Historic Hood River
New Refrigerator
2-21-2014
Notes
This electric company display explains to housewives why they need this new General Electric refrigerator/ freezer. We take easy food storage for granted, but being able to shop for a week at a time and store leftovers is a pretty big deal.
Buzz
Electricity may have done more for our modern world than anything, but I do remember looking forward to the daily deliveries from the iceman who used his icepick to give us kids a sliver of ice to suck and chew on a hot summer day.
l.e.
We still have my mom’s first frig but it is a single door. I didn’t know they made two door back then.
I don’t use it very often. Sometimes in the summer for a beer frig. No lettuce….it freezes the lettuce.
Remember when we used to unplug the frig, pull everything out and start the long process of defrosting?
Arlen Sheldrake
never saw ready kilowatt or whatever the name in a skirt before….cute. Ah yes, the tiny freezer inside the refrigerator…ours not much bigger than a ice cube tray. And the freezer storage locker somewhere on the heights….much like todays storage space rental but freezers instead……that’s where the side of beef or the deer or elk meat went for periodic access.
l.e.
Yep…and when you take the lock off of your locker, don’t put it in your mouth to hold it while you get the meat out.
It leaves you with nasty looking lips when you rip it off.
I am really curious about this frig. I wonder how well the separate freezer and frig compartment worked.
Our freezer box either froze the contents of the frig, or if you turned it down, the ice cream melted.
Refrigeration made a huge change for the dairyman.
m
I would venture a guess that Ready Kilowatt has on an apron rather than a skirt…
Dedilee
Definitely an apron. There are some very interesting pictures of Reddy if you Google his name and look at images. This is one I’ve never seen featuring Trudy Tenderfoot, in a Home Economics booklet by the Ohio Edison Company. http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3171/2462267345_8d4ab326ed_o.jpg
Reddy’s image was used nationwide it seems, I always thought he was from the Northwest.
charlott
Didn’t Samuels have freezer lockers? We had one at "The Boys" Pine Grove Store (then owned by my cousins) and most people who grew their own beef, pork or were avid hunters had one. If I recall there were different sizes. I know when everyone got their own freezers, it was finally torn off the back of the building.
My grandma had either the first or one of the very first Amana freezers delivered to her home.
Judy
The name of the store on "The Heights" where we took our meat to the locker, was ‘Toby’s Meat Market’ . Toby Sherrell owned and operated it. I had a used GE fridge, but not with a top freezer. It came with me from Ohio a long time ago. It had a small freezer box inside, if you could call that a freezer, where you could freeze ice cubes. Used it as a second fridge for years and then one of the boys took it off to college with him.in the 70’s. Finally, had to leave it in CT….still running….but too heavy to move. They made things to last then.
nels
Thanks for Toby’s name Judy. I had been trying to think of that for several months. He and his wife were very nice to me as a young mother. And his freezer drawers were life savers. Was sorry to see him close.
Charlott
I am not certain, maybe you know Buzz, but I think Toby bought the meat market that was Samuels.