The icebox was a wooden cabinet lined with tin and insulated with sawdust and it had a compartment on top for a block of ice and compartments below for the food. The ice man brought the ice and the ice kept the food cold and the food kept the family alive and the icebox was the center of that chain. The icebox was the ancestor of the refrigerator the way a campfire is the ancestor of the furnace.

You opened the icebox and the cold air hit your face and you reached in and took what you needed and you closed it fast because the ice was melting. The ice was always melting. The icebox was a race against time. Everything in the icebox was temporary. The milk was good for two days. The meat was good for one. The icebox did not preserve food. The icebox delayed its death.

The drip pan sat underneath the icebox and caught the water as the ice melted. Somebody had to empty the drip pan. In our apartment that somebody was my sister. She emptied it twice a day and if she forgot the water ran across the kitchen floor and my mother had words about it. The drip pan was the icebox's confession. The drip pan said I am losing.

My mother kept everything in the icebox organized. Butter on the left. Milk on the right. Eggs in the middle. The icebox was small and the family was large and the organization was not optional. You could not waste space in an icebox. You could not waste food in a tenement. The icebox taught economy. The refrigerator teaches excess. The refrigerator is so big you forget what is in the back. The icebox forgot nothing because there was no back.

The refrigerator arrived and the icebox went to the curb. The kids on the block played in the empty icebox until somebody's mother told them a kid in Brooklyn suffocated in one. After that the doors came off. The icebox on the curb with no door was the saddest piece of furniture on the block. A mouth with no teeth. A house with no family. The refrigerator hums. The icebox was silent. I miss the silence.

See also: Ice Wagon, Ice Man