Thomas Wolfe and the Ice Box
“…there’s not a speck of ice in the refrigerator — and ice cream and iced tea to make for supper — You’ll have to trot right down to the ice-house and get me a good ten-cent chunk.”
The Web and the Rock
Much of the furniture in Julia Wolfe’s Old Kentucky Home boardinghouse can be found in American homes today. Some pieces are only recognized as once belonging to your grandmother. One example is the ice box. Julia Wolfe’s ice box sits just outside her kitchen in the hallway to the pantry. No serial number or maker’s mark has been found on the piece, so the date of its manufacture is unknown. There is also no documentation on when exactly it was bought or moved to the property. Based on comparisons with ice boxes found in the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogues published during Thomas Wolfe’s childhood, this artifact likely dates to the first decade of the 20th century.
Food or drinks stored within were cooled by large blocks of ice placed inside a compartment near the top. Typically, the interior of the ice box was lined with zinc or tin and insulated with cork, charcoal, or “mineral felt” (a combination of mineral wool, asbestos, and hair felt made into thick sheets). The ice block cooled the food stored in compartments below and greatly increased the food’s shelf life. As ice melted, the water drained into a pipe that connected the ice storage compartment and a drip pan kept beneath the ice box exterior. As a result of natural melting, ice had to be replenished regularly.
Homeowners might place an ice card in their front window to alert the local ice delivery workers that ice was needed. Ice was cut to order based on how many pounds of ice a customer wanted. In Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe remembers the deliverymen “…brought dripping ice in iron talons from their smoking wagons; he stood beneath their droning saws and caught the flying ice-pulp in his hands….” If one missed an ice delivery, however, they needed to acquire ice themselves from the local icehouse. To this end, Julia Wolfe possibly sent young Thomas to fetch ice from the icehouse office & retail building on Patton Avenue. When she did, he apparently did not remotely enjoy it and never forgot. In chapter 3 of The Web and the Rock he writes about young George Webber and his Aunt Maw:
Pshaw, boy! — Why to think that he would play me such a trick! — Why, I forgot to put the sign out — but I thought he knew I needed twenty pounds! — If he’d only asked! — but here he drove right by with not so much as by-your-leave, and here there’s not a speck of ice in the refrigerator — and ice cream and iced tea to make for supper. — You’ll have to trot right down to the ice-house and get me a good ten-cent chunk.
Yes! A good ten-cent chunk tied with a twist of galling twine, that cuts like a razor down into my sweaty palm; that wets my trouser’s leg from thigh to buttock; that bangs and rubs and slips and cuts and freezes against my miserable knees until the flesh is worn raw; that trickles freezing drops down my bare and aching legs, that takes all joy from living, that makes me curse my life and all circumstances of my birth — and all because you failed to ‘put the sign out,’ all because you failed to think of twenty pounds of ice!
The Web and the Rock
Ice boxes gradually lost their prominence in American homes as mass-produced electric refrigerators became more affordable by 1927. These new refrigerators eventually became the primary means of food preservation, with about half of American homes equipped with them by 1941. However, the wooden and metal ice box never completely disappeared, and the technology of an insulated box with ice blocks contained inside is still seen in modern coolers today.
Want to learn more? Here are some online resources on the history of refrigeration in America:
· Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300721.txt
· Archives of Maryland Biographical Series — Thomas Moore https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc3500/sc3520/015900/015918/html/15918bio.html
· Smithsonian National Museum of American History, “Keeping Your (Food) Cool: From Ice Harvesting to Electric Refrigeration.”
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/ice-harvesting-electric-refrigeration
· Digital NC — City Directories
https://www.digitalnc.org/collections/city-directories/
· Library of Congress — Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps
https://www.loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps/?fa=location:north+carolina%7Clocation:asheville
· UNC-Chapel Hill — Maps (Sanborn Fire Insurance and other maps)
https://web.lib.unc.edu/nc-maps/index.php
