"The Iceman Cometh"

This truck might look familiar to only a few of us old remnants from 8th St.

I remember that Nick Dora the Iceman ( and in the winter, the Oil man) would drive down the block every 2 or 3 days. My mother would leave a piece of cardboard in the window with various amounts written on them. She had one that read "15 "...another "25" and as he drove by he would look up at the windows and this alerted him that we needed 15 or 25 cents worth of ice. If we were playing outside when he came, we would all stand at the back of his truck, he would climb on and using huge Ice tongs, he would pull a big, big block of ice to the street end of the truck, and using a smaller pick, he would chop off a block. I remember we would wait for the chips of ice to fly into the street and we would run and grab a chunk and suck on it as if it were a piece of candy. Then he would toss a piece of canvas over his shoulder, hoist the block of ice on to it and walk up two flights of stairs,( we lived on the 3rd floor) place it in my mothers "Ice Box" and all this for his 15 or 25 cents. On the way down he would knock on the other doors to see if anyone else needed ice. Only now, as I write this,do I realize what a hard job he had, but he made a living in those hard times.... He was a short guy, maybe 5'2 or so, stocky and bald.

In the winter time he made the same trip, only now he delivered oil actually, I think it was kerosene. It was needed for the stove to heat and cook....Not sure why I thought of this but wanted to share it. Do any of you remember him ?....

I found this picture on line and that is how I remember his truck, only he had a large canvas tarp covering the top and sides.....Oh, by the way, in the winter, we very rarely used ice...we had a small wooden crate on the fire escape outside the kitchen window and that is where the few perishables we had were keep....no one stocked up on food...they would go to the corner grocery store...(John Iapossi's) and buy the few items they could afford, fresh each day...and yes you kids who may be reading this, we did walk 10 miles each way to school in the snow...and that was in the summer time...lol