I spent too many hours in those Texas Ice houses after a long hot day in the sun. It was one of those wonderful experiences that I cherished while days spent in Houston. Thanks for the nostolgia, as the Ice houses are very unique vibe that doesn't exist outside of Tejas! Now its a Non alcholic brew in a desert yuppievale full of IPO's!
Sacrilege! Blasphemy! Speak not of sacred brew without the requisite ethanol.
A couple of Mrs. FarSide's friends who live stateside and married Merkins have been in town for a wedding, and I've been chatting with the husbands about the state of affairs in the Merka and sharing geezertalk about the good ol' days. I had a sudden and vivid flashback to long hot evenings spent kicking my boots off with a tall glass of ice cold sacrament.
For a time, we had 7-Eleven and Circle K here, but they were run off because they were stealing vast market share from their pale, anemic Indo cousins. We just can't have Texas know-how showin' up the locals, now can we?
Reminds me of Barta's store in Moulon, Texas, which I've written about before. Basic groceries, hand-pumped gas out front, and the best smoked meats you'd ever want to lay into. The family-run business with personal relationships to their areas is 99% of what's wrong with America now. It changes your whole outlook on life when someone greets you and thanks you by name for your business, and I don't mean "personalized" advertising generated from coldfd, lifeless databases.
Toby's Lounge in Meckling, South Dakota was founded in 1971. Toby's is still there. Best fried chicken in the northern plains. Toby's was just 3 miles or so from our hippie yellow farmhouse. If I had the money, I'd ride my old Schwinn to Toby's, and buy a case of long-neck Budweiser in returnable bottles. I'd balance the case of beer on the handlebars to ride home.
I never had enough money to buy the fried chicken.
If you look up Toby's Lounge Meckling, South Dakota, you can see images of the lounge. The chairs are the same ones they had in 1971.
Tejas is landscaped with icehouses-probably why bernard is so crazy-I'm sure there was no moderation in his youngerdays.. probably had to leaceMerica to save his sanity
MK - Moderation? What's that? You are correct that I had to leave Merka, though. There are still parts of the world that have yet to receive Tejano Mind, and I'm on a mission to bring it to them!
Ah, prisons and ice houses...Americana at its best. I have rarely seen anyone lament the passing of the ice house culture. That was an entire industry wiped out by technology, along with blacksmiths, that is rarely discussed. Regular ice delivery was a key feature of civilization for centuries, and we just take for granted its passing into oblivion. In Houston, I frequently made runs to one of the last real ice houses to get dry ice, but with all the pogroms against CIO2, it's probably gone the way of the dodo too.
Rufus, Hahaha "prisons and ice houses". There is an ice plant in Santa Rosa. I would go there often to pick up ice and dry ice for catering events. The owner was a wisened middle-aged woman from Nebraska. We got along well. Her ice plant was always breaking down. The Mexicans would come by to buy dry ice for their push carts of ice cream treats.
"Mosquito Coast" is a great book by Paul Theroux. Saul Zaentz bought the movie rights and made the film on location in Central America, Belize, I think. It was the middle of nowhere. Harrison Ford was bored out of his mind. There was one chicken restaurant on location. Ford drank beer and ate chicken during the weeks of filming.
The same Aussies (First and Second Directors) who worked on "Mosquito Coast" for Zaentz, worked for Zaentz on "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" in 1990 in Belem, Brazil. That's where I met them. Those Aussies were weird guys.
This was Saul Zaentz' "Jungle Phase" of movie productions.
"Aussies" and "weird guys" are synonymous. Don't know if it's still true, but the original Hoffbrau Haus in Munich used to sequester the Aussies upstairs, so the rest of the world could have fun in peace downstairs.
If being bored on location is the worst of it, that's one for the "win" column. The cast and crew of Lynch's "Dune" nearly went extinct in Mexico. I can think of worse places to be stuck than Belize. A short walk in any direction turns up Mayan ruins, though the howler monkeys and giant ants will drive you to distraction. Some day I'll write up my experience on "The Flintstones" in Costa Rica. One is ever bored when John Goodman and Rick Moranis are on set.
Rufus, Good idea to keep the Aussies separated from others.
I don't know the story of "Dune." It's a weird movie. It would be fun to hear your story about making the "Flintstones." I've never seen the film. John Goodman and I are the same age. I've always liked his acting skills. He's a different kinda guy.
TT - Goodman is what his name implies. Moranis too. Very personable and got to know the crew, which is rare. It wasn't a great flick, but not bad either. Just "hmmm..." "Terms of Endearment" was the only film I ever worked on that got wide praise and won awards, though my favorite set was "RoboCop 2".
I was a Digital Imaging Tech (DIT) on "Flintstones," so I got to sit in an air-conditioned trailer the whole time. Other not so lucky. The Carps had to sweep the set with magnets and no glass was allowed on set because the cast was always barefooted. It was pretty miserable -- mosquitoes, unending heat, rain/mud. There were A/C tents for the cast to chill between takes, but the crew were miserable (all except Larry and I in the trailer).
"Dune" was a nightmare shoot -- dysentery, dehydration, heat stroke. There are documentaries about the shoot. Truly a trial by fire. I heard the "Star Wars" shoot in Tunisia was nearly as bad.
TT - I would that's true now, though the concept of "getting The Shot" used to drive the above-the-line creatives. I've waded through hell and high water to get The Shot, and I've sent people to their deaths (figuratively speaking) to get The Shot. Serendipity helps a lot, but you can't depend on it. To my mind, film production has become gentrified compared to the sets I've been on. You're right, though, modern feature film industry is just a money-driven corporate product, not the art that it once was.
Rufus, Yes. "Get the Shot" was imperative on "At Play." Hector Babenco and Saul Zaentz pushed the actors to the limit. Tom Berenger almost quit. His agent talked him out of it.
Rufus, Thanks for the backstory on "Flintstones." There was no A/C on the sets in Brazil. It was hell. David Jones, my stunt pilot/aerial coordinator boss, told me that "Apocalypse Now" was a nightmare to shoot in the Philippines. Jones lost so much weight, and Coppola was insane. It was the only movie shoot that Jones had to quit to stay alive.
We all had dysentery every day in Belem and the jungle sets. Filming was often interrupted by the cast and crew, who had to hit the latrines in the jungle.
I remember squatting over the hole in the ground, sweating, cramping, and unable to move, while watching a giant tarantula crawl across the ceiling above me.
"Apocalypse" has reached legendary status in the film world. Several directors, including Orson Wells, had tried to film "Heart of Darkness," only to encounter various disasters and project-killing set-backs. Coppola beat The Curse, but only at great cost to everyone involved with the project.
Having A/C is de rigueur these days. The use of computers and digital gear on set makes it an absolute requirement. Larry and I were using an early form of digital non-linear editing called D-Vision on "Flintstones," which required keeping the computers in low humidity and cold rooms. The gear is much more compact and durable now, but in the 90s was cutting edge stuff that generated tons of heat. A warped chip or hard drive would kill thousands of dollars worth of equipment, not to mention all the footage on the drives. Sitting in a trailer feeling the animosity resentment of dozens of sick, sweaty, muddy people while nursing persnickety machines was not an enviable job.
Rufus, Hahaha. You had A/C for your computers, just like the GATO subs had A/C for their radios and targeting computers. The sailors on the sub were happy about that.
My friend, Patrick, in Los Angeles, worked with and became friends with Chas Gerritsen. He is Dutch and was the photographer on the set of Apocalpyse Now. Gerritsen has a book out of his photos and stories from making Apocalypse. What a crazy movie shoot.
A smaller chain with some outlets in Oklahoma, named "Kum & Go," is changing its name to "Maverik." Maintaining the poor spelling motif has some appeal to tradition, possibly. Anyway, It's better than "Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am."
The spelling is for trademark reasons, since "come" and "maverick" are common words and can't be owned under US law. I know the chain, though. Stopped there many times on road trips. I don't recall any ice houses in Oklahoma, though, but I typically cooled my heels in friends' backyards instead of heading out.
Rufus, "Cum and Go" was my dating strategy. "Squat and Gobble" is what the hippie chicks would do sitting on the low porch (we didn't have any chairs.)
When I lived in WISCONSIN in early 1990s local farm folks showed me the spot in basement where they stored cut ice from lake during winter up into the 1960s. They still had the ice saws
Now there's a bit of history. I haven't seen an ice saw in a coon's age. I've seen similar rooms in the Mid-West that are typically converted these days into an extra bedroom or family room, but you can still appreciate the design for storing ice. The house I grew up in had a real built-in ice box that had been converted at some point before we moved in, with the compressor in the basement. It had four compartments, with one holding the ice, and the other three for storing food. It even had a spigot for ice water from the melt. Pretty ingenious device.
Lynnie - So glad you enjoyed it. My weird fascination with historical anachronisms comes from having a history teacher for a father. You might also enjoy reading Daniel Boorstin's book "The Americans: The Democratic Experience" (1973). He wrote a lot about the evolution of incremental changes leading to large-scale social changes. One chapter that is particularly memorable is the evolution of credit cards from charge-a-plates.
In addition to ice boxes, the early refrigerators used ammonia or propane to chill the box and didn't need electricity to do it. Very cool (pun) indeed.
Memories, memories. I'm old enough to remember the old ice house on the nearby creek in NE Philly where blocks of ice cut from the creek were stored under saw dust, and since some of the houses on the block still did not have refrigerators, that horse drawn ice wagon would come down the street every few days so folks could reload their ice boxes. We had a new fangled Servile gas refrigerator thanks to Pop-Pop who worked for the Philly gas company. Also remember the produce husker and his wagon bringing whatever was fresh from his farm to the neighborhood.
Don't recall the Texas ice houses you write about, having not gotten to the Great State until 64. That might be because my arrival was to Waco, where one could not even buy a beer to go let alone sit around enjoying the sacrament with friends, my first year here, and to find any hard liqueur, one had to drive north to the "line" where package stores were stacked up along the road. But even so the local convenience stores were always called ice houses--still are in some spots.
JVC - You are correct! Folks who still use the term "ice box" also call the Squat n Gobbles "ice houses," though I suspect that is nearly gone by now. I always felt sorry for the folks who lived in Wacko and other dry counties, but the liquor stores at the county line are a sight to see in any case.
If you're ever down around Houston, the West Alabama Ice House appears to still be operating, though it looks rather gentrified now.
The authentic ice houses are little more than wooden shacks with picnic tables scattered under the trees. I'm starting to feel a mission to recreate the Texas ice house in Jakarta coming on.
There's something about innovation that threatens an "owner" of territory that kind of ruffles the feathers of the status quo. The next time you find yourself way down south in the land of longhorns and those with a big ol mouth/ ask for a mason jar full of our home growned brew! The taste of Tejas will take you far and wide on the radio far side!
I spent too many hours in those Texas Ice houses after a long hot day in the sun. It was one of those wonderful experiences that I cherished while days spent in Houston. Thanks for the nostolgia, as the Ice houses are very unique vibe that doesn't exist outside of Tejas! Now its a Non alcholic brew in a desert yuppievale full of IPO's!
Sacrilege! Blasphemy! Speak not of sacred brew without the requisite ethanol.
A couple of Mrs. FarSide's friends who live stateside and married Merkins have been in town for a wedding, and I've been chatting with the husbands about the state of affairs in the Merka and sharing geezertalk about the good ol' days. I had a sudden and vivid flashback to long hot evenings spent kicking my boots off with a tall glass of ice cold sacrament.
For a time, we had 7-Eleven and Circle K here, but they were run off because they were stealing vast market share from their pale, anemic Indo cousins. We just can't have Texas know-how showin' up the locals, now can we?
As far as running corporate business out, on our side not doing so leaves Walmart Amazon.com and little mom pop run out. Not so good
Reminds me of Barta's store in Moulon, Texas, which I've written about before. Basic groceries, hand-pumped gas out front, and the best smoked meats you'd ever want to lay into. The family-run business with personal relationships to their areas is 99% of what's wrong with America now. It changes your whole outlook on life when someone greets you and thanks you by name for your business, and I don't mean "personalized" advertising generated from coldfd, lifeless databases.
Toby's Lounge in Meckling, South Dakota was founded in 1971. Toby's is still there. Best fried chicken in the northern plains. Toby's was just 3 miles or so from our hippie yellow farmhouse. If I had the money, I'd ride my old Schwinn to Toby's, and buy a case of long-neck Budweiser in returnable bottles. I'd balance the case of beer on the handlebars to ride home.
I never had enough money to buy the fried chicken.
If you look up Toby's Lounge Meckling, South Dakota, you can see images of the lounge. The chairs are the same ones they had in 1971.
When I ran a liquor store in the city I knew many of my customers by name, and considered all (except the thieves) my friends.
MS - *Wiping a tear from my eye*
MK, There is still an Ice House Bar going strong in Yankton, South Dakota:
https://973kkrc.com/is-yanktons-ice-house-the-best-dive-bar-in-u-s/
Great trip down memory lane!
Tejas is landscaped with icehouses-probably why bernard is so crazy-I'm sure there was no moderation in his youngerdays.. probably had to leaceMerica to save his sanity
MK - Moderation? What's that? You are correct that I had to leave Merka, though. There are still parts of the world that have yet to receive Tejano Mind, and I'm on a mission to bring it to them!
So, how is Jakarta receiving it?
What makes sacramental beer sacramental?
Vonu - Pearl hops and ethanol.
The more of the latter, the more likely hallucinations? :-)
The Ice House Bar is still there in Yankton, South Dakota:
https://973kkrc.com/is-yanktons-ice-house-the-best-dive-bar-in-u-s/
Us hippies, when we had the money, would go there for beers and chicks in 1971-73.
Yankton is a strange little city by Gavins Point Dam on the Missouri River. It has a Federal Prison in the center of town.
Ah, prisons and ice houses...Americana at its best. I have rarely seen anyone lament the passing of the ice house culture. That was an entire industry wiped out by technology, along with blacksmiths, that is rarely discussed. Regular ice delivery was a key feature of civilization for centuries, and we just take for granted its passing into oblivion. In Houston, I frequently made runs to one of the last real ice houses to get dry ice, but with all the pogroms against CIO2, it's probably gone the way of the dodo too.
Rufus, Hahaha "prisons and ice houses". There is an ice plant in Santa Rosa. I would go there often to pick up ice and dry ice for catering events. The owner was a wisened middle-aged woman from Nebraska. We got along well. Her ice plant was always breaking down. The Mexicans would come by to buy dry ice for their push carts of ice cream treats.
"Mosquito Coast" is a great book by Paul Theroux. Saul Zaentz bought the movie rights and made the film on location in Central America, Belize, I think. It was the middle of nowhere. Harrison Ford was bored out of his mind. There was one chicken restaurant on location. Ford drank beer and ate chicken during the weeks of filming.
The same Aussies (First and Second Directors) who worked on "Mosquito Coast" for Zaentz, worked for Zaentz on "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" in 1990 in Belem, Brazil. That's where I met them. Those Aussies were weird guys.
This was Saul Zaentz' "Jungle Phase" of movie productions.
"Aussies" and "weird guys" are synonymous. Don't know if it's still true, but the original Hoffbrau Haus in Munich used to sequester the Aussies upstairs, so the rest of the world could have fun in peace downstairs.
If being bored on location is the worst of it, that's one for the "win" column. The cast and crew of Lynch's "Dune" nearly went extinct in Mexico. I can think of worse places to be stuck than Belize. A short walk in any direction turns up Mayan ruins, though the howler monkeys and giant ants will drive you to distraction. Some day I'll write up my experience on "The Flintstones" in Costa Rica. One is ever bored when John Goodman and Rick Moranis are on set.
Rufus, Good idea to keep the Aussies separated from others.
I don't know the story of "Dune." It's a weird movie. It would be fun to hear your story about making the "Flintstones." I've never seen the film. John Goodman and I are the same age. I've always liked his acting skills. He's a different kinda guy.
TT - Goodman is what his name implies. Moranis too. Very personable and got to know the crew, which is rare. It wasn't a great flick, but not bad either. Just "hmmm..." "Terms of Endearment" was the only film I ever worked on that got wide praise and won awards, though my favorite set was "RoboCop 2".
I was a Digital Imaging Tech (DIT) on "Flintstones," so I got to sit in an air-conditioned trailer the whole time. Other not so lucky. The Carps had to sweep the set with magnets and no glass was allowed on set because the cast was always barefooted. It was pretty miserable -- mosquitoes, unending heat, rain/mud. There were A/C tents for the cast to chill between takes, but the crew were miserable (all except Larry and I in the trailer).
"Dune" was a nightmare shoot -- dysentery, dehydration, heat stroke. There are documentaries about the shoot. Truly a trial by fire. I heard the "Star Wars" shoot in Tunisia was nearly as bad.
Rufus, The fact is, movie producers and directors don't give a damn about cast and crew. They only care about fame and money.
TT - I would that's true now, though the concept of "getting The Shot" used to drive the above-the-line creatives. I've waded through hell and high water to get The Shot, and I've sent people to their deaths (figuratively speaking) to get The Shot. Serendipity helps a lot, but you can't depend on it. To my mind, film production has become gentrified compared to the sets I've been on. You're right, though, modern feature film industry is just a money-driven corporate product, not the art that it once was.
Rufus, Yes. "Get the Shot" was imperative on "At Play." Hector Babenco and Saul Zaentz pushed the actors to the limit. Tom Berenger almost quit. His agent talked him out of it.
Rufus, Thanks for the backstory on "Flintstones." There was no A/C on the sets in Brazil. It was hell. David Jones, my stunt pilot/aerial coordinator boss, told me that "Apocalypse Now" was a nightmare to shoot in the Philippines. Jones lost so much weight, and Coppola was insane. It was the only movie shoot that Jones had to quit to stay alive.
We all had dysentery every day in Belem and the jungle sets. Filming was often interrupted by the cast and crew, who had to hit the latrines in the jungle.
I remember squatting over the hole in the ground, sweating, cramping, and unable to move, while watching a giant tarantula crawl across the ceiling above me.
"Apocalypse" has reached legendary status in the film world. Several directors, including Orson Wells, had tried to film "Heart of Darkness," only to encounter various disasters and project-killing set-backs. Coppola beat The Curse, but only at great cost to everyone involved with the project.
Having A/C is de rigueur these days. The use of computers and digital gear on set makes it an absolute requirement. Larry and I were using an early form of digital non-linear editing called D-Vision on "Flintstones," which required keeping the computers in low humidity and cold rooms. The gear is much more compact and durable now, but in the 90s was cutting edge stuff that generated tons of heat. A warped chip or hard drive would kill thousands of dollars worth of equipment, not to mention all the footage on the drives. Sitting in a trailer feeling the animosity resentment of dozens of sick, sweaty, muddy people while nursing persnickety machines was not an enviable job.
Rufus, Hahaha. You had A/C for your computers, just like the GATO subs had A/C for their radios and targeting computers. The sailors on the sub were happy about that.
My friend, Patrick, in Los Angeles, worked with and became friends with Chas Gerritsen. He is Dutch and was the photographer on the set of Apocalpyse Now. Gerritsen has a book out of his photos and stories from making Apocalypse. What a crazy movie shoot.
A smaller chain with some outlets in Oklahoma, named "Kum & Go," is changing its name to "Maverik." Maintaining the poor spelling motif has some appeal to tradition, possibly. Anyway, It's better than "Wham, Bam, Thank You Ma'am."
The spelling is for trademark reasons, since "come" and "maverick" are common words and can't be owned under US law. I know the chain, though. Stopped there many times on road trips. I don't recall any ice houses in Oklahoma, though, but I typically cooled my heels in friends' backyards instead of heading out.
By the way, I lay claim to "Squat & Gobble". :)
Rufus, "Cum and Go" was my dating strategy. "Squat and Gobble" is what the hippie chicks would do sitting on the low porch (we didn't have any chairs.)
They can be trademarked under US law, as they are, when capitalized.
Fun article.
When I lived in WISCONSIN in early 1990s local farm folks showed me the spot in basement where they stored cut ice from lake during winter up into the 1960s. They still had the ice saws
Now there's a bit of history. I haven't seen an ice saw in a coon's age. I've seen similar rooms in the Mid-West that are typically converted these days into an extra bedroom or family room, but you can still appreciate the design for storing ice. The house I grew up in had a real built-in ice box that had been converted at some point before we moved in, with the compressor in the basement. It had four compartments, with one holding the ice, and the other three for storing food. It even had a spigot for ice water from the melt. Pretty ingenious device.
Rufus, My Dad bought an antique oak ice box. It was very cool. He used it as a liquor cabinet.
Ain't hot ice houses down under, but you'd love bush hotels.
That's where the ping-pong ball shooting Asian wife was performing in "Pricilla, Queen of the Desert," right?
Great background...I had no idea (I seem to be saying that a lot these days). Thanks (again) for the history lesson.
When I was teeny-tiny, we had a converted ice box. Very small, but did the trick.
Lynnie - So glad you enjoyed it. My weird fascination with historical anachronisms comes from having a history teacher for a father. You might also enjoy reading Daniel Boorstin's book "The Americans: The Democratic Experience" (1973). He wrote a lot about the evolution of incremental changes leading to large-scale social changes. One chapter that is particularly memorable is the evolution of credit cards from charge-a-plates.
In addition to ice boxes, the early refrigerators used ammonia or propane to chill the box and didn't need electricity to do it. Very cool (pun) indeed.
Our loss is somebodies gain!
Memories, memories. I'm old enough to remember the old ice house on the nearby creek in NE Philly where blocks of ice cut from the creek were stored under saw dust, and since some of the houses on the block still did not have refrigerators, that horse drawn ice wagon would come down the street every few days so folks could reload their ice boxes. We had a new fangled Servile gas refrigerator thanks to Pop-Pop who worked for the Philly gas company. Also remember the produce husker and his wagon bringing whatever was fresh from his farm to the neighborhood.
Don't recall the Texas ice houses you write about, having not gotten to the Great State until 64. That might be because my arrival was to Waco, where one could not even buy a beer to go let alone sit around enjoying the sacrament with friends, my first year here, and to find any hard liqueur, one had to drive north to the "line" where package stores were stacked up along the road. But even so the local convenience stores were always called ice houses--still are in some spots.
JVC - You are correct! Folks who still use the term "ice box" also call the Squat n Gobbles "ice houses," though I suspect that is nearly gone by now. I always felt sorry for the folks who lived in Wacko and other dry counties, but the liquor stores at the county line are a sight to see in any case.
If you're ever down around Houston, the West Alabama Ice House appears to still be operating, though it looks rather gentrified now.
https://www.westalabamaicehouse.net/
The authentic ice houses are little more than wooden shacks with picnic tables scattered under the trees. I'm starting to feel a mission to recreate the Texas ice house in Jakarta coming on.
There's something about innovation that threatens an "owner" of territory that kind of ruffles the feathers of the status quo. The next time you find yourself way down south in the land of longhorns and those with a big ol mouth/ ask for a mason jar full of our home growned brew! The taste of Tejas will take you far and wide on the radio far side!