Did You Know: Getting Around in Winter, Part III - The Ice Industry
Aldro Hibbard’s “Ice Pond,” which he painted in Vermont in 1927, is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Photo by Smithsonian Museum
The Vermont Folklife archive is full of amazing first-person accounts of everyday life in Vermont and New England–past and present. In this feature, we share these stories with you.
In our previous two posts we highlighted some of the ingenious ways Vermonters navigated winter weather. This month we look at the once-thriving business of harvesting and selling ice from Lake Champlain–through the voice of Albert Morelli. As a boy in the 1920's and 1930's, Albert worked with his father, Frank Morelli, whose Rouses Point, NY ice business served towns in New York and Québec. Albert’s accounts come from a 1994 interview with Vermont Folklife's Greg Sharrow, conducted for a research project exploring life and work around the Lake.
In this first segment, Albert talks with Greg about how his father would stake out the areas of the lake he had cut to warn people about thin ice
AM The first part of the ice season when he tried to cut, he had to cut a cake, pack it in a box with sawdust and send it to Albany to have it checked by the health department to see if the ice was clear, no bacteria, it was all right to put in people's homes. And once he got the okay on that, then he could start his cutting. And he usually tried to start his cutting before the Christmas and holidays for the simple reason that after Christmas, people threw their Christmas trees out. And he'd go around in the afternoon and pick them up alongside the road and bring them out on the lake and stick them in the snow all around where he cut. So, if anybody went out there ice skating or sail boating with sleds, they wouldn't go near there. Otherwise, that was too thin, somebody go through. He used to stake the lake all out like that when he cut.
Over the two to three weeks they harvested ice, Albert and his father–along with hired help that included local farmers–would cut blocks weighing 100-150 lbs from the frozen lake. Here Albert describes the system his father created to get the ice from the lake and into their icehouses efficiently.
AM It used to take him to fill his 2 icehouses about maybe 2, 2 1/2 weeks, sometimes 3.
GS So it was pretty quick.
AM Oh yeah. It was a quick operation. It was rough work, it didn't pay much. I remember Saturday nights the men used to come up and get paid. Some would make 12 bucks, some 16, depending what they did. The farmers with their teams of horses would make a little bit more. And the horses used to be covered over with horse blankets all the time, because they weren't moving that much, you know, to keep warm.
He'd hire quite a few of the local farmers with sleighs to draw the ice from the lake up to the icehouse. The icehouse was about maybe a quarter of a mile away from the lake. His icehouse was located on Rose Avenue in Rouses Point [New York], then he had another one here in Champlain [New York], a smaller one. The farmers used to get in there about 9 o'clock in the morning, that gave them a chance to get their chores done on the farm with their sleighs and their teams of horses. Dad would have a crew down there early in the morning cutting. When they first started out, they cut with hand saws. I've got some up in the attic in the garage that I kept. They're about maybe 6 foot long with about 2-inch teeth on them. Then one of the men that worked for dad come up with the idea of building a power saw with a gasoline engine on it, which worked very good. Had a great big wheel on it. He'd get down early in the morning and cut, and by the time the farmers got there, the ice was ready to move. They'd have a chute that would go down into the water, they'd push the cakes over there and pull them with pike poles. And the cable horses, they'd put a sling like around the cakes, the team of horses would pull them up onto the wagons.
Lyndon Vermont: Sam Handy is shown with the machine and he has ice-creepers on his boots for sure traction. More on this image.
Image courtesy of the St. Johnsbury History & Heritage Center and Ned Handy.
Ice harvest on a pond in Lyndon Vermont, showing the system for moving ice into the ice house. More on this image.
Image courtesy of the St. Johnsbury History & Heritage Center and Ned Handy.
The wagons were only so high off the ground. Once a wagon got loaded, the farmer would drive his team up to the icehouse and they'd unload them there. He'd have a pretty good size crew working in the icehouse because once they started pulling it up into the icehouse, they had one crew that would place the ice cakes side by side, and another crew that would put sawdust on them. They put a layer of sawdust, layer of ice, layer of sawdust, layer of ice until it filled up. The icehouse was about maybe I'd say about 100 foot long, and pretty close to 50, 60 feet wide. Maybe about 24 feet high.
GS So how large a crew did he have? How many farmers?
AM He had I think about 6 wagons. And he must've had a crew of about maybe 20 men. Because, see, you had some on the lake working, some in the icehouse. And when we got up to the icehouse, they had a platform, just about the same height as the sleigh. They pulled about maybe 5 or 6 cakes of ice on that platform. Then they had a chute going up with angle iron on, and they'd put a sling on that with a rope going through the other side of the icehouse, with blocks and tackle, and a team of horses over there. When they were ready, this guy would yell, and the other guy would take off with the team and pull the cakes up into the icehouse.
GS You were talking about loading with a sling, and now unloading with a sling. OK, we got a wagon, and I assume that the ice was in blocks.
AM They were in blocks about 2-foot wide and about maybe 3 foot long.
GS Two foot wide, 3 foot long, and then the depth of the ice.
AM The depth of the ice. You take like right now the ice down at the lake is about 25 inches thick. It all depends on the thickness of the ice. They'd run between 100, 150 pounds a cake.
GS So would they pull each cake individually with a sling?
AM Oh no, they'd pull 4 or 5 at a time, right up into the icehouse. It was no problem with a team of horses.
Next, Albert talks about the process of delivering ice, sometimes to individual households, sometimes to businesses, and sometimes to the railroad–before the advent of refrigerated cars!
AM When he was ready to take his ice out, he'd take them a cake at a time with a pair of tongs with a pulley, lower it down into the truck. And we fill the truck up with ice, we'd go down on the state dock, and he'd have a pail with a half-inch line on it and dip water up, wash the ice all off. Because, see, that ice all had to be clean before you could deliver it. And then, I got the ice stuff in the garage there, we get to a house, and he knew just about how much each person took by the size of their icebox. He'd chop off a chunk, put it on the scales, he had a scale right on the back of the truck. I got that in the garage up in the attic. Know how many pounds of ice they were getting, what to charge them.
GS Would he physically deliver it into the icebox?
AM Oh yes, go over in the house, put them in the icebox. That's why he'd give all the customers one of these. Like in the summertime if you wanted to chip some of your ice, make ice water you could. Everybody got an ice pick. Used to keep them by the cases at home.
Ice entering an icehouse and handled with pike pole which swung blocks into place. More on this image.
Image courtesy of the St. Johnsbury History & Heritage Center and Ned Handy.
But that [filling the icehouse] used to supply him all summer long between the two icehouses. He'd have all the customers here in Champlain. And at those days, most of your grocery stores and your bar rooms–after the license came in–would have ice because they had no refrigeration to keep their stuff cold. And another thing he used to get–sometimes 2 or 3 times a week in the middle of the night–he'd get a call from the railroad. They would have cars coming in with fruits and vegetables on them, and he'd have to go up and fill them up with ice. Because, see, in those days they didn't have refrigerating cars like they do today, it was ice. And that was a pretty rough chore too.
I used to go with dad a lot on the ice truck. And sometimes at night when he was filling up the freight trains, I'd go with him and hold the lantern. Because he couldn't do that alone, he had to get one of the other men to come with him. He'd have to haul it way up on the top of the boxcar to put it down in the holes inside on each ends.
GS Describe that to me. You had to go up on the top of the boxcar?
AM Yeah, there was an opening up there, you put the cakes down in.
GS Would they go down into like a...?
AM Like a compartment on each end, and it kept your whole boxcar, the produce or whatever it was in there spoiling. We'd never see the produce where we were.
GS So would it take a lot of ice?
AM It would take at least a truckload for each boxcar.
GS How many cakes would a truck carry?
AM I'd say about 30, 40 cakes, stand them up on ends. You'd set them up on ends, it wouldn't take so much room.
During Prohibition in the 1920's and 1930's, Lake Champlain was a hot spot for smugglers transporting Canadian beer and liquor into the United States. Here, Albert tells a humorous story involving some contraband they discovered in the icehouse one day.
AM Dad and I went down to the icehouse to get a load of ice, he needed some ice. I don't know if it was one of the stores here or in Rouses Point, I've forgot which. We looked over in the corner, we saw a big pile of sawdust, and that was unusual, you know? So, dad went over, and he started pulling the sawdust away. We found 14 bags of Canadian beer. So, we unloaded it, we put it in the truck, covered it over with the tarp. We had a canvas that we covered the ice with, we covered it over and went home, put it all down cellar. Went back and got our ice and delivered it. About 2 or 3 weeks later, a guy from Rouses Point says, "Hey Harry, did you, uh, find any in your icehouse?" Dad says "No, why?" "Well," he says "I hid about 14 bags of beer in there," he says "they were after me and I didn't know where to hide it." My father says, "Don't ever let me catch you putting stuff in my icehouse like that!" [Laughing] That was the end of it! We had the beer. It was an awful time those days.
Albert's memories give us a firsthand window into this important industry that, in the era before refrigeration, stored up some of winter’s cold against the heat of summer. This is our final segment in our series exploring how Vermonters traveled, worked, and had fun in the wintertime. Next month, we'll start a new series of "Did You Know" articles, highlighting some of the many musicians in our collections.