Hey GG - my mom also had that. Except she said the ice man would cut the block to size - and knew the size of everyone’s ice box. But perhaps there were only two sizes!?
I mentioned to her that I guess back then you never had a REAL cold glass of anything - no ice for the tea, soda, whatever. (She laughed - SODA!?) But the kids would crowd around the ice man (horse-drawn) and he would make sure to have extra shavings for the kids to have!
She said the milk man had a truck, but the Sheny man (sp?) had a mule. Her mom felt bad for him, so would always have something that the kids could bring out to him.
On milk days my old man said he would sneak down early and drink the cream that rose to the top before his mom could bring it in! Usually he would tell this story as he was drinking from one of the plastic creamers in the restaurant!
Another embarassing moment would be when mom would tuck the leftover rolls or bread in a paper napkin to bring back home. “No sense wasting it as they’ll just throw it out anyway”. And once home she would wrap it in a washed out bread bag to keep it fresh. (”Baggies”? - What are those?)
Those frugal habits die hard. In both her winter and summer home she has spots for the washed bread bags and the washed and smoothed out aluminum foil that she will use over and over!
Those frugal habits die hard.
My depression era parents and relatives frequently would get accusations of being cheap.
They would simply reply, we are resourceful.
soda was an extremely rare treat, and thats later on in the depression for many of them.
Everyone I know, aged from their 40s to their 60s washes out ziplocks and has a place to dry them. If the foil isn’t greasy or really gooey from something, that gets washed and dried and reused, as well. My oldest friend is in her 80s, comfortable financially, and she still saves bread bags. Also, we all use and reuse the green or yellow produce bags that absorb ethylene. And we will all rinse and dry paper towels to reuse, if they aren’t really dirty or greasy.
All the folks above are working middle class to upper middle class. Our money goes to taxes, property taxes and energy, so we are frugal where we can be. We also shop devotedly at consignment stores and flea markets and vie for the best find at the lowest price.
We had an ice man when I was young. It was the same man who delivered the milk and orange juice. Real refrigerators were in short supply for awhile after the war. He had a horse-drawn truck and always gave us kids a large chunk of ice in the summer. We had cold drinks: you took an ice pick and chiseled some off the corner of the ice block. The rag man lived along the crick in a shack, had a horse with a hat and we all thought that old nag was a Palomino!
BTW: *sheeny* is slang for Jew.