Do Any Of You Remember This?

HiDesertHal

HiDesertHal

Senior Member
Location
Southern California's High Mojave Desert
We didn't get our first Refrigerator until I was about 12, around 1948.

Prior to that the Iceman would cometh, and with his leather shoulder protector and his Ice Tongs, he would bring a 75-pound block of ice from his truck into our kitchen and slide it into our Ice Box.

We would remove the drip pan regularly and spill the water from the melting ice into the sink.

I recall an Abbott and Costello movie where one scene showed Lou running water into the drip pan and sliding it under the ice box.

Bud asked "What are you doing that for?"

Lou replied "Fresh water!"

Hal
 

The icebox was gone by the time I arrived!

The one in our old kitchen had a rubber hose that went from a flange on the drip pan to a hole in the kitchen floor that allowed it to drain into the basement and evaporate. I remember when my parents remodeled the kitchen in the 70's my stepfather made a wooden plug to finally fill the little hole in the floor.

Some of the ice companies had window cards that let the iceman know how much ice was needed.

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I remember the ice box in my grandfather's home and I remember my aunts cursing when they emptied the drip tray and spilt icy water on the floor. The earliest fridge I remember in our house was gas powered.
 

I'm not old enough to remember home ice deliveries but I remember fresh milk being delivered in reusable glass containers. I recall being able to buy different processed milk, like regular(?) whole milk as it came from the cow, or pasteurized milk, or homogenized milk, or both pasteurized and homogenized milk from the corner store.
 
I remember it well, Hal. Back in the late 30's,in the summer when the iceman came we kids would gather around and he'd be chipping the block to size and would chip off a few small chunks for we kids. He also delivered kerosene for houses that used it. If you grabbed a chip that had fallen in the wrong place (in his truck bed) you got a little kerosene flavor with your ice.


Poor man. His name was Otto, and he was a hunting buddy of my grandfather's. Late in life, he lived by himself, his wife having passed away, and he developed cancer. His solution was to stick a shotgun barrel in his mouth and pull the trigger. A sad ending for a nice man.
 
dpwspringer said:
I'm not old enough to remember home ice deliveries but I remember fresh milk being delivered in reusable glass containers. I recall being able to buy different processed milk, like regular(?) whole milk as it came from the cow, or pasteurized milk, or homogenized milk, or both pasteurized and homogenized milk from the corner store.
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Sometimes it would freeze in the winter and you had to get to it before the cat did!

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My city grandmother had a little milk door, similar to this one, that kept the cat away from the cream.

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My mom loved antiques so we did have one when in our house when I was growing up but never needed to use it ! It was a decor thing for her. Looking back, it really wasn't much of an antiques since my parents bought it sometime in the 60's.
 
The first refrigerator I remember was a squat little thing with a big set of coils on top.

I do remember the coal man coming. Because my grandparent's house (we lived with them) was up a grade from the sidewalk, the coal man couldn't dispense the coal directly into the basement window. He dumped it on the sidewalk and my grandpa had to wheel it up the yard and dump it in the window. Then the sidewalk had to be swept. What a mess.
 
Robusta said:
We had a small fridge with the coils on top. We kept some perishables in the milk house where there was a spring fed cistern that the milk cans were kept in.
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We had a spring fed milk cooler in my grandmother's barn. By the time I came along my father was using the old milk cooler to keep his Genesee beer cold.
 
I remember in the very early 60's visiting Grandma in Spokane, Washington and using the 'outhouse.' The memory I treasure most though was driving the old tractor in the open field around the house. Another note on the outhouse, they have a most memorable aroma :p. Oh, and the trip to the outhouse with 6 inches of snow on the ground is not one to envy either!
 
HiDesertHal said:
Golly, chic...you must really be as young as your art pictures!

Harry
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LoL. ^ I take back what I said. I did see an icebox on The Honeymooners TV show. Alice and Ralph Kramden had a broken down old icebox and Alice did have to remove the tray from underneath. That's the only icebox I ever saw though.
 
I remember the Ice popping the lids off the glass milk bottles on the doorstep in the winter too Aunt bea..in fact I was a milk delivery girl when I was still at school, and on freezing winter mornings, the bottles would stick to our hands. Some people had wooden boxes to place the bottles in, really to prtoect thee foil lids from pecking birds.


I also remember the coalman, not because we had a coal fire..we didn't.. we had electric, but I knew loads of people who did have coal fires, including my grandparents, and when i was a very little my father was a coalman for a short time as well

I remember we had a built in fridge in our prefab when I was very tiny...if I remember rightly it was gas powered..

This wasn't our kitchen, but it was set out exactly the same way ..and you can see the fridge at the far end of the room

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Ice delivery was before my time. But I remember milk delivery. I remember my aunt and uncle had the delivery door at their house. I always thought that was pretty neat.
 
We still have milk deliveries here in the UK...some of my neighbours still have their milk delivered by the milk float (truck)... but nowadays most people prefer to buy their milk from the supermarket where it's much cheaper than buying from the milkman
 
Yes, I do! We lived near the place that delivered the ice and I remember us driving by it a lot.
But more than that, I remember us having a refrigerator that was powered by kerosene.
That was in Taiwan in around 1959.
 
We had one at our camp at the beach. On the way to the camp with would stop and get a block of ice. That was in the sixties but was there long before me.
 
Ice Boxes were gone when I was born but my grandparents and my parents always referred to the refrigerator as the "Ice Box". I always wondered why for many years! We had milk delivery to our house too. Our milkman knew my grandmother was really sick and in the bed much of the time, so he would just let himself inside the kitchen and leave the milk in the fridge and pick up the washed bottles on the cabinet. Now that was customer service!
 

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