First fridge and freezer for family?

buickanddeere · Jul 30, 2013

What year did your family get it's first fridge and first deep freezer?
Electric, LP or Kerosene

When did your family quit using an ice box?

WV2CYL · Jul 30, 2013

Oh what memories, I remember the first refer, it was 1949, the REA had put lines in our community, I watched a man drilling with a brace and bit installing the light in the ceiling and got wood cuttings in my eyes.The frigidaire dealer brought a new refer for us and my grandparents and in the process backed over my tricycle. I was almost 4 yrs.old. In 1970 I was remodeling a house on adjoining farm to us and there was a kelvinator freezer in the house. The owner preparing to move into his parents house and asked me to help load the old freezer on a truck to take to the dump. I was getting married the next week, Aug. 15,1970,almost exactly 43 yrs ago, and was poor as everything and asked for the freezer. I took it home, mom cleaned it up and got it started, when I was honeymooning,and it hasn"t missed a beat in all those yrs. They had bought it when the power came through in "49, 64 yrs ago.

Bill(Wis) · Jul 30, 2013

Our first electric refrigerator was purchased around the beginning of WWII (The Big One). It had a small freezer compartment inside it that would just barely keep a gallon of ice cream frozen. Nothing else. We never had a deep freeze but rented lockers at the meat market in town which was only 4 miles away. We butchered a beef animal every year which would be a 1000 lb holstein steer or heifer. Also traded beef for pork with my uncle. The meat market butcher wouold cut up the meat, wrap it (with shorthand ID as to what it was-"ST, HB, RST," etc.) We also butchered about 400 chickens each year and sold most of them to the meat market, froze some for ourselves. We froze all kinds of stuff. Strawberries were a favorite. When we'd go shopping in town we'd stop at the locker plant last and bring home some meat from our locker(s). Put that in the fridge to let it thaw, or, in the winter, we'd bury some packages of meat in the oat bins where they'd stay frozen. Wisconsin, you know. (;>))
The next refrigerator we got was after the war but it still had the freezer compartment inside, not seperate. We got ice from the ice house for big parties (to keep the beer cold) up into the 1960s. My brother got my uncles ice chest which my uncle was using for a tool cabinet in the shed and made a really nice bar out of it. Solid oak with nickel plated brass hinges.

Mike (WA) · Jul 30, 2013

I think most everybody had juice around here (western Washington) by the early 1940's, and I'm sure we had a refrigerator when we moved from town to the farm in '48. I do remember the first freezer, though- an upright, in about '55 or so. Mom had always canned everything, now started freezing meat and fruit, mainly- much better than canned.

Tx Jim · Jul 30, 2013

I remember my Dad getting mad when neighbors referred to the local electric co-op by the name REA that he helped develop and managed from '38-'70. I remember him stating that REA was just a government entity that financed the co-op's but REA didn't actually build any transmission lines.

Bob Bancroft · Jul 30, 2013

I don't know. But I do know that this road was powered up in 1939. And knowing my family's history, I imagine my grandparents had all the modern conveniences ASAP. Dad used to talk about the "Delco" unit they had prior to that, which was located in a little old out building close to the house.

D beatty · Jul 30, 2013

My folk got their first fridge before I was born and was told it was electric. Their first freezer was boughr in the mid 50's and was a 30 foot upright (huge) Unico sold by Farm Bureau Coop and was electric.
They had that freezer untill the mid 80's when it quite and they got a smaller freeze because they didn't need that large of a freezer since us kids had left home.

retired farmer · Jul 30, 2013

Must have been about 1950 Dad got a propane refrigerator. We didn't get power till about 1952 and he bought an International freezer. We used it till about 1964 and then sold it to my sister's husbands brother. He used it for years and then gave it to my sister. She said it finally died a couple of years ago.

Tech 7 · Jul 30, 2013

My Mother bought a fridge and stove before she was married in 1951. She and Dad bought a deep freeze several years after they were married ( I am guessing 1954 or so) with money raised from selling Dachshound pups. Pups also paid for a vacuum cleaner a few years later.

Mike (WA) · Jul 30, 2013

Unico! That's the name I was trying to remember. The freezer (see below) was a Unico, purchase from the Washington Co-op, which later became Western Farmers Assn. Dad had to build a little alcove off the laundry room to accommodate it- it was a big one, and the walls on freezers were a lot thicker in those days, too.

NEKS · Jul 30, 2013

I was not very old, but do remember mom say she was glad to get rid of the ice box. I think it was 1949 or 50. Grandpa work for a IH dealer and I think he bought all his children(6) a fridge. The folks even got a freezer because dad farmed. Grandpa was limted to 2 a year through the dealer.

D beatty · Jul 30, 2013

Ya it was a very large freezer ( double door). It was alway kept full we raised our owen beef, pork,chicken and rabbit and also a large garden. I was about 9 years old when my folks bought it and it set in the same place on the back porch until they got rid of it.

LenND · Jul 30, 2013

We got REA in 1947. Folks bought a new Philco fridge. Next year bought a new Sears chest type deepfreeze. The freezer still works.

jimont · Jul 30, 2013

In 1954,my father sold a 2500lb holstein steer for $500 and purchased our first deep freeze. We bought ice-cream in 5 gallon tubs and neighouring kids would come in for an ice-cream cone. Next door neighbour bought a T.V. in 1953 and had the neighbourhood in to watch Queen Elizabeth's coronation.

Ted in NE-OH · Jul 30, 2013

1965 bought a LP refrigerator. A bad deal.

Bruce from Can. · Jul 30, 2013

My mom and dad bought a Frigedair in 1950, and a Phinaly propane stove. Made mothers life a lot brigher! Then in 1955, a chest freezer. As others have mentioned their folks kept a "freeer locker" in town. And my folks had one too. The local Dairy had a big cooling plant,so to make extra$$$ , they rented out lockers. Today kids can't even imagin what like was like with out our everyday appliances in the house,or barn. Bruce

greygoat · Jul 30, 2013

We had an "Ice Box" until about 1948, and the ice
man still came around. Then we got a "Wizard"
refrigerator, from Western Auto !

Harry Selleck · Jul 30, 2013

I can"t remember the first fridge But I can remember the getting ice from the "ice house" with my dad. It was hot that day and like magic to a kid to dig in the sawdust to find ice. I also remember the ice man delivering ice and always a chip for the kids. I can remember the ice box and being kept awake at night with the drip drip drip of the melting ice dropping into the catch pan. These had to been the early 1940"s.
My grandmother had a Frigidaire (sp) made by General Motors. All this about 1943-1944

Dick2 · Jul 30, 2013

Dad bought a big chest freezer from International in 1950 right after we got electricity. It worked well for almost 30 years before my brother replaced it.

We had a propane refrigerator for many years before we got electricity but kept using it as it did not make any noise. I think it was replaced the same year as brother got the new freezer in the late 70's.

El Toro · Jul 30, 2013

When we were on the farm my late mom bought a used refrigerator at an auction in the late 1940's. Spent a lot of money on it. In the early Spring during the Korean War of 1953 I bought her a new Frigidaire refrigerator. About a month before I was drafted into the Army.

When my wife joined me a Ft Bragg NC we bought a new mobile home and it had all new appliances. We rented it for 12 years when we bought a house.
Buying big chunks of ice for the ice box was a pain. Hal

Frank Dodson · Jul 30, 2013

My family bought both a kerosene cook stove and refrigerator in the mid forties before the area was electrified. I was born in January 1949 and during the spring of that year we got electricity. My family bought a GE refrigerator and a Deepfreeze brand freezer. The freezer was a huge double door chest type. My granddad ran a country store and had electric refrigeration by 1935. He did keep ice to sell in an ice house until the mid 50's.

PJH · Jul 30, 2013

I was born in 1949, and I can remember getting electricity on the farm, so it was probably 1953 or so when mom got a fridge. The compressor was on top, no cover, and mounted on floppy springs. It bounced all over the place when it torqued on. Entertaining for a little kid.

Mom never owned a chest type freezer - she canned everything, including meat. They'd butcher then take the quarters to a local locker/cold storage plant so she wouldn't be overwhelmed trying to can it up.

The ice box was the first thing to go when the lights came on. . .

Sounds primitive, but I think of that period as the good old days.

bison · Jul 30, 2013

where i grew up we did not have a freezer or fridge (had no electric either till 73 when i build a generator)
I bought the first freezer and fridge in 1980 when i immigrated.
I still use the same freezer but am on the 4th fridge.

PJH · Jul 30, 2013

My wife's family got their first freezer in 1963 through some kind of payment program with REA. We're still using it.

GeneMO · Jul 30, 2013

What are those??

1945, or right after WWII sometime. My dad said REA had the line run along the south boundary of the farm at the beginning of WWII, but quit working on it due to cost, manpower and copper shortages.

My uncle was a Navy Corpsman and came home from the war, opened up a hardware, appliance store and mortuary and got rich selling electric appliances and burying people who didn't need them any longer.

I came from the poor branch of the family

Gene

JMS/.MN · Jul 30, 2013

I was 3 when we got electricity in 1947. Some years later got a Philco refrig....before that, butter was stored in the barn well. Don"t remember an icebox. Philco door lock broke every few yeara, got welded again and again. Upright freezer maybe late 50s/1960- Mom was 4 foot 9, didn"t want a chest freezer, couldn"t reach the bottom!, before that, locker plant in town stored our meat.

johnw (OR) · Jul 30, 2013

We got electricity about 1949, folks bought a new Kelvinator in 1951 when youngest brother was born. Mom was still using it when she died in 1983, latch was broken she put a hasp on the door to keep it closed. New ones don't last that long anymore.

Paul from MI · Jul 30, 2013

Dad buried a gas line from town for his hatchery about 1935, a distance of 1/4 mile, dug by hand. Gas was piped to the house at that time for the refrigerator. That one was traded for a new gas refrigerator about 1948. First chest freezer was a Sears Coldspot about 1953, it was still running when Dad died in 1995.

Bill in Colo · Jul 30, 2013

I was born in California in 43 Dad had a walkin cooler and Locker plant to go with his turkey processing plant.
When we moved to the ranch in Colorado in 1947 we had 32 volt power plant a LP gas refrigerator.it was not new.(used it until 1960) chest freezer came in 1952, lasted into the mid 80's
My grandparents were still using a ICE box until 1948 when rea arrived.

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