Yesterday I shared my grandfather's story of ice harvesting in the early 20th century. As the thermometer hovers well below freezing this week, I share snippets from old newspapers to document ice house history in Potter County.
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| From 1910 |
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| from 1922 |
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| from 1932 |
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| from 1924 |
... and more from my grandfather, shared in his Golly column in 1969.
The youngster of today cannot remember his first dish of ice cream any more than he can remember his first slice of bread, but there was a time when ice cream was new. No one thought of eating ice cream only in midsummer and then only for a special treat on the Fourth of July or at a Sunday school picnic or church social.
Ice was necessary to make the delicious treat, and very few people had access to an ice house. Ice cost money – as much as ten cents for a good big cake. Ice cream freezers were expensive luxuries. Not many families could afford one at a cost of $1.50 to $2.50 – 12 to 20 shillings as the older people of that day might have said.
This writer remembers to this day his first experience with the frozen delicacy.
There was in Whitesville, the town of the long straggling main street, a kindly soul by the name of Bert Wildman. Bert had made a freezer of ice cream to sell at five cents a dish, or a whopping big saucer piled high for a dime.
Bert Wildman was kind, generous and thoughtful. He spied this scribe barefoot and in knee pants. There was no hope of a nickle or a dime sale, so he invited the little fellow to a treat. It was the most wonderful delicious ice cream ever made.
Kindly Bert Wildman departed this life years and years ago but we loved him as long as he lived and we still revere his memory.
1 comment:
Well you now open the floodgate. First, I remember the tank and the dasher that we used with the family ice cream mill. The ice was from icicles gathered by the kids, but to get the temperature down there had to be rock salt added and then a lot of cranking, mostly by the kids. Also I hope you remember Grandaddy's talking about "sugaring down" the sap from the maples until it was thick enough to simply pour out into the snow, whereupon it would magically solidify into that fluid shape of absolute sweetness. Or you could keep boiling it down and whip it into sugar.
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