Posted by Mike Field on April 24, 2001 at 08:38:48 from 203.26.98.4:
In Reply to: Re: How to Keep foodstuffs cool posted by Bruce A Clarke on April 22, 2001 at 03:59:21:
I remember the Silent Knight kerosene fridge quite well, along with the ice-box with its zinc-lined tray under a hinged timber lid -- we had both until we moved house in 1950 when I started school. At that time they were replaced with a brand-new Crosley Shelvador electric refrigerator, one of those now very old-fashioned-looking types with a curved top, on which you precariously balanced your parcels of meat, eggs, butter, and so on while you put them away inside one by one.
We used to take an old green-painted Coolgardie safe away with us when we went camping. Hung from a tree branch, it kept all those sorts of products cool and sweet inside for perhaps three days (in an Aussie summer,) the tray on top filled with water, and with its pieces of wet towelling draped carefully over its perforated sides.
At home, bread and milk were delivered fresh daily, the bread to a box near the Tradesman's Entrance down the side of the house, and the milk to a special brick-paved area inside the front gate. Money was left for each delivery in the appropriate place, and empty milk bottles left out for exchange.
Any groceries you had bought when you went shopping (in the old-fashioned grocer's shop, full of the wonderful aromas of ground coffee, shelled walnuts, and pink-and-black bullseyes) were also delivered free daily, coming in a large tray truck with a roof and open sides -- on the back of which, when empty, and with our legs dangling over the side, the grocer would happily give all the neighbourhood kids a lift for half a mile or so. (That big truck was later replaced with a much smaller Bedford van, and the lifts regrettably stopped. Our grocer's name was Mr Bridger, and for years I thought that every grocer was actually a bridger.)
Ice for the ice-chest was delivered two or three times a week in another, smaller truck. The ice-man would break large blocks into two or more smaller pieces with an ice-pick while we kids watched in awe, waiting breathlessly but unavailingly for him to spike the back of his hand to the timber tray of the truck; then he would give us all a large sliver of ice to suck, and carry the appropriate block on a hessian bag on his shoulder along to the (you've guessed) Tradesman's Entrance.
Ray's comment reminds me that I once heard the ubiquitous refrigerator described (quite correctly) as "the little piece of England that all Australians keep in their kitchen."
And for Ed -- I think it's high time, Ed, that we found you something useful and constructive to do, instead of letting you just drop your little comments in here from time to time to stir us all up :-)