Clouds and cool temperatures didn’t stop about 400 South Bristol residents from enjoying the annual ice cream social at the Thompson Ice House July 3.
Brave children swam in Thompson Pond, visitors toured the historic grounds and the museum, year-round residents caught up with their seasonal neighbors, and everyone devoured gallons of root beer floats, brownie sundaes and fresh homemade ice cream.
George Manchester, the managing director of the Thompson Ice House Preservation Corporation, was one of a handful of volunteers overseeing the homemade ice cream-making process.
Manchester and the others start with a basic, vanilla ice cream mix and add flavoring. The day’s flavors included mint chocolate chip and maple walnut. The real labor starts at the hand-crank ice cream machine, which the volunteers work in shifts while others add alternating layers of salt and ice, harvested in February and stored in the ice house.
“The more you crank, the harder it gets,” Manchester said. “When you can’t crank anymore, it’s ready for the serving table.”
Elsewhere, Greenfields performed folk songs and patriotic anthems and John Harris offered rides in his 1925 Ford Model T.
Not just a social, the event is a fundraiser for the corporation, which maintains the historic building.
The organization recently replaced the roof on the ice house and the wood ramp, which lifts the heavy ice blocks into the building, repaired the Thompson Pond dam and re-wired an outbuilding. Their next project is to upgrade the electrical system in the ice house itself, Manchester said. The proceeds also fund routine maintenance and other expenses, like insurance.
The event also allows other local organizations an opportunity to disseminate information or, like South Bristol School’s incoming eighth grade class, to do a little fundraising of their own.
For the South Bristol Historical Society, it was a chance to spread awareness and hopefully learn about their latest acquisition, “the old smokehouse.”
The tiny shack, just a short walk down Rt. 129 at the S Road School property, formerly “sat on the north side of The Gut close to the bridge,” according to a South Bristol Historical Society leaflet.
Irving Clifford and Henry Jones smoked fish in the small building with the wood smoke from a cast iron stove. In recent years, the Dept. of Transportation “required that it be removed” and longtime bridgetender Craig Plummer moved it to his property on the S Road.
Plummer passed away last year. His son, Brandon Plummer, gave the smokehouse to the Historical Society.
The society hopes to once again smoke fish in the building and hopes locals can help fill the gaps in the smokehouse’s history, including the construction date and the identities of the builder and the people who used the smokehouse.
The South Bristol Historical Society asks anyone with “anything at all” to add, or anyone “interested in helping put it to use again,” to call 644-1234 or e-mail sbhs@tidewater.net.
