Around the Town: Foolishness with ice boxes

By Loretta Humble/Around the Town

The wild violets have come and gone, and I’m watching for the wild honeysuckles to start blooming. They are all over the woods behind my house, and when they bloom it smells like heaven here. Jo Ann Surls told me that the honeysuckles and the hummingbirds show up at the same time. I’m pretty sure if Jo Ann say so, it’s so. I’ve never slowed down enough to notice before, but this year I will have time to watch things like flowers and little birds. As well as time to remember stuff.

I love looking across the road where my great-nephew Wesley has a lot of projects going on. I love it because it reminds me of how it was when we lived over there 70 years ago. Wesley’s modern home replaces the old house where I was born, which Daddy and Mama tore down and turned into a smaller house when I was nine. I guess that was Daddy’s biggest project. He had a lot of them. Some were great and a few were sort of questionable.

For instance, there was the system he created to cool our food after he traded off our icebox. The icebox was one of those nice wooden ones that people love to collect now. There must be more to this story than I remember, but there is nobody left to help me get it straight. So I’ll just tell you that I remember that one day Daddy came in and told Mama he had traded the icebox to my brother-in-law for a cow. As I remember, Mama didn’t like it, but I don’t recall hearing her making a big row about it. Could be that was done out of my ear shot. As I recall, the contraption was about waist-high to an adult, maybe two feet by three feet square. It had a shallow metal pan that just fit the top, with two shelves underneath. He made a skirt for it out of white flour sacks. They lapped over into the metal pan, which is where iceman-type ice was placed, along with critical things like milk. I think he had a heavy canvas covering over that. Supposedly the cold water from the melted ice would seep down the flour sack curtains, cooling whatever was placed on the lower shelves. Meat spoiling wasn’t a problem, as we didn’t eat a lot of meat, and most of what we did have was either running around in the chicken pen or hanging in the smokehouse. I don’t remember how they got the extra water out of that tray. I also don’t remember how long it was before the used electric refrigerator came, but I think it was pretty quick.

Outrageous as this story is, I know Daddy loved Mama, and wanted to make her happy. It’s just that he always thought he knew what would make her happy without needing to ask her. I guess he thought she would rather have that cow than an icebox.

I have a another memory of another hard-headed old guy and a refrigerator. Uncle Pat and Aunt Annie had a wood icebox, too, and their son Alfred, who still lived at home, surprised them by buying a new refrigerator and having it delivered. Uncle Pat took one look at it and was said to have spouted off something to the effect that nobody needs one of these newfangled things. That hurt Alfred’s feelings so much he lashed back, reportedly saying something like, okay, then don’t use it. Because of those two hard heads, that shiny new refrigerator just sat there in the dining room unplugged for a long time while Aunt Annie kept using the icebox. I saw it sitting there when I was a little girl. But finally it got plugged in and all was well I guess. I don’t know who broke the ice. Maybe one day Aunt Annie got tired of the foolishness and just plugged it in. I wish I had asked somebody how that ended while there was still somebody alive who knew the whole story.

Looks to me like Mama and Aunt Annie put up with a good bit more foolishness from their menfolks than most of us would today.