Teaching History Matters

My friend Gordon Hanna died the other day. He was my electrician, and I’m sure the electrician for half of the small town I live in, at least. He was 90.

He was also a World War II veteran. How wonderful that we had the foresight to interview him at his homestead here in Hartford a few years back. We always ask, ‘when and where were you born’. Kaylee got a surprise when he pointed up over his head- to the bedroom upstairs. As Gordon’s generation go, we are leaving an older world behind. I’m not convinced that the newer one is better.

I always say that this is the toughest part about doing projects like these; your friends go and die on you.

Next time I flip the switch in my house I’ll think of him.

Gordon Hanna : There was a big farm down the road. It was the Clifford Sheldon farm, about a three hundred acre farm. And I started working for him when I was eleven year old. Nights after school, and Saturdays and Sundays.
Kaylee Merlow (student interviewer): Where your parents farmers, or …?
GH: My parents, lived down the road, where my father, and my uncle, and my grandfather, owned Hanna Hardware up in Hartford, up here.
KM: Was it difficult for you to balance both school and working on a farm?
GH: No, it wasn’t that bad. Because you got out early. We got out about three o’clock. You would work until dark. But, I worked Saturdays and Sundays. I did all the plowing and fitting the ground and like that. I thought I was doing pretty good. I was getting $1 a day. When that’s when, grown men, that’s all they were getting for work at that time.
KM: Were you raised in like a religious home or….? Like did you attending church every Sunday?
GH: Yes I went to church regularity. White church, Congregational church up here. Then later on I taught Sunday school up there.
KM: Mr. Rozell told me that you worked in Smiths Basin harvesting ice?
GH: Yes, Mr. Rozell thought that that might be something you hadn’t ever heard of. Well, milk was transported from all the farms. There used to be a lot more farms around here than there are now. And the milk was transported in cans. Over to Smiths Basin there’s a big, well, you ever go through Smiths Basin, across the railroad tracks? There’s still a great big building there. That was a creamery. And the milk was all taken in there. Well in that time there was no chemical refrigeration as you know it today, so we had to refrigerate everything with ice. So the canal runs right along there and up the canal right next to the locks they used to cut the ice. They cut it with an old model Ford motor and a great big 48 inch round circle saw. Which you probably never saw sawing wood or anything but that’s what they used. And they cut slices in the ice two feet wide and then they would cross cut them, every three feet, so a cake of ice was two by three by whatever depth it froze to. Long later in the winter, February, like that, they would get up to three feet thick. So a cake of ice, at that time, would weigh probably three hundred lbs. They had, the canal sits a lot lower than about the bank up here when you go down the canal. They had a long ramp made of wood with sides on it, narrow sides like that [hand gestures for ramp], with a walkway up and down it. Then they had a winch, up on top, which one of the farmers would bring his tractor there and run this winch. And they had what the called a ‘crab’ which was a metal thing, shaped like that [hand gestures], with a handle up there. What they would do, they had this ice all scored. They would take it and they had it right up to that ramp. They would take spuds,  just a big knife, about that wide [hand gestures for width], sharp, on a handle. They take that go in the scores where they scored the ice, and that would split off the cakes, individual cakes. They would bring them over to the ramp. Then they would  hook that back of it, then the farmer would start the winch, pulling it up. He’d have to walk along the side of it to keep it from kicking up.
KM: My gosh.
GH: Well, some of the guys he’d go up then up onto a platform up on top. Then all the farmers that brought in milk would have their trucks there. That was a big thing, since that paid good money at that time. And they would slide it onto the trucks, then they’d transport it over to the ice house. Then at the ice house, they had a …. Ice house, about three stories high, they had a big frame work that went up. It had a, like an elevator, well it was slanted like that, made of steel. A farmer would have a tractor on a winch, at that point. He would slide the cake on, when he brought out the truck, it would go onto the elevator. Of course it started down oh say this high, so the elevator would just go up , the cake would slide off into the ice house. Well, as it got a layer of ice, of course it kept going higher and higher and higher. Enough, about three stories high.
KM: When did you ice harvest?
GH: January. It was done in January and February.
KM: So it was only just two months?
GH: Yes.
KM: Because an ice house can only be –
GH: Yes. It normally started in January, which was of course good for me because – [interrupted]
KM: Because of the timing?
GH: -The vacation in January, from school. And I was able to get on the job, that was a privilege to get on that job because at that time, it was paying as I remember, I think it was paying $5 an hour – when the average man was getting $1 a day.

Interviewed by Kaylee Merlow, Dec. 19, 2010.

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