By Marilyn May
Milford History
Beverly Gunn, age 3, with her dad Robert Gunn, Sr. are with Edwin Warner in 1936 as he cuts ice with his homemade belt-driven ice saw machine. Warner is grandfather to Beverly and father-in-law to Robert. The ice storage building with the ramp is in the background. Photo courtesy of Bonnie Gunn Moger.
2024: Would you like some ice in your drink? Okay, I will just put your glass under the ice distributor on the outside of the refrigerator door. Clunk, clunk, clunk.
1900: Would you like some ice in your punch? Well, all you have to do is put on your coat, climb into the barn loft, find the ice pick and chop some ice off the big ice blocks we stored there months ago. And don’t get any straw or sawdust in your drinking glass. We used that to insulate the blocks. Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.
That was the easy way of getting ice before some homes started getting electric refrigerators in the late 1920s and 30s.
The family in the photo is cutting ice in 1936 from a pond on the Stowe Farm down near Laurel Beach. For larger ponds, there was a lot of work “harvesting ice” for men who needed the brute force of horses.
First they had to hand drill a metal tool through the ice to check that it was 12 inches thick, shovel off any fresh snow, and then score the ice. Some large operations used horses and led them back and forth while dragging a metal hook that scoured perfectly spaced lines on the ice. The surface ended up looking like a checkerboard.
The horses had ice shoes with special spikes designed to give them extra traction. When the horses finished scouring the ice, they rested. They were covered with blankets and treated to feed bags while they waited patiently for their next chores.
Now it was time for the men to get to work. They took long (48-60 inches) crosscut saws with large teeth and cut the ice into rectangular blocks. Other workers pulled blocks out of the water using metal poles and ice block tongs. Men pushed the blocks up a short ramp and packed them into wagons in such a way as to balance the load equally. The wagons got so heavy that they needed to be pulled by teams of horses that strained to pull them, usually up slopes, to barns.
The horses worked hard, but don’t you wish you could know what they were thinking?
“Hey, Chester. Why do these guys always take the ice off the pond?”
The barns had either long ramps (as seen in the photo) or elevator-like lifts to move blocks into barn lofts. Meanwhile, others up in the lofts had tools to slide the blocks neatly into place.
Plymouth Church, built in 1834, is mirrored in the Wepawaug River Duck Pond. The barn-like building in the center was used to store ice from the pond. Photo courtesy of the Daniel E. Moger photo collection.
Ice properly stored and covered with straw and sawdust for insulation could last until September. “Ice farmers” did this work at a time when no planting was going on, and many raised extra cash by selling some blocks.
Today there are commercial outfits that harvest tons of ice for restaurants and bars. As late as the 1950s, bars on Daniel Street routinely received blocks of ice in the mornings.
Families that had kitchen ice boxes had to have periodic ice deliveries. Ice was put on the top shelves above the food, because the cold air flowed down over the food below it. The problem here was that melted water collected in a pan under the ice box had to be emptied almost every day.
If you ever visit the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford, notice how she handled this daily chore. She ran a small pipe through the kitchen wall to the pan. As it filled with melted water, the pipe siphoned off the water, and it drained outdoors, right into her flower garden.
Ice can cool, but it can also warm.
In the northernmost parts of China, ice cheers everyone’s spirits when they work in sub-zero temperatures to create an ice city where visitors can walk into the buildings. At night, the whole city is lit, and the effect is spectacular. They start harvesting ice in mid-November, and as many as 5,000 people build a city in 15 days.
Quebec City celebrates Winter Carnival this winter from Jan. 25 to Feb. 1. The carnival started in 1894 but was not held every year. Since 1955, however, it has been an annual tradition. The ice palace alone is worth the trip.
Just outside the city, they build an ice hotel, where people rent rooms and spend a night sleeping on a bed of ice. Weddings have been held in its chapel where guests sit on pews of ice that are covered with deer hides. Even the bible on the lectern is made of ice. After the ceremony it would be time to visit the hotel’s “N’Ice Bar.” Drinks are served in hollowed out, hand-sized small cubes of ice.
Back on the streets of Quebec City there are outdoor ice bars built along the main street. If a bartender suggests a drink of caribou, say yes. It’s made of brandy, vodka, sherry and port. One is enough to warm you all night.
Marilyn May is a lifelong resident of Milford and is on the board of the Milford Historical Society.