By Staff
The other day when we had one of our hot and humid summer days, my wife said what are you puttering around in the kitchen for now?
I said, oh, nothing, I'm putting some ice cubes in my mother's old white china bowl because I'm going to have a treat – something I used to like as a kid back in the 1930s.
It used to get so hot that you didn't feel like even eating.
For lunch I used to chip off some small chips of ice from the big chunk in the top of our old wooden icebox (remember an icepick?).
We had one that had Walker's Ice printed on the wooden handle.
I put the ice chips in the bowl, added some milk and gave it a good dose of salt.
Then I'd break up some soda crackers in it and go at it.
Boy, eating my treat sure brought back some good memories.
As another substitute for crackers, we also used to tear up pieces of white bread (which, as I recall, was not so soft and cushy like now).
Do you remember as a kid you were told if you eat those unripened green apples you picked off a tree, you would get a bellyache?
Try it sometime and when you do, sprinkle a little salt on it.
Though it has been many years ago, I can still recall the sharp taste and don't recall any bellyaches.
Back before TV and electronic video games we kids survived by creating our own entertainment.
We made "slingshots" from a Y-shaped tree branch, which others used to call a "fly-open" crotch.
Some kids on their big balloon-tired bikes had a little generator that was fastened to the front fork and had a round head that when it was pushed up against the moving front tire it made electricity to light up the head and tail lights.
Also, some kids had a couple of raccoon tails hanging from the rubber grips of the handle bars.
Some substituted leather thongs instead.
I can remember as kids how we used to go downtown and scrounge the alley to see if we could find big cardboard boxes like refrigerators or stoves came in to tote home to create something from them.
Like I say, we had to improvise back in my growing-up days.
We made our own swing to hang from a tree branch out of a long rope and a gunny sack bag of old rags.
Before Styrofoam or plastic coolers to keep things cold, they were put in a big, heavy canvas bag container filled with dry ice.
Another thing you don't see anymore, but something I remember, was when a person would go down to the ice plant and get a 25- or 50-pound block of ice and carry it home on the front bumper of the car.
There was room to put it on the bumper that stuck way out in front of those old cars, if you remember.
E-mail him at cardinalcharlie@hotmail.com.