Transcript

Location: 426 Sumner St.

William Koch: Now, in them days, they had—they did have ice, you know—they harvested ice for—to use for refrigeration. And they harvested—harvested this ice up on Black River and out here on the Mississippi and the East Channel, all over. You see, everybody had to have ice! The railroad company had to have a lot of ice for perishable freights and all! And their icehouse was just, uh, north of the, uh, old North Side passenger depot. That had a big icehouse there! And  that provided a lot of work in the winter time for—for people. Men, who would go out and cut ice and they had to haul it to the icehouses. And they’d put these piles of ice up! In the icehouses and put sawdust between the tiers. And that would keep the ice from melting, see. And whenever they wanted ice, they’d just scrape the sawdust off and they’d load it into the cars that had to be refrigerated. 

And we used to cut their ice all the way over on the Black River, see. And then they’d have horses. They’d lay skids—they’d lay down skids. Skids were about—uh, ice skids were about, uh, oh, maybe two feet wide, see. And they’d lay them down in sections—they had sections that they would store in the summer time and in the wintertime they would lay them out on the ground clear over to the river, see. And then they had a horse. They had a doo-dad that they hooked onto the ice—they probably put a dozen or so cakes on the skids. They’d slide them up on the skid outa the river. And then they’d have this hook that they would place in the cake and a horse would pull it along the skid to the icehouse.