Each day as we look back at the past 19 years, often I'm reminded of the Shoebox Memories, and the historical discoveries we've made along the way. Eleven years ago we had one such memory, before any content on Youtube was around to set this history to motion. The Ice Harvest industry was a fascinating one. To see the original Shoebox Memory, click here.

Have a good week :o)

Refrigerators: another thing to be thankful for.

Now i wonder, when we used to go to the ice house in Bellaire in the 1960's, how was that ice made/harvested? The block we'd get lasted the whole week while we were camping.

A wee bit before my time, but I do remember the old metal ice cube trays with the pull-handle.
As a kid, they came in real handy when I was mading my rum and Coke, bedtime cocktails. :-)

I remember the iceman coming around. Kids would all run out to
meet him as get a free chip of that lake superior ice. Gee, I must be
older than dirt.

Oh now I'm feelin' old!
I remember the ice man delivering block ice to my paternal grandfather's place in Detroit the late 1940s/early 1950s — with a horse drawn ice wagon, something like this:



That smart horse knew all the regular stops on the delivery route too, without much guidance from the deliveryman!

As I recall, granddad never had a refrigerator until the day he passed away in 1952. Mom claimed the old "ice box" and used it for storing laundry supplies in our basement for over a decade thereafter!

My folks never stopped calling the refrigerator the ice box. I don't
remember blocks of ice being delivered, but I do remember the
milkman delivering milk from a wagon pulled by a horse. The
milkman's name was Mr. Milky, I kid you not. This was in the early
1950s.