"The Ice Has It"

by Rose Lucas  November 2012

 

Many Northside residents today are probably unaware that we had local grocery stores on many of our corners: Fourth and Broadway, Fifth and Broadway, Seventh and Broadway, Fifth and Lime, Sixth and Lime – actually the original Progress Market took up the whole building at Sixth and Lime, and Mr. A. L. Larimore was one of the owners. He and his family lived on Elsmere Park. After Progress Market, Mr. Larimore opened Boss Food Store, located just north of Loudon Avenue on the west side of Lime – the building is still there. People who lived in the neighborhood often went to the grocery every day for fresh meat and vegetables. While some in the neighborhood had refrigerators, others still used ice boxes and had a yellow ice sign in their windows. The signs had numbers from 25 to 100, in increments of 25, and the home owner was to put the number of pounds of ice desired at the top of the sign. Most of the ice was delivered from the Southern Ice Company – the building is still on Loudon Avenue and has the company sign on it. The lot where the Rite Aid stands was the recirculating pond for the ice company, and metal pipes stood out of the water and aerated the water to keep it fresh – also notable, the area around the pond was the source of the garter snake population on Elsmere Park and its environs. Two teenage boys, and many know one of those was my late brother, Richard Moloney, brought two gallon jars of snakes from the pond area and turned them loose in the street to see which way they would run. Until power mowers appeared we were inundated with snakes. Today our rather large cat population and some of the neighborhood dogs help keep the snakes to a manageable number.