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CHAPTER II CUTTING ICE AT 14° BELOW
ZERO GENERALLY
speaking, young folks are
glad when school is done. But it wasn't so with us that winter in the
old
Squire's district, when Master Pierson was teacher. We were really sad,
in fact
quite melancholy, and some of the girls shed tears, when the last day
of school
came and "old Joel" tied up the melodeon, took down the wall maps,
packed up his books and went back to his Class in College. He was sad
himself —
he had taken such interest in our progress. "Now don't
forget what you have
learned!" he exclaimed. "Hang on to it. Knowledge is your best
friend. You must go on with your Latin, evenings." "You will
surely come back next
winter!" we shouted after him as he drove away.. "Maybe,"
he said, and
would not trust himself to look back. The old
sitting-room seemed wholly
deserted that Friday
night after he went away.
"We are like sheep without a shepherd," Theodora said. Catherine and
Tom came over. We opened our Latin books and tried to study awhile; but
'twas
dreary without "old Joel." Other
things, however, other duties
and other work at the farm immediately occupied our attention. It was
now
mid-January and there was ice to be cut on the lake for our new
creamery. For three
years the old Squire had
been breeding a herd of Jerseys. There were sixteen of them: Jersey
First,
Canary, Jersey Second, Little Queen, Beauty, Buttercup, and all the
rest. Each
one had her own little book that hung from its nail on a beam of the
tie-up
behind her stall. In it were recorded her pedigree, dates, and the
number of
pounds of milk she gave at each milking. The scales for weighing the
milk hung
from the same beam. We weighed each milking, and jotted down the weight
with
the pencil tied to each little book. All this was to show which of the
herd was
most profitable, and which calves had better be kept for increase. This was a
new departure in Maine
farming. Cream-separators were as yet undreamed of. A water-creamery
with long
cans and ice was then used for raising the cream; and that meant an
ice-house
and the cutting and hauling home of a year's stock of ice from the
lake, nearly
two miles distant. We built a
new ice-house near the
east barn in November; and in December the old Squire drove to Portland
and
brought home a complete kit of tools — three ice-saws, an ice-plow or
groover,
ice-tongs, hooks, chisels, tackle and block. Everything
had to be bought new, but
the old Squire had visions of great profits ahead from his growing herd
of
Jerseys. Grandmother, however, was less sanguine. It was
unusually cold in December
that year, frequently ten degrees below zero, and there were many high
winds.
Consequently, the ice on the lake thickened early to twelve inches, and
bade
fair to go to two feet. For use in a water-creamery, ice is most
conveniently
cut and handled when not more than fifteen or sixteen inches thick.
That
thickness, too, when the cakes are cut twenty-six inches square, as
usual,
makes them quite heavy enough for hoisting and packing in an ice-house.
Half a
mile from the head of the
lake, over deep, clear water, we had been scraping and sweeping a large
surface
after every snow, in order to have clear ice. Two or three times a week
Addison
ran down and tested the thickness; and when it reached fifteen inches,
we
bestirred ourselves at our new work. None of us
knew much about cutting
ice; but we laid off a straight base-line of a hundred feet, hitched
old Sol to
the new groover, and marked off five hundred cakes. Addison and I then
set to
work with two of our new ice-saws, and hauled out the cakes with the
ice-tongs,
while Halstead and the old Squire loaded them on the long horse-sled, —
sixteen
cakes to the load, — drew the ice home, and packed it away in the new
ice-house.
Although
at first the sawing seemed
easy, we soon found it tiresome, and learned that two hundred cakes a
day meant
a hard day's work, particularly after the saws lost their keen edge —
for even
ice will dull a saw in a day or two. We had also to be pretty careful,
for it
was over deep black water, and a cake when nearly sawed across is
likely to
break off suddenly underfoot. Hauling
out the cakes with tongs,
too, is somewhat hazardous on a slippery ice margin. We beveled off a
kind of
inclined "slip" at one end of the open water, and cut heel holes in
the ice beside it, so that we might stand more securely as we pulled
the cakes
out of the water. For those
first few days we had
bright, calm weather, not very cold; we got out five hundred cakes and
drew
them home to the ice-house without accident. The
hardship came the next week,
when several of our neighbors — who always kept an eye on the old
Squire's
farming, and liked to follow his lead — were beset by an ambition to
start
ice-houses. None of them had either experience or tools. They wanted us
to cut
the ice for them. We thought
that was asking rather
too much. Thereupon fourteen or fifteen of them offered us two cents a
cake to
cut a year's supply for each of them. Now no one
will ever get very rich
cutting ice, sixteen inches thick, at two cents a cake. But Addison and
I
thought it over, and asked the old Squire's opinion. He said that we
might take
the new kit, and have all we could make. On that,
we notified them all to
come and begin drawing home their cakes the following Monday morning,
for the
ice was growing thicker all the while; and the thicker it got, the
harder our
work would be. They
wanted about four thousand
cakes; and as we would need help, we took in Thomas Edwards and Willis
Murch as
partners. Both were good workers, and we anticipated having a rather
fine time
at the lake. In the
woods on the west shore,
nearly opposite where the ice was to be cut, there was an old "shook"
camp, where we kept our food and slept at night, in order to avoid the
long
walk home to meals. On Sunday
it snowed, and cleared off
cold and windy again. It was eight degrees below zero on Monday
morning, when
we took our outfit and went to work. Everything was frozen hard as a
rock. The
wind, sweeping down the lake, drove the fine, loose snow before it like
smoke
from a forest fire. There was no shelter. We had to stand out and saw
ice in
the bitter wind, which seemed to pierce to the very marrow of our
bones. It was
impossible to keep a fire; and it always seems colder when you are
standing on
ice. It makes
me shiver now to think of
that week, for it grew colder instead of warmer. A veritable "cold
snap" set in, and never for an hour, night or day, did that bitter wind
let up. We would
have quit work and waited
for calmer weather, — the old Squire advised us to do so, but the ice
was
getting thicker every day. Every inch added to the thickness made the
work of
sawing harder — at two cents a cake. So we stuck to it, and worked away
in that
cruel wind. On
Thursday it got so cold that if
we stopped the saws even for two seconds, they froze in hard and fast,
and had
to be cut out with an ax; thus two cakes would be spoiled. It was not
easy to
keep the saws going fast enough not to catch and freeze in; and the
cakes had
to be hauled out the moment they were sawed, or they would freeze on
again.
Moreover, the patch of open water that we uncovered froze over in a few
minutes, and had to be cleared a dozen times a day. During those nights
it
froze five inches thick, and filled with snow-drift, all of which had
to be
cleared out every morning. Although
we had our caps pulled down
over our ears and heavy mittens on, and wore all the clothes we could
possibly
work in, it yet seemed at times that freeze we must — especially toward
night,
when we grew tired from the hard work of sawing so long and so fast. We
became
so chilled that we could hardly speak; and at sunset, when we stopped
work, we
could hardly get across to the camp. The farmers, who were coming twice
a day
with their teams for ice, complained constantly of the cold; several of
them
stopped drawing altogether for the time. Willis also stopped work on
Thursday
at noon. The people
at home knew that we were
having a hard time. Grandmother and the girls did all they could for
us; and
every day at noon and again at night the old Squire, bundled up in his
buffalo-skin coat, drove down to the lake with horse and pung, and
brought us a
warm meal, packed in a large box with half a dozen hot bricks. Only one
who has been chilled
through all day can imagine how glad we were to reach that warm camp at
night.
Indeed, except for the camp, we could never have worked there as we
did. It was
a log camp, or rather two camps, placed end to end, and you went
through the first
in order to get into the second, which had no outside door. The second
camp had
been built especially for cold weather. It was low, and the chinks
between the
logs were tamped with moss. At this time, too, snow lay on it, and had
banked
up against the walls. Inside the camp, across one end, there was a long
bunk;
at the opposite end stood an old cooking-stove, that seemed much too
large for
so small a camp. At dusk we
dropped work, made for
the camp, shut all the doors, built the hottest fire we could make, and
thawed
ourselves out. It seemed as though we could never get warmed through.
For an
hour or more we hovered about the stove. The camp was as hot as an
oven; I have
no doubt that we kept the temperature at 110°; and yet we were not
warm. "Put in
more wood!"
Addison or Thomas would exclaim. "Cram that stove full again! Let's get
warm!" We thought
so little of ventilation
that we shut the camp door tight and stopped every aperture that we
could find.
We needed heat to counteract the effect of those long hours of cold and
wind. By the
time we had eaten our supper
and thawed out, we grew sleepy, and under all our bedclothing, curled
up in the
bunk. So fearful were we lest the fire should go out in the night that
we
gathered a huge heap of fuel, and we all agreed to get up and stuff the
stove
whenever we waked and found the fire abating. Among the
neighbors for whom we were
cutting ice was Rufus Sylvester. He was not a very careful or
prosperous
farmer, and not likely to be successful at dairying. But because the
old Squire
and others were embarking in that business, Rufus wished to do so, too.
He had
no ice-house, but thought he could keep ice buried in sawdust, in the
shade of
a large apple-tree near his barn; and I may add here that he tried it
with indifferent
success for three years, and that it killed the apple-tree. On
Saturday of that cold week he
came to the lake with his lame old horse and a rickety sled, and wanted
us to
cut a hundred cakes of ice for him. The prospect of our getting our pay
was
poor. Saturday, moreover, was the coldest, windiest day of the whole
week; the
temperature was down to fourteen degrees below. Halse and
Thomas said no; but he
hung round, and teased us, while his half-starved old horse shivered in
the
wind; and we finally decided to oblige him, if he would take the tongs
and haul
out the cakes himself, as we sawed them. It would not do to stop the
saws that
day, even for a moment. Rufus had
on an old blue army
overcoat, the cape of which was turned up over his head and ears, and a
red
woolen "comforter" round his neck. He wore long-legged, stiff cowhide
boots, with his trousers tucked into the tops. Addison,
Thomas and I were sawing,
with our backs turned to Rufus and to the wind, and Rufus was trying to
haul
out a cake of ice, when we heard a clatter and a muffled shout. Rufus
had
slipped in! We looked round just in time to see him go down into that
black,
icy water. Addison
let go the saw and sprang
for one of the ice-hooks. I did the same. The hook I grabbed was frozen
down;
but Addison got his free, and stuck it into Rufus's blue overcoat. It
tore out,
and down Rufus went again, head and ears under. His head, in fact, slid
beneath
the edge of the ice, but his back popped up. Addison
struck again with the hook —
struck harder. He hooked it through all Rufus's clothes, and took a
piece of
his skin. It held that time, and we hauled him out. He lay
quite inert on the ice,
choking and coughing. "Get up!
Get up!" we
shouted to him. "Get up and run, or you'll freeze!" He tried
to rise, but failed to
regain his feet, and collapsed. Thereupon Addison and Thomas laid hold
of him,
and lifted him to his feet by main strength. "Now run!"
they cried.
"Run before your clothes freeze stiff!" The man seemed lethargic — I
suppose from the deadly chill. He made an effort to move his feet, as they bade him, but fell flat again;
and by that time his clothes were stiffening. "He will
freeze to death!"
Addison cried. "We must put him on his sled and get him home!" Thereupon
we picked him up like a
log of wood, and laid him on his horse-sled. "But he
will freeze before we
can get this old lame horse home with him!" exclaimed Thomas. "Better
take him to our camp over there." Addison
thought so, too, and seizing
the reins and whip, started for the shore. The old horse was so chilled
that we
could hardly get him to hobble; but we did not spare the whip. From the
shore we had still fifteen
or twenty rods to go, in order to reach the camp back in the woods.
Rufus's
clothes were frozen as stiff as boards; apparently he could not move.
We feared
that the man would die on our hands. We
snatched off one of the side
boards of his sled, laid him on it, and, taking it up like a stretcher,
started
to carry him up through the woods to the camp. By that
time his long overcoat and
all the rest of his clothes were frozen so stiff and hard that he
rolled round
more, like a log than a human body. The path
was rough and snowy. In our
haste we stumbled, and dropped him several times, but we rolled him on
the
board again, rushed on, and at last got him inside the camp. Our
morning fire
had gone out. Halse kindled it again, while Addison, Thomas and I tried
to get
off the frozen overcoat and long cowhide boots. The coat
was simply a sheet of ice;
we could do nothing with it. At last we took our knives and cut it down the
back, and after cutting
open both sleeves, managed to peel it off. We had to cut open his boots
in the
same way. His under-coat and all his clothes were frozen. There
appeared to be
little warmth left in him; he was speechless. But just
then we heard some one
coming in through the outside camp. It was the old Squire. Our
farmhouse, on the higher ground
to the northwest, afforded a view of the lake; and the old gentleman
had been
keeping an eye on what went on down there, for he was quite
far-sighted. He saw
Sylvester arrive with his team, and a few minutes later saw us start
for the
shore, lashing the horse. He knew that something had gone wrong, and
hitching
up old Sol, he had driven down in haste. "Hot
water, quick!" he
said. "Make some hot coffee!" And seizing a towel, he gave Sylvester
such a rubbing as it is safe to say he had never undergone before. Gradually
signs of life and color
appeared. The man began to speak, although rather thickly. By this
time the little camp was
like an oven; but the old Squire kept up the friction. We gave Rufus
two or
three cups of hot coffee, and in the course of an hour he was quite
himself
again. We kept
him at the camp until the
afternoon, however, and then started him home, wrapped in a
horse-blanket
instead of his army overcoat. He was none the worse for his
misadventure,
although he declared we tore off two inches of his skin! On Sunday
the weather began to
moderate, and the last four days of our ice-cutting were much more
comfortable.
It had been a severe ordeal, however; the eighty-one dollars that we
collected
for it were but scanty recompense for the misery we had endured. |