It was a warm late winter day in 1937, and I was a seven year old boy.

Our good neighbors had joined us for a day of harvesting ice for our newly constructed Ice House.
No one in our community had refrigerators as they weren’t readily available nor did we
have electricity to operate them, but we did have ice boxes. That day we were filling
our ice house with blocks of ice. It was a few miles from a creek that had been dammed
up and had frozen ice about a foot thick. The ice would be marked so 14 to 16 inch
blocks could be cleanly cut with a large, long toothed saw. Those blocks would be
loaded onto a wagon, pulled by two horses and hauled back to our farm. There they
would be stored in our ice house and fit into our ice box throughout the spring and early
summer.

Cutting, hauling, loading and unloading was a dangerous job because a block of ice
could slip away and hit someone if you weren’t very careful. That work was done by the
older members of the work gang. While they were away getting a load of ice, Marilyn,
our seven year old neighbor girl and I would play and slide down the cellar door. We
did have an important job to do. As the layers of ice blocks were built up higher, there
was room for us to get between the ice and the roof where we would cover it with straw
for insulation between the layers and around the sides. Bigger people couldn’t fit in as
the space became smaller.

While the older men were getting more ice, Marilyn and I liked to sing and slide down
the ice house door. A popular song at that time was “Hey, hey, oh playmate,
Come out and play with me.You’ll bring your dollies three, Climb up my apple
tree. Cry down my rain barrel, Slide down my cellar door. And we’ll be jolly
friends Forever more.

So sorry, playmate I cannot play with you. My dolly’s got the flu.
Boo-hoo-oo-oo-oo. Can’t cry down your rain barrel, Or slide down your cellar
door. But we’ll be jolly friends Forever more.

As we sang, running around from our rain barrel, to the apple tree, we slid down the
cellar door so many times, my little friend wore the seat of her pants out, exposing her
little cheeks. I’m not sure why I remember that, I guess it just seemed funny at the time.
After the ice house was filled, we covered the ice with clean straw. The ice was not
used until the weather warmed. We then took out one block and put it in our ice box in
the house where we could keep milk and butter and a few other items. A block would
last at least a week. We occasionally would take a block and break it up in a gunny
sack into smaller pieces that would fit into our ice cream freezer. Ice cream was a real
treat.

The blocks of ice were used up by the time we got to fall. Then we relied on the cool
weather of the year to keep our food cooled. We didn’t use our ice house very long as
we would have a delivery of ice to our farm home once a week. One block of ice for a
dime.

Then electricity came through and refrigerators became available and the ice house
became obsolete.

Some information about Schimmer’s Lake