Where do you keep your food?

Nutrax, in the Hoosier cabinet, are the 'hoppers' the things that look sort of like cisterns attached below the dresser part?

Before there were "fridges" does anyone remember Ice-chests? Or am I the oldest one here?
The ice man came a couple of times a week, he wore a sack over his head and shoulders and carried the large ice block on his shoulder. He put the ice into the compartment top of the ice chest and it kept our food cool for ages. We kids would go out to his truck and ask for small bits of ice from the blocks.
We have always had a pantry, a small room for food storage and china. Much better than cupboards, you can see everything at a glance. They are still building pantries in modern homes here (in Sydney).

Back to the museum. There is a placard that you could put n your window. It can be rotated to show 25, 50,or 75 pounds of ice--or no ice. The iceman would show up with a horse drawn wagon, with ice packed in straw. If you wanted ice, he'd deliver the right amount & put it into the ice box.

You are not the oldest person on any thread to which I contribute, Shona, and I remember iceboxes well (icebox was what it was called here in Chicago). My paternal grandmother had one, and my brother and I did her shopping for her. I think that my brother may have been the one who emptied the tray that collected the water from the ice as it melted.

The ice man, a neighbor, didn't wear a sack of any kind, but had a leather pad over one shoulder. He used an ice pick to chip a large block of ice on his truck to the appropriate size, then used ice tongs to lift the smaller block to his shoulder and from there into the icebox.

You were obviously more high-class than my brother and I were. We never sucked ice chips, but when a roof in the neighborhood was being re-roofed we would ask the roofers for bits of tar to chew on. Delicious, as I remember (and probably carcinogenic). The roofs in our neighborhood of two- and three-flats were tarred, with overlapping rows of "roofing paper" unrolled onto the hot, wet tar, after which gravel was spread over the surface.

Edited by NorthAmerican to add the ice tongs link. The ones pictured date from the 1920s.

#10 --

What were refrigerators called before, Vinny?

In my family, it was the icebox (although it was an electric refrigerator). Some of our neighbors said frigidaire. Both might have also called it a refrigerator.

#21 --

We kids would go out to his truck and ask for small bits of ice from the blocks.

When my mother was a little girl on the West Side of Manhattan, c. WWI, the ice man would shave ice into a twist of newspaper, put syrup on it, and sell it to you for a penny. But not if you were my mother, whose mother didn't trust the iceman's hygiene, and didn't let her buy any.

Before there were "fridges" does anyone remember Ice-chests?

yes, we had one and also a Coolgardie safe. We lived a long way from town so would bring ice home wrapped in wet hessian

We have a small pantry in our house in Scotland and we call it a "pantry". I didn't realise it had become so obscure.

I remember the icebox very well, even after it became an electric refrigerator it was still an icebox in our family as in VinnyD's. Never heard the word fridge until I went to Australia.

Spanish in México shortens it to "refri", which makes more sense than "fridge".

NA, what is high class about sucking ice chips? We were not above picking chunks of ice off the road and eating them too. They were great days -- we had the rabbit-oh, the clothes-prop man, the Chinese veg. seller, the ice man, the milkman, the baker, all of these had a horse and cart. Mum would rush out with other ladies and scoop up the horse poo for the garden, while we fed the horse.
The horses all knew the way and would go on to the next stop by themselves.
Pardon me, I just got lost in the past.

Nutrax, I have never seen a Hoosier cabinet before. What an amazing piece of furniture! It looks like a dresser, but with more functions.

Shona, I was joking. Sucking ice may not be high class, but my brother and I, chewing tar, didn't quite measure up to that standard.