There was a mix-up with our new refrigerator and the delivery company had to reschedule, which is fine—they’ve given us a new date and reassured us it will be delivered between nine and St. Patrick’s Day. So for a little while at least we’re going through the perishables like it’s a blackout and I’m buying ice like it’s that episode of The Twilight Zone where the Earth has moved too close to the sun and the temperature just keeps rising. And because of that I’m thinking a lot about ice. It’s really an amazing thing. Less than two hundred years ago ice was a luxury, unless you lived in a really cold climate. The only way to get it in the lower latitudes was to have it cut from winter lakes, covered with sawdust, and shipped south in insulated trains. There’s a Three Stooges short I remember seeing as a kid where they’re delivering ice. Curley starts out carrying a giant block up a set of stairs and by the time he gets to the top…
Source: Tenor
Now ice is something we take for granted. Almost every refrigerator spits it out from a dispenser in the door, and if you need more you can buy bags of ice. And even that’s a big change. I remember when we had to carefully fill trays with water and stick them in the freezer to get cubes of ice. There are cocktail drinkers who swear spherical ice is the only way to go—the lack of edges providing a more even melting that doesn’t interfere so much with the taste of whatever spirit they’re imbibing. A coworker once said offhandedly that he never understood why some ice cubes are clear and some are cloudy. I said it was because of impurities in the ice—the same nucleation sites that create bubbles in boiling water.
There are ice hotels, people sculpt ice—a wonderfully ephemeral medium—and so many parents have endured hours and hours of talk about Elsa, one of the heroes of Frozen. Most of the water that we know of in the solar system—outside of Earth, that is—is ice. There are vast oceans of diamond-hard ice under the surface of the Moon and Mars, and Europa and Enceladus are icy worlds that may have oceans underneath. Here on Earth Sonic Drive-Ins have special ice machines that produce “nugget ice” that some people think is better for cooling beverages and easy to chew, if crunching ice is your thing–it’s not mine and I prefer a higher beverage-to-ice ratio myself, but it works for them, and it’s better than McDonald’s where the ice cream machines don’t even work most of the time.
So, yes, I’ve been thinking entirely too much about how cool ice is. The one thing I’m not doing right now is re-reading Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle because—spoiler alert—the idea of the world being destroyed by ice isn’t something I want to think about right now. Not that it’s something I worry too much about—if anything I’m concerned about warming because here it is, late February, and this is what I find:
The whole time I was reading this, Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice was playing in my head ????
Now I’ve got “Under Pressure” in my head!
Wow, my emoji got turned into question marks for some weird reason!
That’s really weird that WordPress does that. In the app I see the emoji but on the site I get question marks. I’ve got questions all right.
Chris,
It’s almost midnight here and 66 degrees. It’s been a weird February. Pollen is probably going to be a bitch this year, too. Do you know if there’s a correlation between a warmer winter and what that means for summer? I should look that up. I have no idea if we’re in a El Nino or LA Nina cycle, but not looking forward to having to turn the AC on extra early this year! Stay cool ???? but don’t freeze! Mona
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Mona, I think we’re in an El Nino currently, which doesn’t help. And even if the pollen weren’t so bad the roller coaster ride of temperatures has got to be terrible for all of us. A week ago it was summer. Now we’re in late winter again. I wish the weather would settle down!
Synchronicity is so cool, Chris. Yesterday, I bought two ice cube trays because (1) our refrigerator doesn’t make ice and (2) I need to use ice for physical therapy on my clicking jaw. Thanks for the warmth you always bring here.
It’s probably a good thing to have a refrigerator that doesn’t make ice–making your own with ice cube trays probably saves electricity. I hope the ice has helped your jaw.