Where did they get the ice ?
Them coloured boys who were carrying the blocks of ice, what ?!
sharethey got the ice from a garage or a store that sells (or provides free of charge) blocks of ice
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MovieChat Forums > O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2001) Discussion > Where did they get the ice ?
From an ice house.
Very common in rural areas back in those days.
yes, but where did the garage or a store get the ice... it takes two weeks for anything to arrive.
Smoke me a kipper. I’ll be back for breakfast
stargazer1701-1 wrote:
yes, but where did the garage or a store get the ice...
In 1844, an American physician, John Gorrie, built a refrigerator based on Oliver Evans' design to make ice to cool the air for his yellow fever patients, so can probably be said to be the father of the ice generator.
In 1851, John Gorrie was awarded US Patent 8080 for an ice machine.
In 1853, Alexander Twining was awarded US Patent 10221 for an ice maker. In 1855, James Harrison received a similar patent for an ice maker in Australia.
In 1867, Andrew Muhl built an ice-making machine in San Antonio, Texas, to help service the expanding beef industry before moving it to Waco in 1871.[2]
In 1873, the patent for this machine was contracted by the Columbus Iron Works,[3] which produced the world's first commercial ice-makers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icemaker
Ice houses allowed a trade in ice that was a major part of the early economy of the New England region of the United States, which saw fortunes made by people who shipped ice in straw-packed ships to the southern U.S. and throughout the Caribbean Sea.
In Texas, former ice houses are a cultural tradition. Ice merchants diversified to sell groceries and cold beer, serving as early convenience stores and local gathering places. The widespread US 7-Eleven convenience store chain developed from ice houses operated by the Southland ice manufacturing company in Dallas and San Antonio in the 1930s, which were first known as Tote'm stores.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_house_%28building%29
By the turn of the 20th century, manufactured ice became more common. The Pacific Fruit Express (PFE), for example, maintained seven natural harvesting facilities, and operated 18 artificial ice plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator_car
I would guess that ice, whether manufactured or harvested, was distributed over moderate to long distances by refrigerated railroad cars. Trains ran everywhere in those days.
By the time of this movie, trucks would have handled local delivery quite quickly.
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Actually, back before refrigeration was ever available, people harvested ice in the winter from rivers, etc, and then stored it in deep root/ice cellars, packed in sawdust, where it kept very well even throughout the summer.
I learned this from reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Farmer Boy". In fact, from reading her Little House series, I would probably know how to churn butter, butcher a hog, and break a horse!
KatrinaW wrote:
Actually, back before refrigeration was ever available, people harvested ice in the winter from rivers, etc, and then stored it in deep root/ice cellars, packed in sawdust, where it kept very well even throughout the summer.Certainly, but that only works in areas that get cold enough in the winter to get a thick layer of ice.I assumed that part of the question was how would they have gotten the ice in the South. Certainly some of the ice would've been harvested that way and then shipped by train in insulated cars.As noted in one of the articles I quoted, ice was even shipped from New England to the Caribbean. I was surprised.David-CG's very useful Scripts for Firefox: http://userscripts.org/users/67626 share
My grandfather's brothers and sister (born between 1901 and 1918) would have grown up in roughly the era the movie takes place, and I can confirm that ice houses were common. The way they did it was to go cut ice from a pond during the winter and pack it in the icehouse, very tightly with sawdust as insulation. It would keep very well that way. It would be used for the icebox in the kitchen- as well as occasionally for making ice cream in the summer. It was necessary in the days before widespread rural electricity.
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