It was an amazing, round-shouldered 1950s model with an enormous chrome-covered handle that you pulled down like the throttle of a steam engine as you flung the heavy door wide open to your right, engulfed momentarily in a cold mist from your face down to your shoes. Philco was the make. Solid, and dependable. It seemed droll and old-fashioned to me in the 60s, as Mum and Dad had upgraded to a model with sleek, straight lines and a separate freezer on top. Ours was a Fridge, because that’s what you call a Frigidaire. Nana always called hers “the icebox.”
It stood, a bit humped and forlorn, in the dining room in Nana and Fufa’s city apartment in Batavia, outside of the small kitchen whose four walls only had the space for a work table for carving or for making pies, a sink in the right corner, a large double-hung window that looked down into the brick-walled alley where Fufa parked the car, and of course her gas stove.
From those fired up burners she produced kitchen miracles like her home-fried potatoes, a lunchtime specialty, where she would stand, dressed in a housedress and in her apron, and patiently dice up leftover boiled potatoes from the night before (chopping them up right inside her black cast-iron skillet using the sharp end of a used soup can), and bring them to golden perfection in a bit of bacon fat, which she always had on hand, stored in the icebox.
The table for eating seemed enormous to me, and it was pushed into an opposite corner of the dining room from the icebox, but still had space to seat four people. Of course Nana and Fufa were only two in number, except when one of us nine grandchildren would stay overnight. Nevertheless, the table still had the space, even with two kids, for the setup of her bulky reel-to-reel magnetic tape recorder, stacks of newspapers, and her favorite salt and pepper shakers, which were for me a permanent feature on the table, a kind of revered, national landmark.
They had probably been brought back from a trip to Florida, years before. They were in a futuristic mid-century style with flip-up lids that screwed on to the striated glass bases. The tops were made of the latest Bakelite, or maybe plastic, one deep green and one ivory-colored. They were so remarkable, I think they were the only things Ron wanted to keep when Nana was widowed, and had to close the apartment to move back to the farm with her sister. I kept her seasoned cutting board, handmade of pine, with painted red edges. Mum got the skillets.
When I was ten or so, I asked her why she called it the icebox, and received a lesson of how years ago ice was delivered door to door, and you’d tell them how much you needed and they would chip off a hunk from the huge block sitting on the wagon down on the street, drawn by horses, even in the summer, and bring it up the three flights of stairs for you. To be placed inside a wooden icebox.
Of course, back on the farm out on the Alexander Road, her father had all the fresh eggs, chickens, and hogs you could ever need, in the old days. She told me about curing hams back in the barn, which would get them through the long winters, of making their own bacon, and the wonderful orchards where Grandpa Schultz produced apples, pears, peaches, and all kinds of vegetables which he sold in town. We still have his carefully written lists and prices from the sales. A few pennies, here, ten cents there.
One summer I took remedial algebra classes at the Batavia High School, and had lunch with my grandparents every day. Nana had some specialties that, depending on the day of the week, I looked forward to and enjoyed after my morning classes. The fish market had smelts on Fridays, and many times I was glad to enjoy a plate of them when she would fry up a batch. They were one of Fufu’s favorites, too. They were so small, and so tender, that you’d eat them, bones and all, by the forkful. And I spied on her one time in the kitchen, cooking up a tongue. It must have been a beef tongue, as it was enormous. She knew how to tenderize and boil it for hours, in her biggest pot, and it came out fall-off-the-fork-tender.
Many times, my whole family would crowd into the front room with my grandparents, and Nana would go to the icebox and bring out a bucket of vanilla ice cream. Off in the kitchen, she’d serve up gobs of it to each of us in her deep, ivory colored soup bowls with the red ridges, and would take out the large tin of her best New York State maple syrup, brought back from the Adirondacks, and generously drown the ice cream. The memory of those wholesome, high-calorie Saturday afternoons, brimming with love, is still warm in my heart. One summer day, when she stayed with us years later down in Pavilion, I made a batch of my own home-made vanilla ice cream, and Nana told me it was just as good as what they used to make fresh, back on the farm. But I think she was fibbing.
Even after I went off to school in Boston, I’d visit her in the nursing home between semesters, and of course would sing for her, which she loved and always asked me to do again and again. On one of those visits, she gave me hints about how to economize costs on food. That’s where she told me about potato soup, which I had never had. This must have taken her right back to the Great Depression, when Fufa simply couldn’t get a job, and they had three little girls to feed.
The recipe is basically what you have available. Your potatoes, an onion, if you have one, some milk if you can, and maybe “a spoonful of fat, to give it some flavor.” For that, she told me how to render salt pork, which I actually found at the Star Market on Boylston Street. I never knew if she meant a spoonful for one serving, or for the pot. Sure enough, one batch of potato soup could get me through a week in those student days, and I did survive. In the meantime, I worked cleaning apartments and later as a barman and cook at the Café Vendôme, but all that money went for rent, tuition, and buying scores. Thank goodness for potato soup, which by the way, when made with leeks, is a highly appreciated French specialty.
Ron reminded me recently that Nana always kept a red rose in a glass in her icebox. In a glass of water, just like that. She told him the rose would keep better that way, and she would see it every time she opened up the icebox. I suspect she had an admirer who would lovingly show up every week bearing a rose, and can easily imagine it was Fufa. “Bill and Vi, Vi and Bill” as they were known and loved by all, were inseparable.
If my grandmother had one fault, one tiny but unforgivable quirk in this whole wide world, I’m hesitant to say it here, but still, I just have to. Nana always had a jar of Jiffy peanut butter on hand, just in case one of us kids needed a snack…
But she also kept that in the icebox. I discovered at an early age that it would become a cement-like substance that could almost break a good knife.
POST SCRIPTUM:
Tonight, we’re some fifty or sixty years removed from those events. The air feels a bit heavy, and as I so often do, I go automatically to my own icebox. The urge to pull out some ice cream is irresistible, but this time the sudden thought occurs to me to also get out the maple syrup. Warm and fuzzy feelings overwhelm me as I drizzle the glowing, golden liquid over the deep bowl of three generous scoops. I haven’t done this for years.
The great Simone Signoret famously said La nostalgie n’est plus ce qu’elle était ̶ “Nostalgia is just not what it used to be…”
But this one time, with comforting thoughts of Nana serving us her ice cream, I think a bit of nostalgia is definitely not overrated.