It's a Family Addiction

When I was growing up, as far back as I can remember, homemade ice cream was a part of every family get together or holiday occasion.

My father was a stickler for doing things the “right way” (a trait I inherited much to the irritation of my wife). In anything you do, to do it the “Right Way”, first the scientific theory or laws of physics of everything involved is considered. In this case, first you placed the mixing canister into the refrigerator to get it cold.

Then my little brother and I, or our cousins would all get in the car to drive to the ice house. With the advent of crushed ice packaged in plastic bags, “The Ice House” is now an archaic term.

Dad would buy a 20 or 30 lb. block of ice, wrap it a tote sack (a burlap bag pronounced Toe-Sack) and place it atop the open gap between the front bumper and the fender for the drive back to the house.

Mother or Aunts would be in the kitchen mixing up the ingredients which included raw eggs, a can of Eagle Brand condensed milk and cane sugar. Sugar was a hoarded item during World War II as it was rationed. When it was time for homemade ice cream this was an extra special treat.

The freezing area was carefully chosen so that the salt water drained from the freezer bucket didn’t kill grass or other vegetation.

When all was mixed and ready, Dad placed the canister into the wooden mixer bucket. Then using a multi-prong ice shaver, he would render the ice into smaller pieces than the crushed ice of today. My father (an avowed teetotaler) contemptuously called crushed ice, “Beer Ice.”

He explained to me that ice melts at 33 degrees, but if you added rock salt it melted at a lower temperature. The ice melting at 27º was pulling heat calories from the canister which eventually froze the mixture inside it.

This ice was placed in two inch layers around the outside of the metal canister. Each layer got a 1/4 inch of rock salt. This was continued up to an inch or two below the edge of the canister lid. At that point adding salt was stopped to prevent the melting ice from getting salt into the ice cream. Then ice was added to the top of the bucket. A thick layer of tote sacks was placed over the top to insulate it. Once the mixture started getting hard, one of the kids would sit on it to add weight so that the bucket didn’t “Walk Around”.

At first dad and uncles took turns turning the crank. By the time my cousins and I had reached the age of ten or eleven, this was a chore we assumed.

Dad loved soggy old banana cakes and banana ice cream. By the time I was 11, my siblings and I were sick of it always being banana ice cream. My sister plaintively uttered the unthinkable, “Couldn’t we just have some vanilla?”

After experimenting with several different concoctions (of which we kids were happy to eat what he considered failures), he came up with “Strawberry Nut.” A delicious treat, it was his master piece. There was only one problem, hand cranking it, you had to turn it fast at the start to keep the small pieces of pecan suspended in the mixture. Dad had built a freezer with an electric motor but it was one speed.

By the time I was 12, to solve this problem: Dad had designed and built a two speed, automatic transmission, electric ice cream freezer. To gear it down so the electric motor could run at a faster speed, he used the gear tower from an old cream separator.

Then taking two large 3/4 inch thick pieces of aluminum for side plates , he constructed another gear case to house his planetary gear. I watched as he laid the gears out in the shade of the breezeway and figuring the ratios selected which gears to use.

I might mention that he had a sizable collection of gears from scrapped turn of the century machinery and spare gears he had made himself as a young man taking a machinist course and constructing the parts for his own metal lathe.

He laid it all out, and drilled holes for the shafts in the aluminum side plates. He used electric solenoids to stop the rotation of the key gears to shift it into a lower gear. As the mixture froze the motor working harder pulled more current, A load cell determined this and another circuit triggered the solenoids.

Now my task was just to observe, pull the cork to drain off a little salt water before it got too high and squirt a little transmission oil on the planetary gears when it shifted into low.

Shifted into low it would turn that ice cream until it was so hard, it was a major chore for them to get the paddle out.

Now flush with auto trans. two speed freezer, we experimented with other flavors. Dad got a bigger bucket canister set up that would make two gallons of ice cream.

Dad would pull the paddle, put a cork in the hole in the top, pack it with ice, and then we’d go eat our meal. Afterwards we would dish up the ice cream and put the remainder in covered deep pans to put into the refrigerator freeze.

Once, we had made a big batch of lemon, one of my favorites, and a gallon and a half had been placed in the freezer. My parents and siblings had gone to my grandfathers on Sat morning and weren’t due back until Sunday evening.

I didn’t go since I had a Saturday evening and Sunday morning paper route to deliver.

Sunday morning after sleeping a couple of extra post route hours, I sat down in a comfortable chair with a reading lamp and a stack of library books. From time to time, I’d get up and refill my large ice cream bowl. It was a wonderful day, alone with my books. No distractions nor interruptions with a delicious continuous snack.

Then the folks came home. I heard an incredulous bellow from the kitchen area, “Ruth, He’s eaten a whole gallon of ice cream.” He was just oozing sarcasm, “Had his nose in a book. Didn’t even taste it. He might as well been eating cold mashed potatoes.” Heard about it for the next four years.

I read last week that they had a test market of ice cream for dogs in San Francisco and it was a big success.