2 stories both involving my dad who was born in VERY rural Tennessee in 1937. Just down the street from the log cabin that he was born in, was a small store. This store was built OVER a natural spring. And the store had a trapdoor to a small area that they stored milk and other perishable items in the water stream. This kept them from spoiling as the water from this spring was ALWAYS cold. As in “brain freeze” if you drank it too fast on a hot day kinda cold.
At the ripe old age of 15 when my step-grandfather abandoned my grandmother, my dad quit school and got a job delivering ice blocks to people who had “ice boxes”.