By Maylon Rice
All the blame for this Pastime belongs to El Dorado teacher and music man – Ricky Green – a longtime friend and observer of all things in our home town of Warren.
Sometime this past sweltering summer, Ricky must have needed some ice for an ice cream freezer or an outdoor event.
He harkened back to the day when such needs took one to the Warren Ice Plant – on Scotta Street in West Warren.
Ice, for sale back then, did not come in a compact eight or 10 pound plastic bag. It came in a block, often wrapped in an old, but clean, burlap bag or better known in Bradley County vernacular a ‘toe’ sack.
If needed, an ice pick was included in the purchase of a 10, 20 or 50 pound block of ice.
Just try finding one of those in a kitchen these days – a long needle like culinary tool – about 6-8 inches lone - with a wooden handle attached.
Often the wooden handle would have imprinted advertising on its handle. Often the name of the business, hours and a slogan if there ever was one for the business was used.
One place I do remember that had ice picks for customers into the late 1960s if not until I graduated in 1974 from WHS was Carl’s One Stop.
Somehow in the vast chasm of my memories – the imprinting on the ice pick was green – and a big line-drawing of a big mouth bass leaping out of the water was depicted on Carl Savage’s ice picks he sold or gave away at this business.
And the CA telephone number of the business. If you don’t know what a Castle Six telephone prefix is, well you really are lost reading this article. I would like to have an old Carl’s One Stop – icepick if one could be found.
Carl and Martha Savage who operated a very successful bait and tackle outdoor shop in Warren forever.
They were the parents of three of the nicest kids – Dale, Jan and the youngest girl, Renee.
Dale was a Lumberjack football player like few others. Jan and Renee, to my memory were both WHS cheerleaders. I know that Jan played in the WHS band, and all three sang in Curry and Mary Lou Martin’s choirs, but I digress.
Back to the ice house. The ice house in Warren was a part of the Southern Cotton Seed Oil Plant (and other assorted businesses) at one time managed by “Bo” Weiss. The Weiss daughters, Nancy and Suzanne’s names came up in a Facebook Post on the ice house discussion. The Weiss’ lived down on one end of Scotta Street near the ice house. The Ice House was near where Mitchell’s Lumber Company is today, according to several of the Facebook posts.
The Cotton Seed Oil mill, crushed the cotton seed from area cotton farmers and formed the oil into a “cake” which would be fed to cattle and hogs. The drying up of the cotton crops in Bradley County (before and certainly after World War II) caused the Cotton Seed Oil Mill to be converted to a fertilizer concern – Swift Fertilizer – which also had a massive plant in Texarkana.
After World War II, back in 1957, there was a big, and I mean big and ugly election of the “wets vs. dry’s” in Bradley County – eliminating since that time all the retail sale of beer and liquor.
The Weiss’ had the local Budweiser distributorship which sold the St. Louis based band and many other kinds of beer for retail and restaurant consumption. The vote to make Bradley County “dry” just eliminated this profitable local business.
The ice house, however, remained for a few more years. A set of scales was near the ice house, operated for ever by the daughter of Emmitt Blankenship – sorry her name escapes my memory.
After Swift Fertilizer purchased the property – including the ice house – the local manager was E.F. Paulus for a while.
The ice house was a going concern; they delivered ice to all of Bradley County on routes. When my uncle Lonnie Brown returned to the Warren area after WWII he lived almost seven miles out on Highway 15 then (the Pine Bluff Highway) and had a 50 pound block delivered each week to his home for an old style fridge.
Lonnie Brown was to later play a big role in the Cotton Seed Oil Mill.
The ice plant had its own power source – a Fairbanks Morris natural gas fueled single stroke engine. The engine had its piston on the outside of the motor. It moved when in operation and had a unique – a very euphonic sound – when the engine was running.
The phuut phutt phutt of that engine could be heard, like the Courthouse clock – all over town in the late evening or early morning hours in the still of the evening.
The ice was drug out onto a dock with the operator – not E.F. Paulus, but an employee with big ice tongs, a wicked looking tweezer like apparatus with sharp barbs on the end to “bite into the ice,” holding it securely. There was always a lot of sand and sawdust around the ice house to help hold the blocks of ice in their frozen state.
After getting the 20-pound block, wrapping it in the burlap they provided you would get home with very little leakage or melting.
I’ll have more about the purchase of the Southern Cotton Oil mill property from a bankruptcy and its final demise in a fire later in another Pastime.
As a kid, I would ask for (and get) a chunk of that hard frozen ice to lick all the way home, riding in the back of my grandfather’s Ford pickup truck all the way to the foot of the North Steel Bridge on the Pine Bluff Highway.
That’s a summer Pastime – worth remembering.
All the blame for this Pastime belongs to El Dorado teacher and music man – Ricky Green – a longtime friend and observer of all things in our home town of Warren.
Sometime this past sweltering summer, Ricky must have needed some ice for an ice cream freezer or an outdoor event.
He harkened back to the day when such needs took one to the Warren Ice Plant – on Scotta Street in West Warren.
Ice, for sale back then, did not come in a compact eight or 10 pound plastic bag. It came in a block, often wrapped in an old, but clean, burlap bag or better known in Bradley County vernacular a ‘toe’ sack.
If needed, an ice pick was included in the purchase of a 10, 20 or 50 pound block of ice.
Just try finding one of those in a kitchen these days – a long needle like culinary tool – about 6-8 inches lone - with a wooden handle attached.
Often the wooden handle would have imprinted advertising on its handle. Often the name of the business, hours and a slogan if there ever was one for the business was used.
One place I do remember that had ice picks for customers into the late 1960s if not until I graduated in 1974 from WHS was Carl’s One Stop.
Somehow in the vast chasm of my memories – the imprinting on the ice pick was green – and a big line-drawing of a big mouth bass leaping out of the water was depicted on Carl Savage’s ice picks he sold or gave away at this business.
And the CA telephone number of the business. If you don’t know what a Castle Six telephone prefix is, well you really are lost reading this article. I would like to have an old Carl’s One Stop – icepick if one could be found.
Carl and Martha Savage who operated a very successful bait and tackle outdoor shop in Warren forever.
They were the parents of three of the nicest kids – Dale, Jan and the youngest girl, Renee.
Dale was a Lumberjack football player like few others. Jan and Renee, to my memory were both WHS cheerleaders. I know that Jan played in the WHS band, and all three sang in Curry and Mary Lou Martin’s choirs, but I digress.
Back to the ice house. The ice house in Warren was a part of the Southern Cotton Seed Oil Plant (and other assorted businesses) at one time managed by “Bo” Weiss. The Weiss daughters, Nancy and Suzanne’s names came up in a Facebook Post on the ice house discussion. The Weiss’ lived down on one end of Scotta Street near the ice house. The Ice House was near where Mitchell’s Lumber Company is today, according to several of the Facebook posts.
The Cotton Seed Oil mill, crushed the cotton seed from area cotton farmers and formed the oil into a “cake” which would be fed to cattle and hogs. The drying up of the cotton crops in Bradley County (before and certainly after World War II) caused the Cotton Seed Oil Mill to be converted to a fertilizer concern – Swift Fertilizer – which also had a massive plant in Texarkana.
After World War II, back in 1957, there was a big, and I mean big and ugly election of the “wets vs. dry’s” in Bradley County – eliminating since that time all the retail sale of beer and liquor.
The Weiss’ had the local Budweiser distributorship which sold the St. Louis based band and many other kinds of beer for retail and restaurant consumption. The vote to make Bradley County “dry” just eliminated this profitable local business.
The ice house, however, remained for a few more years. A set of scales was near the ice house, operated for ever by the daughter of Emmitt Blankenship – sorry her name escapes my memory.
After Swift Fertilizer purchased the property – including the ice house – the local manager was E.F. Paulus for a while.
The ice house was a going concern; they delivered ice to all of Bradley County on routes. When my uncle Lonnie Brown returned to the Warren area after WWII he lived almost seven miles out on Highway 15 then (the Pine Bluff Highway) and had a 50 pound block delivered each week to his home for an old style fridge.
Lonnie Brown was to later play a big role in the Cotton Seed Oil Mill.
The ice plant had its own power source – a Fairbanks Morris natural gas fueled single stroke engine. The engine had its piston on the outside of the motor. It moved when in operation and had a unique – a very euphonic sound – when the engine was running.
The phuut phutt phutt of that engine could be heard, like the Courthouse clock – all over town in the late evening or early morning hours in the still of the evening.
The ice was drug out onto a dock with the operator – not E.F. Paulus, but an employee with big ice tongs, a wicked looking tweezer like apparatus with sharp barbs on the end to “bite into the ice,” holding it securely. There was always a lot of sand and sawdust around the ice house to help hold the blocks of ice in their frozen state.
After getting the 20-pound block, wrapping it in the burlap they provided you would get home with very little leakage or melting.
I’ll have more about the purchase of the Southern Cotton Oil mill property from a bankruptcy and its final demise in a fire later in another Pastime.
As a kid, I would ask for (and get) a chunk of that hard frozen ice to lick all the way home, riding in the back of my grandfather’s Ford pickup truck all the way to the foot of the North Steel Bridge on the Pine Bluff Highway.
That’s a summer Pastime – worth remembering.
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