Thoughtful Thoughtful ReflectionsReflectionsOf an Ice Man

Before mechanical refrigeration, the only efore mechanical refrigeration, the only

sources of ice were ponds, rivers and sources of ice were ponds, rivers and

lakes. It worked, but was it sanitary? As a lakes. It worked, but was it sanitary? As a

result, the ice company was essential in every community. An iceman in Illinois realized in-result, the ice company was essential in every community. An iceman in Illinois realized in-

stant success with his new artificial ice plant after he started a rumor that a dead man

and a dead horse had been found in the natural ice pond.

it was used for. Mom was involved in the later stages of this process, because she trained the offi ce staff.

By the late 1920s, this building frenzy started to slow. At this time my grandfather and two of his four sons came in from their nomadic existence and started buying ice plants. They ended up owning more than 30 ice plants, several frozen food locker plants and one brewery. The plants in Illinois became available early in World War II because of an act of Congress that required public utilities (power companies) to get out of any business where they were selling their product to themselves. By this time, the “electric icebox” had become affordable and was widely used in homes. As soon as the war was over, everyone who did not already own an “electric icebox” was planning to buy one, and everyone knew it. As a result, no one really wanted ice plants, and the plants in Il-linois were sold very cheap. Dad bought two plants and eight

By Al Smith

As streams, lakes and rivers became more polluted, serious concerns were raised about the quality of the natural ice taken from them. In addition, natural ice was not available in southern states unless it was shipped from northern states.

The sudden need for an ice-manufacturing plant in every town in North America created an enormous demand on the refrigeration equipment manufacturing industry and on those who built these plants. Few men had any idea how to build and operate an ice plant. Those who did know were considered wizards. My father was such a man. He would contract to pro-vide the “expert” supervision necessary to put the entire plant together and to train the plant operators’ engineers to run and maintain the plant.

Dad insisted that the chief engineer for the new plant be on the crew putting the plant together. This allowed Dad to explain the fi ner points of why certain items were involved and what

The following article was published in ASHRAE Journal, November 2004. © Copyright 2004 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating The following article was published in ASHRAE Journal, November 2004. © Copyright 2004 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. It is presented for educational purposes only. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electroni-and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. It is presented for educational purposes only. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electroni-cally or in paper form without permission of ASHRAE.

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…An iceman in Illinois realized instant success with

his new artifi cial ice plant after he started a rumor that

a dead man and a dead horse had been found in the

natural ice pond ….

refrigerated jitney stations in fi ve other towns. He paid off the loan in less than three years.

Beginning My Life as an IcemanDuring the summer after I fi nished the seventh grade, Dad

asked if I would take over operation of the Main Street jitney station in Galesburg, Ill. A jitney station is a small refrigerated storage building that held 20 or 30 tons (18 or 27 Mg) of ice, which was sold in the neighborhood in blocks.

In addition to selling the ice, collecting the money and keeping the cash account correct, I had to take care of the refrigeration system. I added oil to the compressor, adjusted the packing gland, adjusted the hand expansion valve, and drained the oil trap. I cleaned the water side of one of the two small shell-and-tube condensers each week, and cleaned the fl at belt and the wooden motor pulley each week. My pay was the grand sum of $11.76 for an 84-hour workweek. I worked 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week.

At the end of my fi rst week, Dad came by the station and gave me my fi rst paycheck. Wow—what a thrill that was! I could hardly wait to get home and show it to Mom. She looked at it and gave me a big hug. Then she reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. She held the paper in her hands and made a little speech about how I was now entering a man’s world and that I was expected to pay my own way.

The piece of paper was a bill for room and board, which was $1.25 a week with laundry service or $1 a week without. I very quickly learned to wash clothes.

Jitney Station StoriesOften, children picked up ice in a small wagon called a jitney.

When the factories changed shifts later in the day, the man of the house picked up ice in the family car. Most of the time, I put the ice on the bumper and leaned it up against the front grille or the trunk lid. I could always spot a new costumer because he drove too fast trying to get home before the ice melted and hit a bump at the end of the jitney station’s driveway and lost the block of ice. Neighborhood kids who were hanging around got a good laugh.

One fellow down the street from the jitney station had a large garden in back of his house. In the summer he sold the produce from this garden in his front yard. When the watermelons were ripe, he put a horse tank in the yard next to the road and hung a sign that said, “ICE COLD WATERMELONS.” Then he came to the jitney station with his wheelbarrow and bought a 50 lb (23 kg) block of ice. When he got back to his house, he wrapped the ice in about 3 in. (75 mm) of newspaper and two or three rugs and put the bundle in the horse tank on a box so that the bottom was about 1 in. (25 mm) below the water level. He made sure the bundle had a small opening in a corner so people could reach in and feel the ice. This setup was kept under

‘

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Customers purchased coupon books (at left) to redeem for ice. Those who could not read could select the right quantity of ice based on the color of the coupon. Customers displayed their ice cards (center) to indicate how many pounds they needed. An ice pick (right) serves as a reminder ice was necessary to preserve food properly.

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Only with the improved design of compressors and the development of Freon refrigerants was the “electric icebox” economically feasible and safe for the masses. Of course, the icemen did not think this “electric icebox” was a good idea. They came up with several strategies to improve the

Mechanical Refrigerator Was Ice Industry’s Villain

a tent. That block of ice lasted three or four days, and he sold more watermelons than anybody in town.

One older widow lady, quite feeble and not too steady on her feet, used a cart made from an old baby buggy. She brought her baby buggy to the jitney station and tried to inter-est a neighborhood boy to go home with her to carry the ice into the house in exchange for a cookie. After some time she realized that if she waited until near when I closed the station, she could probably talk me into carrying it for her as her house was on my way home. This saved her the fi ve cents a week it cost to have the ice brought to her by a delivery truck, and I got an oatmeal cookie. I still like oatmeal cook-ies with raisins.

The Ice Delivery ManPeople who didn’t want to pick up their ice relied on the

ice delivery man. Most of the ice routes were “owned” by the driver, and he was expected to pay cash for his ice before it was loaded on the truck.

The ice card was a necessary item in the delivery process. The card was usually about 10 in.2 (645 cm2) and had large numbers printed on each side (25—50—75—100). The number that cor-responded to the amount of ice a person wanted was displayed upright in the front window of a house, so the iceman could see from the street how much ice the person needed.

Early ad promotes benefi ts of being the ice man.

perception of their product. Among the suggestions were uniforms for the delivery men, a best-looking iceman contest at the Ohio State Fair, a slogan (“Cold alone is not enough”), and an effort to petition Congress to pass a law declaring that mechanical refrigeration was a cause of cancer!1

In some North American states an attempt was made to put mechanically refrigerated cold storage warehouses out of business, declaring products stored in them dangerous, unsanitary, and even poisonous.2

Because delivery men sometimes had trouble getting paid in cash, they began to sell coupon books. The costumer would buy a 500 lb or a 1,000 lb (225 or 450 kg) coupon book (usu-ally at a discount) and pay the delivery driver by tearing out the appropriate coupon and leaving it on top of the icebox. The coupon books were printed with different colors for different amounts of ice. The colors usually were the same as those on the window card. This simple, precise, successful system was necessary because many housewives could not read.

Even with these systems in place, strange things sometimes happened. Old Eddie, the ice delivery route driver, had to put up with a lot. Granny J was probably the worst. She insisted that he put her 25 lb (11 kg) block of ice on the fl oor on top of a pile of newspapers and wrap the entire block with about 0.5 in. (13

Ice cakes, which could weigh 400 pounds, await distribution in this ice storeroom, circa 1910.

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mm) of paper. Then she had him tie it up with the greasy string she saved from the butcher shop—all before Eddie could put it in the icebox.

If the weather was hot enough and the milk man had left an older bottle of milk, the folks at the offi ce could be sure they would get a visit from Granny J. Usu-ally she was accompanied by O’Riley the beat cop. O’Riley, who was right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, would stand behind Granny J and look to the heavens while she hollered her head off that the ice was no good. Dad and Eddie tried very hard to explain that if the ice didn’t melt, it wouldn’t work. She was sure that fast-melting ice was a conspiracy of the rich to take more money from poor people who couldn’t afford an “electric icebox.”

At the end of the home ice delivery era, Granny J became the last icebox owner in town. Her church found a used “electric icebox” and arranged for an electrician to wire it up for her. I found out many years later that Dad and Eddie had more than a little bit to do with the electrician. There was not a happier man in the world than Eddie when he came into the offi ce months later and told Dad about seeing Granny J at the power company offi ce, O’Riley the beat cop in tow, waving her power bill around and hollering at the clerk. Dad and Eddie went and got drunk.

There is another story about the delivery man who went into a house to deliver a

‘Jitney stations’ dispensed ice to customers who could haul it home themselves, usually in a small cart called a jitney. Children often vied for chips of ice on hot summer days.

In Columbus, Ohio, there is a res-taurant called, “The Spaghetti Ware-house.” It was built in 1891 as an ice plant and was one of the larger plants in Columbus.

In the 1920 Columbus, Ohio, city directory, it is identified as “Station #1.” The same city directory lists 39 ice stations.

Why in the world would they build that many? One reason was my grand-father. In the slow season, he scouted around and found out where the largest ice company in the region was going to build a new plant. When he had this information confirmed—usually by actually seeing construction start—he took up his option on the piece of prop-erty he had acquired next to or across the street from the new plant.

He then called one of his sons and they quickly built a small plant. The plant consisted of the basics: an ice-freezing tank and a small loading dock. They didn’t have a storage room or an offi ce.

On the day the new plant opened, my grandfather also opened his plant. The only advertising he did was a wooden sign about 2 ft high and 10 ft long that said, “ICE—10 CENTS A HUNDRED LESS.”

Needless to say, the guy across the street was unhappy. Twice a day, usu-ally at 5 a.m. and 5 p.m., the ice puller harvested half the day’s production and put it on the loading dock.

The independent route drivers would line up and take that ice and go across the street for the rest of the ice they needed. After a month or two, the owner of the other plant offered to buy out my grandfather.

You can be sure he got more than a fair price. He took down his sign and went to the next adventure.

Why Columbus Had a Lot Of Ice Stations

“long 75” (that is a piece of ice cut from a 400 lb [180 kg] block as three 25 lb [11 kg] pieces end to end). This woman was a chronic complainer. She had two days of newspapers on the fl oor to catch the drips. One day the delivery man came in the back door and caught his foot on the crumpled newspaper and lost his balance. When he jerked around to keep from falling, he broke the rivet that held his ice tongs together. He went one way, the water in his back pad went on the fl oor, the “long 75” landed on the fl oor, small end down, and went through the fl oor to the basement and pulled a throw rug and a bunch of newspapers after it.

The housewife stood speechless watch-ing the carnage in her kitchen. The deliv-ery man stood up and looked around at the mess and picked up the coupon and left without saying a word. The housewife, after collecting her wits, went to the corner store and called my dad. She demanded she get her coupon back. When the driver came in, Dad asked him about it. The delivery man said, “I delivered the ice and she should pay for it; besides, I’m out the cost of a rivet!” Dad almost choked.

Ice-Refrigerated Railroad CarsWithout ice-refrigerated railroad cars,

livestock couldn’t be slaughtered until it reached the place where the meat would be sold. Because nearly half of a live animal is waste, the consumer was pay-

ing twice as much for freight. Gustavus F. Swift (of Swift & Co.) created the purpose-built ice-refrigerated railroad cars in large quantities in the late 1880s, which permitted fresh meat to be shipped

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from Chicago to the eastern coast. When he died in 1903, after only 15 years of production, Swift owned more than 100,000 ice-refrigerated railroad cars. These cars required replenish-ment of their ice bunkers en route, and an industry was born. Other industries were born because once the produce and meat reached its destination, it had to be kept cold.

The availability and wide use of cheap refrigeration and the completion of the western railroads was a primary reason for the successful westward expansion of the United States. Without refrigeration, the produce of the west and the meat of the plains could never reach the eastern population in useable condition.

Nationwide, the artifi cial ice industry produced 658 lb (300 kg) of ice per person in 1927. In Galesburg, Ill., however, 3,458 lb (1570 kg) of ice was produced per Galesburg resident. The big difference? The railroad car icing station in town used nearly 38,000 tons (34 200 Mg) of ice each year.

One of the most exciting trains that we re-iced was the annual trainload of grapes that was headed for Montreal, where the grapes would be made into homemade wine. We always had at least 24-hours notice before it arrived. Starting about eight hours before it was due, we got hourly updates from the yardmaster. Approximately four hours before it was to arrive, we started stacking blocks of ice on the platform, which was slightly taller than the railroad cars. The icing platform was over a half-mile (0.8 kgm) long and had a track down each side.

When the train was brought close to the platform, it was broken in two sections on the fl y. The back half was snatched by a little switch engine and put on the other side of the platform. As soon as the train was stopped, the road engine and caboose were taken off and replaced with a new road engine that already had a full head of steam and the new crew’s caboose. The back half of the train was iced fi rst, so the little yard engine could pull it back up the track and switch it over to connect to the front half.

When the cars were about 100 ft (30 m) apart, the engineer of the little switch engine started blowing his whistle to warn the men working on top of the front section to hold on in case he bumped too hard. We were supposed to get off the cars, but most of us didn’t. Every bunker on the end of each car was topped off with ice and a little salt. This train would use about 500 tons (450 Mg) of ice and about 5 tons (4.5 Mg) of salt. It was a big test to see if we could beat last year’s time; we did it all in two hours one year. It was an exciting time.

About 30 years later, I was sent by a compressor manufacturer on a service call to Montreal and met a man who iced the cars at the produce market down the street from the artifi cial ice plant. He told me that the trainload of California grapes would be sold in four or fi ve days. The French Canadians do love their wine.

Other AdventuresAt Dad’s plant we had four sources of water: two lakes, one

well, and the city main. Most of the time we used one of the lakes as the source for the ice itself, and the well as the source for the condenser. The well for the condenser was about three-

quarters of a mile (1.2 km) from the ice plant and right next to a graveyard and in a very low area where a stream had once been. The stream had been diverted to allow a railroad right-of-way to use the space. It was almost a swamp. The state required that we take a sample of the water each year even if we were not using it to manufacture ice. Each time the report had a note on it about the bacteria count in the water. We paid no attention to the report because the water was only used over the condenser and then sold to the power house to be used in the boilers.

One day a man came into the offi ce and started to strut around and saying things like, “I am here to shut this operation down; I am an important man from the state who has the authority of a po-liceman.” After Dad got this political appointee calmed down, we found out that he had a report from the test lab that said, “Check for dead horse in well.” Dad put him in the car and took him to the well site. As he drove down the lane between the century-old cemetery and the well, Dad asked the man how he was going to check for the dead horse. He said, “About all I can do is look.” He did. There was no horse, and his report said so.

The Next ChapterBy 1970 I was struggling to maintain some kind of presence

and income in the ice business. It became more and more dif-fi cult and required more and more time for less and less money. We went the whole route from crushed ice in a 100 lb (45 kg) canvas bag to sized crushed ice in plastic-coated paper bags, ice cubes cut on a steam-powered grid cutter, to a fragmentary ma-chine. We had coin-operated vending machines and wholesale delivery to large country clubs, grocery stores and gas stations. It was a sad day when I decided to pull the plug. Dad had died, and my two brothers had gone on to other ventures. It was up to me to put a three-generation business to sleep.

Several suppliers of the fragmentary ice machines and large industrial refrigeration machinery believed I knew more about the refrigeration side of the ice business than they did, and I was approached to help solve some of their problems. The result was my being sent on some very interesting projects. These projects included building an ice plant for a cement contractor on a hy-droelectric project so far north that icebergs were fl oating down the river; and for a fi shing dock in Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa.

This was what I did for a living. I was right back doing what my dad and grandfather did. Someone asked me once if my only goal in life was to make people think about what I said or wrote. After thinking about it for a while I told him that my real goal in life was to drop a raw egg into a fan and watch what happened. Think about it.

References1. Tigon, F. A. 1933. Cancer: The Potential Penalty of Electric Refrigeration.2. Donaldson, B. and B. Nagengast. 1994. Heat & Cold: Mastering the

Great Indoors. ASHRAE.

Al Smith is a retiree with primary work experience in heavy industrial refrigeration, mostly ice manufacturing.

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