The Superior Express -

I enjoyed Saturday’s spring-like weather and appreciate the rain which followed but I am not looking forward to the colder temperatures and the possibility of snow which conclude the forecast for this week.

That might be different if I had plans to put up ice. There was a time when putting away ice was a regular winter activity.

Recently while reading an issue of the Ruskin Leader published in 1923, I came across a story distributed by the University of Nebraska Extension Service which advised every farm should have an ice house and farmers should be making plans to harvest ice.

It was reported the average farmer should plan on putting up 5 to 10 tons of ice each winter plus about 50 percent more to allow for melting during the warmer months. To store the ice, the farmers were advised to construct an ice house. Recommended size was 10x8x8. No mention was made of how to insulate the ice house.

My grandfather Blauvelt said he found it easier to obtain a summer wheat harvest crew if he had ice from the previous winter to cool their drinking water.  Grandfather was a businessman who between business ventures engaged in farming and thus had opportunity to build more than one ice house.

For some of the farming ventures, he may have been able to obtain the ice from the Republican River or a flowing creek. I now wish I had asked him where he got the ice when he lived on farms in the Abdal area. I’ve been to those farms. They weren’t near streams and farm ponds were not common when he was farming.

Superior once had a thriving ice industry. The Santa Fe railroad maintained ice ponds in the Republican valley south of Superior. Newspapers of that era tell of the railroad bringing in large gangs of men to cut and ship ice frozen naturally.

The Burlington railroad operated an ice cutting and shipping facility at Crystal Lake near Ayr.

Here in Superior the Edsel ice company had a pond at the southwest corner of Superior. Water from the mill race was diverted into the pond and allowed to freeze.  The resulting ice was cut and hauled to the company ice house located about where the 213 Building is now. I don’t know how Grandfather Blauvelt insulated his ice houses but I believe the Edsel ice house was insulated with cork.

I recently read a story by the Nebraska Historical Society that said when white settlers arrived from the east they, found Indian children used blocks of ice for sleds.

Somehow the children obtained blocks of ice about 12 inches thick and attached rawhide straps with which they could pull the ice blocks up hill. At the top of the hill, they sat down on the ice and went scooting down hill. Sometimes, when the ice block bounced over an obstacle, it would shatter but that wasn’t a  big deal. The youngsters just cut another.

I wish the story would have told how the youngsters cut the ice.  It doesn’t seem to me tools made of bone or flint would have been suitable for cutting ice.

While I haven’t seen it in recent years, I am supposed to have a bar that was once used to harvest ice.  For awhile, I kept it in the newspaper garage but I got afraid an employee who didn’t understand the purpose of the bar would try to use it for a pry bar. It would have been easy to bend and make it unsuitable for its original purpose.  So I put the bar away — and it is away so well that I haven’t seen it for several years.

It had a round shaft with a knob on the top so it could be easily lifted and dropped on the ice. The business end was heavy and made in a flat wedge shape. Apparently, to break the ice, it was lifted up and then allowed to fall straight down as the user guided it to its mark.

I remember the day my father bought the bar.  We were attending an auction of an old farmer’s things. As a young man, my father had worked with the farmer and perhaps had seen the bar used. 

I didn’t understand why Dad was actively bidding on the bar. It was short and didn’t look like a good pry bar. Dad was all smiles when the auctioneer knocked it off to him and the bar was passed back.  He handed it to me and said, “Son you need this.”

I didn’t understand why I needed it and asked for an explanation.

It wasn’t the first time Dad presented me something I didn’t know why I needed.  Among that class is the header barge fork he brought home from an auction.  When he was getting ready to go to the auction, I asked him to be on the lookout for a pitch fork. I wanted a small bundle fork to use for distributing garden mulch. Instead he bought a fork more than twice the size of what I had in mind.  The large fork was originally used for pitching straw in threshing process. It takes a stronger man than me to pitch green grass clippings with that beast.

When thinking about the weather and Thanksgiving memories, among my good memories are three that came on unusually mild days.

One year, at Rita’s parents’ farm, we gathered around the tailgate of our pickup and ate homegrown watermelon. I didn’t believe the garden catalog when it advertised a Thanksgiving melon but I ordered a small package of seed. With a nearly white skin, the melons never looked ripe but I harvested some at the end of the growing season, kept them from freezing and took them to the farm on Thanksgiving Day. After the traditional meal, we ventured into the yard in our shirt sleeves to sample the melons. They had a very thick rind but in the center we found tasty flesh. 

I only planted them once but I would like to try them again.

Another year, after the meal prepared by my aunt was finished, my uncle wanted to burn some of the extra calories and asked if there was anything I needed help with. I mentioned some fence I wanted to build around the orchard before cattle were turned into an adjoining field to graze the corn stalks. It was necessary to wade into a nearby stream to set some of the temporary posts but it was a shirt sleeve day and with boots I didn’t mind wadding in the water. The next day we had a blizzard that left 9 inches of snow.

My third memory involves the Thanksgiving that I went horseback riding with my parents.  Dad and I rode together a lot but my mother seldom had time to join us. That year, of all times, she had time on Thanksgiving day.