Health & Fitness
Remembering the Ice Block Era
Air conditioning was a revolutionary invention in the late 1930s, when new movie theaters promoted it as a welcome amenity.
Once upon a time there was no air conditioning! And no electric fans! Imagine coping with 90+ degree temperatures with nothing more than a paper or cardboard fan and the shade of a tree. In that bygone era, we could push a bed close to a window, place a pillow on the windowsill, and try to sleep with as much air as a sultry night could provide. And, if that didn't make the oppressive heat more tolerable, we could retreat to the basement which was always several degrees cooler than the rest of the house.
Somewhere around 1937 or 1938, one of the two movie theaters in town opened with--Ta-da!--AC. The marquee made much of this astonishing amenity and it then became possible to escape a sweltering evening by going to the movies. The other--and older--theater was not equipped with a cooling system and it was in this older, larger building that high school graduation ceremonies were held. Into this heavily carpeted and upholstered space graduates, in caps and gowns, of course, had to march and sit for at least two hours on what seemed, inevitably, to be the hottest day of June. Torture!
People who lived in rural areas often had a root cellar or spring house where food could be kept for a day or two without spoiling in the dog days of summer, and a block of ice served that purpose in the icebox that preceded the refrigerator. We brought the ice block back from the ice dealer on the rear bumper of our car. From that block we could chip off bits of ice with an ice pick--a lethal weapon, if there ever was one.
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To compound the woes of summer heat, it was the season when garden produce had to be canned. Over boiling kettles of tomatoes, beans, peaches, applesauce, and whatever else was abundant at the time, the kitchen crew labored no matter what the thermometer registered. Those were not the "good old days" in my judgment. But the absolute worst foretaste of Hades was the low-ceilinged farmhouse in Iowa where my mother was born and where we visited her brother and his family every summer. I cannot think about those visits without feeling that I'm about to melt.
