Country humor

Celebrating the cool
By Jack S. Bray

Nowadays, most of us take them for granted, but two or three generations ago, such marvels as ice cubes on demand were only for the wealthy—or at least the moderately well-to-do—who mostly lived in towns.

Until well into the 20th Century, most rural Americans tried to keep food from spoiling by storing it in springs, streams or cellars. A few harvested winter ice from ponds and filled icehouses. It was a system that worked better in cool weather. As temperatures climbed, food-spoiling bacteria blossomed rapidly and food poisoning was so common the malady often was referred to as “summer complaint.”

The mid-1800s saw the advent of the ice box, a large wooden cabinet insulated with sawdust or seaweed (creating a haven for mice) and containing a tin- or zinc-lined compartment for block ice. A drain line from that compartment carried melting ice water to a pan under the contraption; if the homeowner forgot to empty the pan regularly, it overflowed and dampened the floor under and all around the ice box. Even with the ice box, gelatin salads and frozen desserts were treats only the wealthy could afford.

But the ice box was an improvement of sorts over storing food in cellars and springs, although it depended on a regular supply of ice. Most towns of any size had an ice plant, which made scheduled ice deliveries to households in town. Country people who owned ice boxes either had to haul ice from the plant or use ice from their winter-filled ice houses.

A few commercial refrigerators appeared after World War I. These were costly and cumbersome—and dangerous. These early refrigerators used ammonia and other noxious gases as coolants. If the system sprang a leak, as was often the case, the refrigerant leaked into the room and sometimes killed people, or at the very least, ruined the atmosphere.

Then, in the early 1930s, General Electric developed the “Frigidaire.” This was a sleek, compact refrigerator that used chlorofluorocarbons as a refrigerant. Equally as important, the Frigidaire was priced within reach for most middle-class Americans. The term “Frigidaire” soon became synonymous with refrigerators, regardless of the make and brand. Now, leftovers could be left over longer, since the refrigerator extended the shelf life of food and of the people who ate it.

However, country people—most of them—were still left out in the cold, so to speak, where mechanical refrigeration was concerned, simply because they didn’t have off-the-pole power to run a refrigerator. It wasn’t until rural electricity came to the country that most farm families could enjoy all those blessings of mechanical refrigeration their city cousins had already begun to take for granted.

Of all the benefits of rural electricification (and there are too many to count), refrigeration of comestibles must rank among the top. It’s impossible to measure what doesn’t happen, of course, but it could be that safe, cool food storage has contributed to human longevity as much as all the nostrums developed by medical science.

And electric refrigerators have fewer hiding places for mice.


Dogs for the sake of being dogs
By Mitch Jayne

My wife Diana has spent the biggest part of last year compiling a book about dogs. Not just working dogs, but just the kind of dogs you find everywhere: farms, small towns, urban places or just in somebody’s yard—out in what Ozarkers call “the jillikens.”

Diana is an artist, one of those camera-like people who capture things the rest of us just glance at. Her collection of dogs reminds me of every hound, feist, yard dog or house pet I have ever shared time with, including an insane retriever. That dog would come back with bottle rockets still fizzing, a big rock flung aside from a furrow, or one time, a bass plug cast from a pond bank that required two people with wire cutters to remove from her lip.

What Diana set out to catch is that element of dog personality that makes us have “dogs” instead of owning them, sort of like the reason nobody ever asks you how many children you own. Dogs become family animals and take on the character of the lives around them, putting up with human moods the same way they put up with weather. Dogs eagerly accept whatever’s coming to them.

What amazed me about Diana’s project was that she has forevermore been a cat person—one of those people like Aunt Bee, of Mayberry, who in real life had 15. When I asked her why, she said, “Why not?”

Diana admires cats for the very reason many people don’t; a cat makes decisions on its own and never needs a human watching. A cat old enough to know better can still amuse itself for an hour with a paper sack, sleep in it, bite pointless leg-sized holes to reach through and later tear it into irritating strips—all with no audience to impress.

What has made her discover dogs, to the point of taking a year to illustrate her fondness, was the way they admire humans. Dogs work not only at pleasing us, but try to understand us, and that’s a job most humans hesitate to tackle.

How many people cock their heads in interest when you talk, or wag their whole bodies with enthusiasm on greeting you? Or to put it another way, how many dogs lose patience with your driving, smoking, or humming to yourself, let alone your predictable opinions on life?

Diana has tried to capture those elements of dogs that remind us of ourselves: the way we sigh and stretch with comfort, scratch with industry and yawn with leisure. The way we look for joy in strange occupations and love being appreciated for what we are. The way we look at new land as so full of possibilities we can’t wait to explore it and dig all of our lives for only a faint promise of a treasure at the bottom of any hole.

I’m an old hound man myself, up to now mostly impressed by a hound’s dedication. It took a woman’s insight to make me see that any dog, whatever make or model, shape or size, can make us kinder people—just by being themselves.

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