If you are over 90, you probably know, over 80 you may remember. Younger than that, I don’t imagine you ever saw the ice truck. Not the ice cream truck that everybody knows. The ice truck.
I am remembering back in my childhood and in the ‘20s and into the ‘30s, an open truck with a canvas over its cargo to block out the hot summer sun. It was loaded with big blocks of ice, clear as glass, dripping slightly on the streets as the truck traveled. For many folks at that time the icebox was the only means of keeping foods cool enough to be safe to eat.
The driver cruised through the residential streets of Bangor watching the houses for a window with the “ICE” sign displayed. When we got to our street, we kids, playing in yards or street, promptly gathered when the call went out, “Here comes the ice truck!” We knew where he would stop.
My littlest sister was sometimes slow. “Come over here on the sidewalk, Lois, until the truck stops.”
As soon as he stopped, the driver jumped down from his seat with a grin for our little crowd waiting.
“Hi, Mr. Iceman!” We never did know his name; probably there were different drivers, but they were friendly and we liked them all, no matter which one it was.
“Hi, kids. How’s everybody today?”
“We’re good” … “We’re good” … “and we’re hot, too,” added Judy.
He laughed, but his customers and his ice were waiting. He had to hurry on with the job.
“Okay, let’s see now. Mrs. Cushing’s ‘ICE’ card is upside down. That means…”
Again the chorus of kids, “She wants a haffa block.”
“You’re right,” and with heavy tongs he pulled done block forward where he split it in two with a big ice pick, shiny chips flying as he worked. He flung a thick rubber cape over his shoulders. Then the tongs held the heavy block there while he carried it to Mrs. Cushing’s icebox.
No sooner had he walked away from the truck than we kids converged at the back to snatch the frozen splinters he had left there. I found a big one for me and a small piece for Lois. They were hard to hold, slippery, wet and cold, but this was what we had been waiting for.
We stood around, grinning at each other and licking at our treasures while icy water dripped from our chins, soaked our shirt fronts and trickled down our arms. Oh, it was so delicious!
Coming back, the driver laughed at our dripping hands and faces, but he didn’t scold. Without pausing he hurried to deliver the second half of the block to Mrs. White across the street.
So his job was done at this stop. Off came the cape, the tongs landed in the truck bed, and he continued up the street. His visit here was brief but welcome, and we looked forward to the next one, whenever he came.
Time marched on, and our dear old ice truck was made obsolete by the electric refrigerator. Did the housewives mourn the departure of their old icebox? More likely they cheered as they dumped the old drip pan that had resided for so many years under the icebox and had to be emptied promptly before it overflowed and icy water ran across the floor.
We adjusted quickly to drinking our milk really cold, to storing ice cream – the important stuff to kids. We also liked having ice cubes always handy. But no ice ever tasted so good as those clear splinters from the back of the ice truck.
(Olive Hart is, and always was, a Maine girl and a nature lover of green and growing things, the four-footed friends in the farm and gardens. She graduated from the University of Maine in 1948 and married that evening. She stayed in Orono for two more years until her husband graduated in 1950. Their first baby was born that same year.
Olive stayed at home raising her family of four until her youngest was in seventh grade. She then went on to teach reading, English and writing in middle school for 17 years.
Her father was always interested in Maine’s history, not politics but how it came to be. He had taught Olive the geology of Maine’s formation that occurred during the Ice Age and that the family’s lake was one result of that.
Her mother’s interests lay in books, in knowledge and education. Olive has always thought her mother was the smartest person she knew, and still does, in fact.
Olive feels as though she is the product of their influences. She tried writing off and on over the years entirely on her own but was never satisfied with the results and disposed of them. Encouragement in her 90s astonished her and has uncorked her bottled-up words. Now she can’t stop.)
