The Iceman

One of my favorite people, Aunt Sister, visited our home in the summer. She was a teacher, and her best school story revolved around a second-grade boy.  He had a problem with his grammar, and often said "have came" and "have went".

His teacher had the boy stay after class to write 50 times on the blackboard:  "I have come, and I have gone".  When he finished, the teacher had stepped out of the room, so the boy left a note saying "I have wrote 'I have come, and I have gone' 50 times, and you ain't came, and I have went home".

I thought of that sentence, when I recalled the demise of the ice man.  My first job was iceman's helper, for all of fifty cents a week.  And I was worth the money.  A picture show cost a nickel, candy bars, coke or popcorn, the same.  Plus all the ice I could eat.  And in 1935, when I was twelve years old, a 12 1/2 pound block of ice was also a nickel. We didn't eat a lot of ice, but when you take an ice pick to a four hundred pound block, you always had a few small pieces break away.  This was about the only perk I enjoyed that summer. 

An old friend, Charles Kilpatrick, a veteran of the BB and Rubber Gun Wars on Groesbeck and Bremond Streets, sent a message through another friend recently.  He asked if I ever heard of some neighborhood boys spooking the ice wagon mules.   They were helping themselves to scraps of ice, and when they jumped onto the wagon.   The mules took off like a whip had been cracked over their heads.  In their flight  the wagon rammed a nearby garage.  Charles lives in San Antonio, and as soon as I get his email address,  I'm going to smack him with these old ice house stories, ready or not.  I am interested in hearing his version of this tale, since I suspect he had something to do with the mules unruly behavior.

Ed Kenley, another lifelong friend, reminded me of the mule-drawn ice wagon that pulled up to the side of their home on Fourth Street.  The red brick house still stands across from City Hall in Lufkin.   When the ice man of the late twenties and early thirties delivered ice, they drove a team of the smartest mules in the world.  The mules knew the ice route as well as the team driver did.  The mules would patiently wait, while the driver delivered ice inside the house.  When he returned and mounted the wagon, they moved toward the next stop.  But, on this particular morning, the animals were restless.   The Kenley home was at the top of a steep hill.  And that one block hill on Fourth Street, beside the Central Fire Station, was an unpaved sandy slipperly slide.  The driver was inside when the mules suddenly lurched, sending a 400-pound block of ice careening down the hill.  The driver, hearing the commotion, quickly led the mules back down the hill, where the firemen helped load, and wash-down the block of ice.  The driver then walked around in front of the mules and gave them a very hard stare.

Electric refrigeration became more affordable by the mid-thirties, taking a large part of the ice company's business.  Lufkin Ice Company added a packing plant about that time.  It was very successful, serving more than a dozen surrounding counties.  Both plants closed during World War Two.  The building and its contents were destroyed by fire following the war.  The complex burned for several days, and while the local firemen have forgotten the Fourth Street ice slide, they surely remember the stubborn fire they fought at Lufkin Ice and Packing Company.  That building was located at the present site of Albertson's Shopping Center.

THE ICE MAN PLAYED A LARGE ROLE IN OUR LIVES, BUT the avalanche of time took him out.

HE HAS CAME, AND HE HAS WENT''. 

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