The iceman don’t cometh anymore

As someone who hates to be cold, I have always held that fire was

man’s greatest discovery.

The wheel? I don’t drive anymore, and if you don’t drive, the

wheel doesn’t seem all that significant. Can you sit around a wheel

on a cold night and warm your hands? Or slap a couple of steaks on

the wheel to grill? No. Fire has it all over the wheel.

However, it has occurred to me that there is something right up

there with fire, and that’s the ice cube.

When I first came to Balboa, which we have established was shortly

after the last dinosaur waded into the La Brea tar pits, most people

had ice boxes. This was a primitive version of today’s refrigerator

-- an insulated box with space for a large block of ice that kept the

food cold.

Underneath the ice box was a pan that caught the water as the ice

block slowly melted and, in every household, someone had the

responsibility of regularly emptying the pan so that the kitchen

didn’t become awash in ice water.

Clarence Reed owned the ice house that served most of the area. If

memory serves me, it was on 32nd Street.

Every winter, huge slabs of ice were brought from places like Big

Bear and stored in the ice house. There, they were hacked into

300-pound blocks and loaded into the ice truck that delivered ice to

each household.

An ice tong with four or five teeth was used to break those

300-pound blocks into the correct size to fit into the various ice

boxes. Then the iceman would grab a pair of regular ice tongs and

heave that block onto his shoulder, protected by a piece of leather,

and carry the ice into the house. As you can imagine, you had to be

incredibly strong to be an iceman.

Clarence’s son, Bob Reed, was our local iceman and a hero to all

us little urchins who would gallop after the ice truck, grabbing

slivers of ice whenever the iceman’s back was turned. It wasn’t just

little kids who admired Bob.

The whole town thought he was the best iceman in the area, and so

when someone from Santa Ana claimed that honor, there was nothing to

do but have a contest -- a half-mile run up Balboa Boulevard carrying

a 300-pound block of ice, first man across the line the winner. You

would have thought it was the Kentucky Derby the way people were

betting.

The Santa Ana contingent arrived, and their man was big, but he

was no bigger than Bob Reed. The two contestants stood at the

starting line, their ice tongs ready, the blocks of ice on the ground

next to them. The starter raised his gun -- there was nothing penny

ante about this contest -- and fired.

Both men slung the ice blocks up on their shoulders like they were

pillows and started off. At first, there was no difference between

them, but gradually, Bob moved ahead, and he reached the finish line

a good 10 seconds ahead of Santa Ana’s best. If he’d been a hero

before, he was godlike after that.

My first job was chipping ice at the Green Dragon. For 10 cents an

hour, I wielded an ice pick, and I can tell you, it’s a slow way to

make ice for a drink.

When you reach the ripe old age of 91, you don’t have a lot of

time to waste, and to reach into the refrigerator and pull out some

ice cubes for my evening toddy ... well, I’d say that’s pretty close

to sitting next to a warm fire, and way ahead of any wheel.

So in my book, the ice cube is right up there.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.