When I was a wee little nipper, my parents bought a new Philco refrigerator so they could mix my formula and keep it cold.
This was back in a time when having a refrigerator was still a pretty big deal for people who had grown up in the country, so I have no doubt it was cause for celebration.
They always called it “the ice box,” and I deeply hope they weren’t more excited about it joining the household than they were me.
The Philco was a workhorse. It kept my formula and the family’s food cold from the end of Harry Truman’s second term all the way through Richard Nixon’s.
It held everything from the raw milk from our Jersey cow to frozen liver for catfish bait to left-over pinto beans and new potatoes.
Sometime while I was overseas, the parents bought a new refrigerator and wheeled the ice box out into the garage, where it kept random things cold until my parents moved back to Ada in 2007.
After my parents died, the old Philco made its way to my garage, where it has been sitting, unplugged and empty, for six or seven years.
Over the weekend, I was feeling kind of 1952ish, so I plugged it in and immediately heard the low hum that I remember. It has taken a while for it to level off at a good operating temperature, but part of that is because I have trouble reading the numbers on the coolness dial.
It’s getting there, though, so we have stocked it with some period-appropriate bottles of pop. Grapette, Orange Crush, Mason’s Root Beer, Double Cola.
Also on Saturday, the delivery truck of happiness brought a camera I bought on eBay some time ago.
It’s an Ikoflex with a serial number that indicates it probably joined the world about the same time as the ice box and I.
Everything still works as intended, even though the focus knob is the slightest stiff. I’m about halfway through a roll of film, which I will send off to a place in California for developing.
The ice box and the Ikoflex both still work pretty much as intended, which gives me cheer and hope for an extended run of usefulness.
Now I’m thinking I need to find a ‘52 Chevy coupe.