In the 1940s, when I was a child, a refrigerator was called an “icebox” Each week, a sign was hung in the front window to indicate how many blocks of ice the homeowner wished to have delivered and a driver would stop with a weekly purchase. In summer, children would follow the open-bed delivery truck in hopes of being tossed a sliver of frozen enjoyment.
An ice pick and tongs were the honored tools of the day used by the truck driver to chip away small cubes from the huge frozen block on the truck bed and then fill the owner’s order.
Under my mother’s command, I could only watch the process from our small porch at the front of our house near the Poplar Level Road Grocery Store which we owned. I was not allowed to step down on the sidewalk. I was too young to follow the ice truck like the neighborhood kids so I had to be content with watching the delivery man haul the block of ice. into our home.
Striding into our kitchen, with the block over his back, he bent down, opened the lower level of our “icebox”, and stored the block inside its lined walls so that our food could be stored for another safe week in the upper level of the box.
When we moved to McKay Street, we owned a Servel model refrigerator which was gas-operated. I do not recall when the old “Icebox” went away but our new refrigerator had a frozen section where two ice trays could be stored. That was a modern step up from chipping off pieces from the block houseded in the lower level of our “Icebox”.