[AT] Putting the tractor to use - Ice Houses

charlie hill charliehill at embarqmail.com
Mon Jun 16 12:47:35 PDT 2014


Bruce we had an ammonia ice plant here up until it was bought out by a
larger company and closed sometime in the late 80's or maybe even the 90's.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Brucemoden
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 3:26 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Putting the tractor to use - Ice Houses

Well, I was born in 1936 & we had an ice man who delivered ice in 100, 50, & 
25 lb blocks, you had a square sign that you hung in the front window by one 
of the corners, each corner displayed the size ice block you needed for that 
delivery.  All our delivery men (ice, milk, & bakery) drove horse drawn 
vehicles, which looked like small standard "Divco" trucks w/o motors, holes 
below the windshield for the reins.  In the summer the milk-man used block 
ice & in the winter he had a kerosene heater (like a chicken coop heater).
In the city most ice was produced by ammonia refrigeration plants, very 
flammable, one near us burned about 1944 with flames 100 feet in the air. 
Smaller rural communities still cut ice from the small lakes, ponds & 
resivors, today some still cut ice for "ice castles", see Mayville, NY on 
Chautauqua Lake where they cut ice by the ton for the winter spectacular.
Pharmr.

> Sent from my iPad


> On Jun 16, 2014, at 1:20 PM, David Bruce <davidbruce at yadtel.net> wrote:
>
> There is a site here that was once an ice pond.  That was long before my
> day but I do remember my grandpa using the area after the dam slipped
> over to grow watermelons and muskmelons.  Just a bit behind my house and
> on my uncle's part of the old farm.  Deer and turkey make goring things
> there these days impossible.
>
> David
> NW NC
>
>
>> On 6/16/2014 12:50 PM, charlie hill wrote:
>> My memory is foggy on this but I want to say I can remember
>> when the Milk truck in our area still used blocks of ice to keep the
>> milk cold.  I was born in 1950 and I'm sure it wasn't much later
>> when refrigerated trucks took over so maybe not.  Maybe I'm
>> remembering people talking about it.
>>
>> I surely remember
>> when we had an ice house in town with blocks of ice.  It had a
>> crusher mounted on the outside of the house for folks that needed
>> to crush their ice or you could buy blocks.  Daddy used to buy blocks
>> of ice and put under the salt bench in the smoke house when we
>> were salting and smoking pork in the winter.  The bench was used to
>> salt down the hams, shoulders and sides of bacon.  It was built just
>> the right height for a block of ice to slide under it.
>>
>> Charlie
>
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