a very simple mind that only knows how to spell a word one way.—Andrew Jackson

3:30 is too late or too early to do anything—Rene Descartes

Everything is okay when it’s 50-below as long as everything is okay. – an Alaskan in Tom Walker’s “The Seventymile Kid”

You can have your own opinion but you can’t have your own science.—commenter arguing on a story about polar bears and global warming

He looks at three ex wives as a good start—TV police drama

Talkeetna: A friendly little drinking town with a climbing problem.—a handmade bumper sticker

“You’re either into the wall or into the show”—Marco Andretti on giving it all to qualify last at the 2011 Indy 500

Makeup is not for the faint of heart—the makeup guerrilla

“I’m going to relax in a very adult manner.”—Danica Patrick after sweating it out and qualifying half an hour before Andretti

“Asking Congress to come back is like asking a mugger to come back because he forgot your wallet.”—a roundtable participant on Fox of all places

As Republicans go further back in the conception process to define when life actually begins, I am beginning to think the eventual definition will be life begins in the beer I was drinking when I met her.—me again

Hunting is a “critical element for the long-term conservation of wood bison.”—a state department of Fish and Game official explaining why the state would not go along with a federal plan to reintroduce wood bison in Alaska because the agreement did not specifically allow hunting

Each day do something that won’t compute – anon

I can’t belive I still have to protest this shit – a sign carriend by an elderly woman at an Occupy demonstration

Life should be a little nuts or else it’s just a bunch of Thursdays strung together—Kevin Costner as Beau Burroughs in “Rumor has it”

You’re just a wanker whipping up fear —Irish President Michael D. Higgins to a tea party radio announcer

Being president doesn’t change who you are; it reveals who you are—Michelle Obama

Sports malaprops

Commenting on an athlete with hearing impairment he said the player didn’t show any “uncomfortability.” “He's not doing things he can't do."

"… there's a fearlessment about him …"

"He's got to have the lead if he's going to win this race." "

"Kansas has always had the ability to score with the basketball."

"NFL to put computer chips in balls." Oh, that's gotta hurt.

"Now that you're in the finals you have to run the race that's going to get you on the podium."

"It's very important for both sides that they stay on their feet."

This is why you get to hate sportscasters. Kansas beats Texas for the first time since 1938. So the pundits open their segment with the question "let's talk about what went wrong." Wrong? Kansas WON a football game! That's what went RIGHT!

"I brought out the thermostat to show you how cold it is here." Points to a thermometer reading zero in Minneapolis.

"It's tough to win on the road when you turn the ball over." Oh, really? Like you can do all right if you turn the ball over playing at home?

Cliches so embedded in sportscasters' minds they can't help themselves: "Minnesota fell from the ranks of the undefeated today." What ranks? They were the only undefeated team left.

A good one: A 5'10" player went up and caught a pass off a defensive back over six feet tall. The quote? "He's got some hops."

Best homonym of the day so far: "It's all tied. Alabama 34, Kentucky 3." Oh, Tide.

"Steve Hooker commentates on his Olympic pole vault gold medal." When "comments" just won't do.

"He's certainly capable of the top ten, maybe even higher than that."

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"Biyombo, one of seven kids from the Republic of Congo." In the NBA? In America? In his whole country?

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"They're gonna be in every game they play!"

"First you have to get two strikes on the hitter before you get the strikeout."

"The game ended in the final seconds." You have to wonder when the others ended or are they still going on?

How is a team down by one touchdown before the half "totally demoralized?"

"If they score runs they will win."

"I think the matchup is what it is"

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"Somebody is going to be the quarterback or we're going to see a new quarterback."

"That was a playmaker making a play.”