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New, time saving, household appliances have always been a favorite of house wives, house husbands and anyone else with culinary responsibilities. In its time, I think the electric ice box, now called a refrigerator, must have been a sought-after status symbol.

I'll bet you there were some "againers" back in the early 1930s. Things like, "My Mother didn't have one and I don't want one. What if the electric goes off? What if my husband loses his job and we can't pay the light bill? All our food will spoil!" All valid considerations back then.

I remember riding to the ice house with my mother to pick up a twenty-pound block of ice that would ride on the bumper support bar of our car. Did it get dirty like that, riding outside like that? Sure did, but the dirt just melted itself off.

Electric refrigeration did have its economic drawbacks; no more ice houses making 300-pound blocks, no more mule-drawn ice carts on their delivery routes. You didn't have to put your ice card (shown below) up in your front window.

A local financial tragedy was suffered by 4 year-old E.C. (Bob) Prince. When his parents owned the Lynn Apartment Hotel in Sarasota, he used to make as much as fifty cents a week emptying the drip pans in the ice boxes. And, before water-use restrictions were even thought of, his Mother saved the drip water and used it in cooking. LIFE WAS GOOD!

(photo credit: Pete Esthus Collection)