I am certain that WWII seems like ancient history to many, but I was a small child living in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Civilization was on the cusp of the first technological advances of the twentieth century. Televisions—black and white—had been created but were not common in the average household. Telephones still had wires. Most cars still had manual transmissions.
The refrigerator had also been invented, but my family did not own one. We had an ice box. This appliance—I use the term loosely—required that a large block of ice be deposited at regular intervals to keep perishable foods cool.
We lived on the top of a three- story walk-up. Callers pushed a button which rang a doorbell in our apartment. A member of the family trudged down the stairs to open the outside door eight steps above street level to admit the visitor.
The ice man drove a horse-drawn wagon. He wore a black rubber garment with a padded segment over his left shoulder. Taking massive steel tongs, he laid a fifty-pound block of ice over his shoulder and lugged it up the long flight of stairs.
The best part was petting the ice man’s horse waiting on the street. For a child in San Francisco, one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the twentieth century, it was a big deal to see a horse.
Reminding readers of how much the world has changed and of the small pleasures of a by-gone times is one of the reasons I write.
This post is adapted from the post “I Have Seen Much in the Past Seventy Years” published 4/11/16 on the blog Sharon writes as Sharon Burgess: http://www.sharonburgess.com/blog.html.