How the Pomperaug Pioneers Preserved Food: Iceboxes, Wax Paper, and Life Without Plastic

Among the first writers for History Chip was a group of 80 and 90 year old residents of a beautiful retirement community in Southbury, CT, called Pomperaug Woods. We met once a month for about 8 years. The writers, and there were anywhere from 10 to 15, wrote about their memories over their long and interesting lifetimes. After a while, the group asked me for prompts, story suggestions, and with that change we began to collect multiple stories on a specific topic, which was great. That gave us a number of perspectives on a given topic. The group, which we dubbed the Pomperaug Pioneers, wrote about a wide rangeof topics including dating, WWII, the Great Depression, games they played as children, smells, music. One interesting topic was food preservation. I wanted to know how they kept left-overs or wrapped up their sandwiches or kept food cold. This was a great topic because so much about it has changed and so much about it seems so foreign in the 21st century. I hope you will search out these stories in our archive but as you do, keep in mind that these are all stories about how food was kept in the United States. Imagine the fascinating stories from other countries teaching all of us a thing or two about ways to preserve food!

Here are a few tidbits from the archive.

From “Keeping Food” by Elsie Johnson:

[We] kept [food cold] in an ice box which had a drip pan that had to be emptied every day! The Ice Man would deliver blocks of ice in various sizes. He would have the truck stop at all the houses which displayed a card indicating the size of ice you wanted - 25, 50 - 100 lbs. He would bring it into the kitchen carrying it with tongs over his shoulder covered with a leather cloth. As he chipped the ice in his truck, we would wait patiently for him to give us chips to suck on - what a treat! We would wait for the ice man to come like the children of today waited for the ice cream man. Food was kept wrapped in wax paper or a container in the icebox. My mother would keep fresh vegetables in the cool dark area of the basement.

Here in Connecticut, there were Ice Houses, as well as other areas, which stored thick chunks of ice which had been cut out of local lakes. These chunks of ice would be loaded into horse drawn trucks and delivered with the help of big tongs to the ice boxes of local homes and businesses. Imagine emptying those drip pans every day!

And from “Street Sounds” by Jeanne Henry

There were other noises also – not existing today such as the hurdy-gurdy man who wandered up and down, turning the handle on his music box, in hopes of having a few coins thrown his way – and the clop-clop of hooves signaling that the ice man cometh!  With his huge blocks of ice to be placed in – where else? the ice box (whoever heard of a refrigerator?) – or the milk man in his wagon?

A writer friend from India, Prati Kaufman adds:

Growing up, I watched my mom and grandma repurpose everything. Plastic was so rare that each plastic bag was cherished—washed, saved, and reused time and time again.

Now, living in America, I can’t bring myself to throw away anything that can be repurposed. Empty cartons become storage containers, ghee jars store dry goods, and old clothes are transformed into cleaning rags. Candle boxes turn into pen holders, and even old toothbrushes get new life cleaning hairbrushes, windowsills, and graters.

I squeeze every last bit out of toothpaste tubes, adding a little water to empty jars to capture the final remnants of spaghetti sauce.