The fact that I know what a Root Cellar is ought to tell you my age. Add to that an Ice House and you will know that I lived in a rural area of Canada prior to 1955.
If you can remember both the Root Cellar and the Ice House being not only in the rural setting but also in town or even a city – you are at least 80 years old – or very close to it.
A few weeks ago I was pointing to a long and odd shaped saw that hung on the wall at the pioneer exhibit. Beside the saw was large pair of tongs – that looked like a big “C” when opened up wide. I told the kids listening that this was used to make Ice Cream… and puzzled looks came over their faces.
Of course the saw was used for cutting ice blocks from the frozen lake and the big “C” was the tongs that were used to lift the massive blocks of ice on to the sleigh to head back to the Farm.
Root Cellar first…
On the old farm at Truax, Saskatchewan was the first place that I witnessed the freaky Root Cellar. My Aunts loved to take us down there with a lantern as it seemed to spook us out.
The entrance to the Root Cellar was below the middle and west room in the farm house… just below the old crank, wall telephone… and in front of a storage shelves that covered the north wall of that middle room.
In order to go down into the Root Cellar it was necessary to roll back an old rug that covered the trap door that was lifted. I think the rug likely helped to insulate the Cellar from heat above and the room from the cool below.
The large black ring was secured to the floor door and when pulled up the dark cavity deep below was ready to swallow you up. When I was 7 years old it looked a cavern. The wisp of dank air that rose was cool and damp. The first few steps down stirred the air that then rose up to meet your nostrils. My aunt was just a head of me holding the old lantern…and as it moved from side to side in her hand it cast shadows on the walls at all sides. Spooky!
That particular Root Cellar was simply dug deep into the black soil beneath the house. The sides of the Root Cellar were dirt…not fancy lumber or cement… just good old prairie dirt.
Over on the south east wall someone had built kind of wooden bins to hold things… As I came closer the shadow cast made everything bigger and moving. In the one bin was the strangest ‘monsters’ peaking out… and their tentacles danced in the shadowy light. These were the potato monsters with their huge tentacles of sprouts protruding upward from the bin. Some of the sprouts were more than a foot long. The potatoes were trying to grow – but couldn’t…
My Aunt told me to pick up some Potatoes which meant reaching into that mass of tentacles and fetching a potato for her bowl.
The first reach in was dangerous… and proved to be real yucky… my fingers went right into a rotten potato… squishy and smelly. My Aunt stated that she figured so… as she could smell a rotten potato a mile away. If she could why did she take me below and make me put my hand into the potato bin first?
I can remember some one calling some one else a “rotten potato” and now it made sense. They were squishy, smelly and not something that you wanted near you.
On the north wall was the make shift plank shelves. On the shelves were dozens of bottles that were filled with all kinds of weird things immersed in fluid. There were red colours, white colours and even green… in large jars and small jars… dozens of them.
This was not a strange laboratory of some kind – it was Grandma’s preserves. In the season before and before the frost came she had pickled and canned almost everything from her garden… and now the produce was stored on the shelves.
Between the potato bin and the canned produce was another bin… it was cool and soft to put your hand in. The content was of sand and a little dampness. My Aunt told me to stir my hand in the sand to see what I could catch… The first dip into the sand yielded a big fat carrot… firm and clean.
After we retrieved enough carrots for supper my Aunt cried out, “What do we have here…” and then she dipped one more time into the carrot bin… and brought a super ugly lizard by the tail. It was truly the dinosaur of the Root Cellar. As she held it the wiggle to get free started… then its tail came off in her fingers… and the thing dropped to the sand again.
I was concerned that the lizard has lost its tail. My Aunt reassured me that the lizard would grow a new one soon… he sheds his tail to get away!
Go figure – Grandma’s Root Cellar was a place to learn more about Biology and Monsters at the same time!
My sister freaked at the sight of the lizard.. which meant that I just had to pick it up – even though it had no tail… which produced the desired effect both with my sister and my Aunt. Yes… the Root Cellar would be a place I would come again.
The one real fear of the Root Cellar was the real possibility that Mr. Skunk would burrow under the side of the house and into the Root Cellar… in which case he would be there when you came down the small stairs… which would not be good at all… worse yet the hungry Skunk might eat some of the food stored there!
The Ice House
Just to the north west end of the house was another odd building that was built very strong. It was one story high with no windows. The door was fastened shut and secured so nothing could get in.
Upon my Grandma’s instruction my Uncle went to the Ice House to get a treasure. Together we stepped inside. The air smelled different and it was cool… very cool. There was a tinge of a straw smell mixed with dank whatever. The darkness inside yielded to the light coming over our shoulders… and there below was a deep hole… filled with straw. The straw was kind of not piled up but rather square looking.
My uncle brushed aside the straw and there in the Middle of Summer was a large block of Ice – white and blue in colour peeking out of the strands of straw sticking to it.
My Uncle’s big arms picked up the Block of Ice with the tongs and away we went back to the house.
Needless to say we didn’t have a refrigerator in those years. I think there was an Ice Box inside the lean-to… but my memory is failing now…
That day I helped Grandma make Ice Cream… by turning the crank as she salted the Ice on the outside of the Ice Cream tub that turned steadily.
Memories of strange places for sure…
Two days ago Alida and I walked into the gigantic COSTCO store in our community. I followed her into the cool room with the perishable fruits and vegetables all neatly in the shelves.
One package stated that it was a product of the USA… another said Portugal… and still another stated Grown in Israel…
There was no lizard there. The vegetables were not in weird, science experiment kind of bottles either.
My how the world has changed! My grandkids will never see the wonders of Root Cellar or an Ice House. It is unlikely they will ever be spooked by the tentacles of the potato bin – or the live lizard in the carrot’s bin… Too bad.
I raise my glass today to an old memory that came flashing back today…
~ Murray Lincoln ~
www.murraylincoln.com
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1 comment:
Wow, I didn't realize I was so old. My great grandmother had a root cellar and an ice house with the ice tongs, and the saw. We used to take the sleigh down in the winter and cut blocks of ice out of the river for her, and put them in her ice house. She would shave off the pieces, and make us home made maple syrup slushes. Mmm, so good.
I guess I am just old at heart.
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