A recent phone conversation with my cousin, Jack Burch, who lives in North Carolina brought back memories of wintertime activities in Saguache - some sixty years ago. I don’t think it is just my childhood memories. I am quite sure the winters were colder, back then.

I have vivid memories of my brother and I going with our Granddad ‘Sandy” Burch out to the reservoir to bring back blocks of ice which were stored in one of Hammond Merc. icehouses. The old log barn which stood directly across the alley from our place was used for this purpose, but the main icehouse was along the alley in the 500 block on San Juan Ave.

I have been told that a livery stable was located there, back in the early days. So I wonder if the livery barn was later used as an icehouse. I would also think that early day merchants such as Gotthelf & Tarbell and others would have likely stored ice at some location.

The blocks of ice which were sawed manually at the reservoir were well over a foot thick and possibly 16 inches wide and 30 inches long. A crew of men loaded the ice in Granddad’s wagon, using planks to make a ramp. The blocks were stacked several layers high and chained to the wagon box for the trip to town.

Upon arrival, the ice blocks were layered and completely surrounded in sawdust. This method of insulation worked great -  there was some shrinkage, but the blocks usually lasted until the next winter.

I remember of several ranch families along Saguache Creek who stored it in icehouses of their own. It was always a treat to visit Uncle Harry Burch’s family at the “White House” ranch in the summertime. Quite often we kids got to help bring ice from the ice house, crush it and help make ice cream from real cream!

This was before the days of home refrigerators, so most folks had some type of ice box to store perishable food items. My folks had Hammond’s deliver a block of ice weekly during the summer months. The rest of the year we relied on the screened in porch located on the north side of the house. The only problem with this arrangement was the lack of a thermostat.

Fred Curtis delivered a quart of milk to our house early in the morning. If we failed to bring it in the house within a few minutes, the milk would freeze and would expand a couple inches above the milk bottle -  with the paper cap still on top.

Quite often, Sally and I realize that we are from a time long past, as we get a puzzled look, when asking one of the Grandkids to get something out of the “ice box”.