Pencil making photos

Coincidental timing, this just ran in the local paper:

"Ice harvesting was Michigan's frozen winter tradition"

Ha. It looks like they purloined some copy from the earlier story that was posted.

It sounds like it was much the same all over, at least in the north. I wonder what they did in southern states, where they didn't have much ice? Did they eat rotten fish? d8-)

I also remember going with my dad to the town ice house, which had a huge refrigeration system. It always smelled like ammonia from the refrigerant leaks. It wasn't something I really enjoyed for that reason.

We shipped it down there of course ;-)

Looks like Norway shipped world round...

Before my time. I can just remember talk of the "meat locker". Kind of in between times I think. Neighbor worked there and my folks would use their service to store stuff. Pretty sure I have an old ad for a local one in an old Plat book.

I started working in earnest as an electricians apprentice. My boss/owner would do repair and new for local fruit growers. I remember quite vividly going along to scope out an upcoming job and walking right into a bad ammonia leak. Those were some big compressors. It wasn't unusual to see 40, 60 and once a 120 hp three phase motor running them... There was three of us as I recall and we all just scattered in different directions simultaneously without a word said :)

In case you avoid Disney-princes movies, "Frozen" opens with traditional Norwegian ice-cutting.

The little boy and baby reindeer are major characters later.

I was ten years old when we got electric lights.

Are there many ice houses around these days? I can remember going with my dad in the early 1970s to the ice house in Huntington Long Island for ice and IIRC they produced it for ice dispensers and mostly for fishing to keep the catch cool. They produced big blocks of ice maybe 1' x 2' x

3'. Maybe these days they just do it on board and the old ice house has been developed on.

Well, that beats the heck out of me. But I did ride home from the hospital in my dad's Model A Ford. I sure wish I had it now.

There are a few around. Along the mid-Atlantic coast, I think that most of them serve the fishing fleets, as in your example. The last time I was tuna fishing at Montauk, L.I., which was maybe 15 years ago, we had big blocks delivered by truck.

But it wasn't my boat, and I didn't inquire about the source of ice.

Going back about 25 years, my uncle and I got our ice and our chum from the same place -- an old ice house in Perth Amboy, NJ. It was the same deal; they delivered it by truck, so I never saw the ice house.

My father used to drive us by an ice house (yes, it was made on site) to pick up a cubic foot of ice to be chipped into drink coolant as the day's sail went on. I saw something like 1x1x3' blocks being moved around. This was in the late 1950s. At some point we shifted over to bagged ice, perhaps because the ice house closed. (My father is no longer with us, so I can't ask.

Enjoy, DoN.

I took my driver's test in the family Model "A", My Dad traded up by

30 years for$300.00

That 1x1x3-foot size is the one we had delivered to my uncle's boat. We'd get two blocks for the fish cooler and chip one up in the cooler. If it was really hot or if we were riding out to the Hudson Canyon, we'd get three blocks, and wrap canvas around the ice, the cans of chum (if hot) and/or the bait (if a Canyon trip).

I barely remember ice houses, we used to get ice from the one in Angleton, Texas for making ice cream.

Dad came to Texas in their model T. He told of hearing a veteran speak on the horrors of war in elementary school in Nada, Utah. The veteran fought in the civil war.

We had Dad's 98th birthday party a couple weeks ago. He's really slowing down.

Pete Keillor

The TV just ran an ad for a public demonstration at a still-working ice house.

-jsw

Hey, that's entertainment!

I asked my dad what people did for fun in the wintertime in New Hampshire. "Shave quarters" was his reply.

Actually, I'd like to see that again. I was too small to know what was going on when I saw ice being cut at the pond in Bayside.