Each town of any size had an ice house where ice was made.  There was a big room where the temperature was below freezing.  The room had thick insulated walls.  In that room cans were filled with water and sunk into brine.  After a period of time the water in those cans would freeze.  Once frozen these cans would be emptied of the ice.  Each of the cans had a block of ice weighing 300 pounds.

These 300 pound blocks would be removed from this freezer room and run through a machine that would score the ice so that the 300 pound blocks would be score at the 50 pound levels.  This was so the ice could more easily be separated into smaller pieces.

In Coleman this scoring machine was outside the ice house.  The ice would be moved from the freezing room through the scoring machine to a storage room.  The tiny chips that flew from the blocks of ice as it was scored, we called snow.  As a boy as we walked by the ice house we would pick up some of this “snow” and eat it., It sure tasted good on a hot summer’s day.

People would go to the ice house, tell the man there buy how many pounds you wanted and the man there would use an ice pick and cut out that amount of ice from a 300 pound block.  The scoring made it easier to separate the ice from the 300 pound block into smaller quantities.  Ice could be bought in quantities of 12 ½, 25, 37 ½, 50 pounds, etc. 

 If you lived in town you would place a sign in your window showing how many pounds you wanted.  The ice man would drive up the street in his horse drawn wagon (later a truck), see the sign in the window and use an ice pick to chip off from a 300 pound block the amount of ice on the sign and carry it to your house using ice tongs and put it in an ice box.

The ice box in the home was just a wooden insulated box with two compartments.  The  top place had a door that lifted up and that is where the ice was placed.  The lower part had a door that opened out and that is where food was placed.  Both compartments were lined with metal.  The top part had a small pipe fixed to the bottom that was connected to a pan under the ice box.  As the ice melted the water would go to the pan.  The pan had to be emptied periodically or else it would overflow and the water would run on the floor. 

The ice house also had a machine that would crush ice.  This crushed ice would go into 50 pound sacks made of leather and canvass.  In town the ice man in his wagon or truck would take the crushed ice to the drug stores for use in the soda fountains for drinks and to restaurants and cafes.  There were no such things then as ice cubes. 

When I was 16 years of age I quit my job as a soda skeet or soda jerk at the Owl Drug Store and went to work at the ice house as a helper on an ice truck delivering ice to homes, drug stores, restaurants and cafes.  Sometimes I would also work at the ice house serving customers.  The ice house was operated by West Texas Utility Company.

If you lived on a farm or ranch ice was not delivered.  You had to go to the ice house, buy ice and then take it home.  Some of it would melt before you got it home.  Frequently when you bought it you would wrap the ice in quilts to slow the melting.

In the north, where your grandmother Denise grew up, in the winter it would be below freezing for several months.  Some of the lakes would freeze.  Sometimes water would be pumped from a lake into a pond that would freeze.  After the water froze in the pond or lake, men would take long saws and saw the frozen water into chunks of ice.  The saws had a handle at each end so two men operated the saw.  The ice would then be carried to a storage room or building a frequently be packed in sawdust to slow melting as the temperature became warmer.