Brrr…Ice, Ice and Ice!
Weather alerts have been on the news yesterday and today warning of the impending ice storm in Oklahoma. As the day deepened into the afternoon, the forecasts came to bear as an icy mist began to fall. Around the edges of the small neighborhood lake frosty fingers have formed stretching toward the center of the pond. Gazing out at that frozen perimeter I thought about the way Washington retrieved ice from the Potomac’s rim to keep in his ice house for use later in the year. How bitterly cold the workers must have been as they wrenched the glistening chunks from the bone-chilling waters. The next step was maneuvering the unwieldy hunks up an incline and into the hillside passageway created for that purpose (YES, there is a tunnel at Mount Vernon as seen on National Treasure 2, but it is NOT in the basement). At the end of the tunnel the ice was covered with straw to help insulate it from melting. When summer arrived and Washington wanted some ice cream, the servants used a pulley and a ladder inside the vertical part of the tunnel to lift the ice up to a door that was tucked into the side of the Ha! Ha! Wall (The Ha! Ha! Wall is a story for another day). It was a short distance from there to the kitchen where ice cream could be made for Washington. Ice Cream? Brrrr.
January 29th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Those workers must have had a hard time navigating up that fairly steep hill from the river to the tunnel. I can barely walk outside and get the mail without falling on the ice! That is a lot of work for a bowl of ice cream, but that's also an ingenious system.
October 5th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Those workers must have had a hard time navigating up that fairly steep hill from the river to the tunnel. I can barely walk outside and get the mail without falling on the ice! That is a lot of work for a bowl of ice cream, but that's also an ingenious system.