When ice was nice: Local Historical Society remembers the days of ice harvesting

As the warm February sun beat down on the clear roads of Addison, Vt., the subject of ice would never have crossed one’s mind. But on Sunday afternoon, Feb. 21, members of The Addison Town Historical Society gathered with community members at the Addison Community Baptist Church for slides, speakers and discussion about the bygone days of ice extraction from Vermont’s major waterways.

Every chair in the room was filled and a plethora of delicious baked goods gave the afternoon a festive air. The group first watched a brief presentation of slides from Lake Champlain ice extraction in 1957. The pictures outlined a process in which a coalfired conveyor belt transported ice from the lake to a nearby ice storage house. The ice was used as an early refrigerator for food as well as an air conditioner on train passenger cars. By wrapping a large ice slab in canvas and stowing it under each seat, passengers enjoyed comfortably cool trips into the hot summer months.

At the conclusion of the slides, conversation turned to personal memories and anecdotes from the days before electric refrigeration. Old friends reminisced about life before modern technology and commented on the relative ease with which we live life today.
Ninety-four-year-old Dean Jackson spoke of his memories of ice cutting on Otter Creek with his family and friends from nearby farms. He explained the labor-intensive process of horse-pulled plows and the hand cutting of ice in bitter Vermont Januarys. “That was rough manual labor, any way you looked at it,” said Jackson. “We didn’t mind it in them days ’cause we didn’t know any different.”

His relief at the mechanized improvements to the process was huge. By the 1940s, the Jackson family was using a Model-T Ford engine buzz saw to cut through the frozen creek.  He displayed a passionate expertise for the process. “We would snap them cakes [of ice] edgeways after we had sawed ’em crossways,” said Jackson, his outstretched arms giving his audience a feel for the dimensions of the ice.

When asked how much a slab of ice weighed, Jackson gave no estimate.

“I never weighed one, but I dropped one on my foot once,” he said, chuckling.

He told the group that as a child a plow horse once got a little too close to the edge and fell right through the thin ice.

“I was a kid, and just about scared to death,” said Jackson.

Luckily, his father was able to save the horse and warm it up in the family’s heated barn.

Mechanization truly changed the face of ice extraction. One mechanized ice plow could do the work of 50 men in the same amount of time. The ice extracted from Otter Creek was packed in sawdust and stored primarily in local icehouses, but ice from the larger areas in the Champlain Valley found its way all over the Northeast.

Mary Sleeper shared an entry from her grandfather’s diary at a time when ice shortages in New York City increased demand for commercial icehouses in West Addison. Vermont’s cold winters and expert ice extractors made Addison a supplier of ice for points south of Albany and throughout New York State.

As the discussion progressed, others brought up stories they had heard of dangers associated with ice extraction. Red Clark chimed in about a friend he had who once went through the ice.

“He was fiddlediddlin’ around, and slid right in,” said Clark. “He was fine, though quite concerned that his cigarettes got wet.”

While modern technology certainly makes life easier, it takes some longer than others to come to grips with the changes. Charles Chapman spoke about his mother’s ancient icebox.

“Probably the oldest one still in use,” he speculated.

Machine frozen ice was delivered to her door each week by a gas-burning truck until the demand for such an out-of- date practice died off all together.

His wife, Evelyn Chapman, still remembers the first refrigerator her family got.

“I was six or seven years old, and I’ll never forget how excited we were,” Evelyn Chapman said. “For the first time we could keep things cold all the time.”

As they sipped coffee and laughed about the old days, these Addison County locals with stories to tell found the atmosphere anything but icy.