Letter about the old days

Ted,

"Bob's Charter Oak had an ice house, I guess I'm not sure what one of those would be."

I'm surprised you didn't think of an "igloo".

It just goes to show you that, regardless of how much education you get, there's more to learn. Everyone should know that an "ice house" is where they store the blocks of ice. The ice was harvested from a lake and shipped by rail (that's railroad train) for storage in the ice house.

Normally it's just below ground level where it's packed with sawdust. In the summer you went there for ice to make ice cream and, of course, the "ice man", with his team and wagon, delivered ice to the homes. The homes had a sign in the window which told him how much to bring in. He carried in the appropriate block and installed it in the "icebox". Of course the houses were not locked. The sign in the window was standard and we still used them when students at the Univ. of Iowa. They were about 12" square with diagonal lines from corner to corner which left "V" shaped sections where choices of quantities were designated such as 15, 25, 35, & 50 lbs. The numbers were printed in a manner so that the bottom section gave the requested number while the top section would "read" upside down, and the side sections were each lying on their sides.