We didn't have a freezer when I was young. We had a tiny little box at the top of our fridge that was just big enough for a coupe of ice cube trays and we thought it was great. Sometimes you could even store a bit of ice cream in the little cubicle. If it was left too long, the container filled with ice crystals and became dreadful tasting. It was better, however, than the fridge that I remember from my three-year old life. That was a literal ice box. It had a chamber for keeping things cold and another for the ice. A man would come every few days and sell us some dry ice to put in the top of the box which kept things cold for a bit. That was during Word War II.
My grandmother would be at school teaching and I would be home at the apartment we shared with my beloved Aunt Renee and Uncle Max. The ice man would come and I would be fascinated by the whole procedure. He would carry the ice into the house with a pair of large ice tongs. Aunt Renee said that if he touched the dry ice it would be so cold that it would burn his hands.
I also remember that we walked a lot. We walked to the small grocery to get needed items. There was a little corner grocery and we would just ask for what we wanted. The grocer would fill the order by giving you the item you wanted. Forget asking for a brand at that small store. You got what he had. Of course, we shopped once a week at the larger grocery store where you went around with a cart and picked out what you wanted. At the corner grocery, a child could be sent with a few dollars and come home with the item in a brown paper bag and some change. When I was tiny, of course, I just went with an adult. When I got older I was allowed to walk there and back. Usually, I was allowed a few pennies for a treat because I had run the errand. You know, had I kept walking everywhere, like I did back then, I would be in a lot better shape than I am. Now I have taken up daily walking for my health. Then I just did it because everyone else did. :)
When we moved to Carbon Avenue, there was Mabbitt's Market just a block away. When my cousins and I would be sent there for a can of tuna, for example, we were given a nickel to buy a treat. I liked to use it all on a Three Musketeers Bar because he actually had three chocolate sections and we could each have one. However, we usually got something else like all-day suckers. Sometimes we would buy popsicles which we all liked but which made a mess of the fronts of our outfits before we got the block back home.
