Remember When?

 Does anyone remember when refrigerators were called 'ice boxes'? We had one that looked just like the one in the photo above and if I wanted a glass of Kool aid or cold water my mom would tell me to get it from the ice box.

The ice used to be delivered to our home in a horse drawn wagon and I recall the guy who delivered it would have a leather pad on his shoulder and grab the chunk of ice with tongs and put it on his shoulder and carry it into the house and put it in the ice box at the top. That ice would keep our food cool. There was a trey at the bottom that collected the melting water and that had to be emptied often. I was young then and we kids would go out to the ice wagon and beg for a piece of ice to suck on which the delivery person would usually give us as a special treat.

Even after we replaced the ice box with an electric model my mother would refer to the new one as the ice box. We lived in the city and the horse drawn cart would go down the street delivering ice door to door. Even though we lived on a paved street it was not uncommon to have "road apples" in the street which was horse poop. As more and more neighbors got electric 'ice boxes' there was less and less work for the ice man and finally he stopped coming to make deliveries all together.

With the modern day refrigerators it is hard to believe in the past food was kept cool by ice boxes with the ice delivered right to your door. We also had a box on the front porch for the milk man to leave our milk and butter in. My mom would leave a note on the box so the milk delivery man would know how much to leave. The milk man had a horse drawn cart also that he delivered our milk in which came in glass bottles where the first couple inches would be cream which mom would pour
off  to use on berries or coffee. Sometimes as a very special treat she would pour some cream on my oatmeal which made it taste much better.

I'm sure this sounds alien to folks now but it was common place back then.