The Iceman Cometh

When I was growing up in Scarborough during the early 50's it still wasn't a rare occurance to get a whiff of freshly deposited road apples on a hot summer's day. Deliverymen riding horse drawn carts could still be seen meandering up and down residential streets plying their trade. The transition from four-legged modes of commercial transport to motorized vehicles was almost complete, but there were still a few holdouts. I remember the milkman, the coal deliveryman, and the bread man coming to our house with a horse and cart.

Junk collectors still roamed the streets collecting old pots and pans and other scrap metal. The ragman could still be seen lazily riding down the street, his cart piled high with old clothes he'd collected to be sold to the paper making trade.

One of my fondest memories was the iceman. We still had an icebox, not one of the new Kelvinator, Fridgidaire, or GE electric refrigerators. We weren't the only ones in the neighbourhood to hold on to the old fashioned icebox, because there was enough business for the iceman to call once a day during the summer.

Every weekday morning, early, before my father arose to go to work, my mother was up to make him breakfast, prepare his lunch box, and empty the water tray at the bottom of the icebox. She would put a quarter on top of the icebox for the iceman.

The icebox we had was a real old fashioned unit. It stood up from the floor on legs so that the water pan could slide underneath. It was about as tall as an electric refrigerator and was very boxy without the rounded lines of the 50's modern kitchen appliances. It had an old fashioned lever type handle and the hinges were mounted on the outside. The top compartment was for the ice block. Nothing else could fit in there. There was no light, so you couldn't contemplate whether it went off when you closed the door, and of course no freezer to keep the Neapolitan ice cream from melting.

It was always a treat on hot summer days to hear the clop-clop-clop of horse's hooves. Relief from the sweltering heat was only a couple of doors away.

The iceman would pull up to the curb in front of our house and we'd stand on the sidewalk to watch him and wait patiently for refreshing chips of ice. He'd set the wheel brake, drop a heavy metal weight to the road, tie the reins to it to keep the horse from wandering off. Then he'd put a feedbag over the horse's snout.

He wore a long leather apron that went from his neck to his boots. There was a leather pad over one of his shoulders. He'd climb on the back of the wagon and take a long shiny ice pick out of his apron and start hacking at a very large block of ice. He'd chip away until he had a perfect piece of ice, the right size to just fit through the door of our icebox. It amazes me to think that he could remember the exact size of block to cut for each of his customers. When he'd finished cutting the ice, he would pick up a big set of ice tongs, snap them into the sides of the ice and heft the heavy block to his shoulder.

When the block was balanced on his shoulder, he'd kick a few shards of ice to the end of the wagon and then he'd jump down, without saying a word to us. As soon as he had gone to the house, we'd rush to the back of the wagon and pick out the biggest pieces of ice to suck on. I don't think there was anything more refreshing on those hot summer days.

We'd sit on the front steps to enjoy our cool treat, while the iceman would return to his wagon. He'd put the tongs back in their holder, take the feedbag off the horse, slap it on the neck and put the weight back in wagon and climb up. He'd snap the reins sharply, mutter something to the horse, make a few clicking sounds and the old horse would jerk the wagon forward and they'd be on their way to the next icebox hold out.

The cool, shards of ice were not the only things left behind. Invariably, there would be a nice steaming pile of road apples that would be shoveled up and spread in the gardens.

The inevitable happened. One day the old icebox was relegated to the back porch to await the junkman with his horse drawn wagon. The old icebox had been replaced by a brand new, modern, gleaming white, GE electric refrigerator that hummed all day long. It had light in it, and of course, everyone contemplated whether it went out when the door was closed. There was a meter attached to the back for the quarters that used to be left for the iceman. If it wasn't fed with quarters a few times a day, it would shut off. That's how my parents paid for it on a convenient time payment plan, one coin at a time. It had a freezer up top where the ice compartment used to be. Now we could have ice cream all the time, but those refreshing pieces of ice on steamy summer days were really missed.