HISTORY ON THE ROCKS
Unless you’ve spent the last week in Australia (lucky you!) you’ve probably been going through a lot of cold drinks lately. Whether your jam is lemonade, iced tea, seltzer or slushy, with or without a little adult kick, chances are pretty good that you’ve been using plenty of ice in recent days. And if you’re a history nerd like me, you might have wondered how people got their ice before the days of a good fridge with an icemaker.
Like so many other things we take for granted -- say, comfortable beds, indoor plumbing, and more than one outfit to wear -- iced drinks have been around for centuries, for the top end of society. The ancient Romans used snow from the mountains to cool their wine, and visitors to the Ottoman Empire were very impressed to be welcomed with what we’d recognize as slushies. But unless you had the money and power to force other humans to drag that ice to your house, you were going to be very happy with the water from the local spring, or the bottom of the well –- which was actually pretty refreshing on a summer day, as long as you drank it right away.
It wasn’t until the early 1800s when a New England businessman named Frederick Tudor figured out how to keep ice cold for shipping, and started selling it to wealthy British folks in the Caribbean. Soon, a whole lot of other people realized that having ice was a great idea, and it became a major industry. As it grew, it became more accessible and affordable to the masses.
Ice harvesting was big in New England, the Great Lakes, and anywhere that got cold enough for thick layers of ice to form on bodies of water. It won’t surprise you to know that Norway was one of the other big producers!
Harvesting ice was exactly what it sounds like. In the dead of winter, when the ice on a lake, river or pond was as thick as it would get, crews would go in and saw it out in massive blocks, then load it into ice houses, to keep it covered in straw and other insulation until it could be shipped, usually by barge.
By the mid-19th century, the ice industry had moved well past the wealthiest, and many homes had some minimal refrigeration. Grandma calls the fridge an icebox because that’s the word her mother used – and Great-Grandma probably did grow up with one.
Great-Grandma, and her friends, relied on those ice boxes to keep dairy products and some other things cool, and certainly, if your Great-Grandma was anything like mine, enjoyed the occasional drink “on the rocks.”
Iceboxes were common enough that when the winter wasn’t cold enough in Maine or Minnesota, there would be shortages, known as “ice famines.” It happened often enough that some companies went out of business, and speculators ruined themselves trying to take advantage of the following years. But ice had become an essential household item, and the daily visit from the ice wagon was a fixture of comfortable home life (just like the milkman) into the 1920s at least.
Reliable electric refrigeration finally did what ice famines couldn’t, and superseded the old icebox. But the next time you get a cold drink, take a good look at those ice cubes – and maybe add a splash of something in honor of Great-Grandma and her pal the ice wagon.
Like so many other things we take for granted -- say, comfortable beds, indoor plumbing, and more than one outfit to wear -- iced drinks have been around for centuries, for the top end of society. The ancient Romans used snow from the mountains to cool their wine, and visitors to the Ottoman Empire were very impressed to be welcomed with what we’d recognize as slushies. But unless you had the money and power to force other humans to drag that ice to your house, you were going to be very happy with the water from the local spring, or the bottom of the well –- which was actually pretty refreshing on a summer day, as long as you drank it right away.
It wasn’t until the early 1800s when a New England businessman named Frederick Tudor figured out how to keep ice cold for shipping, and started selling it to wealthy British folks in the Caribbean. Soon, a whole lot of other people realized that having ice was a great idea, and it became a major industry. As it grew, it became more accessible and affordable to the masses.
Ice harvesting was big in New England, the Great Lakes, and anywhere that got cold enough for thick layers of ice to form on bodies of water. It won’t surprise you to know that Norway was one of the other big producers!
Harvesting ice was exactly what it sounds like. In the dead of winter, when the ice on a lake, river or pond was as thick as it would get, crews would go in and saw it out in massive blocks, then load it into ice houses, to keep it covered in straw and other insulation until it could be shipped, usually by barge.
By the mid-19th century, the ice industry had moved well past the wealthiest, and many homes had some minimal refrigeration. Grandma calls the fridge an icebox because that’s the word her mother used – and Great-Grandma probably did grow up with one.
Great-Grandma, and her friends, relied on those ice boxes to keep dairy products and some other things cool, and certainly, if your Great-Grandma was anything like mine, enjoyed the occasional drink “on the rocks.”
Iceboxes were common enough that when the winter wasn’t cold enough in Maine or Minnesota, there would be shortages, known as “ice famines.” It happened often enough that some companies went out of business, and speculators ruined themselves trying to take advantage of the following years. But ice had become an essential household item, and the daily visit from the ice wagon was a fixture of comfortable home life (just like the milkman) into the 1920s at least.
Reliable electric refrigeration finally did what ice famines couldn’t, and superseded the old icebox. But the next time you get a cold drink, take a good look at those ice cubes – and maybe add a splash of something in honor of Great-Grandma and her pal the ice wagon.
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