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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Today marks the official first day of summer, so what better way to kick off the season than talking about something that helps us stay cool?

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A new book titled Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity outlines how ice revolutionized industries such as alcohol, food, technology, science and medicine, and sports. Author Amy Brady includes stories of how Boston's Ice King Frederic Tudor taught Cuban bartenders how to cool the drinks. How a 19th-century physician named John Gorrie invented a machine to make ice and how ice men became objects of romantic desire. A Wall Street Journal review says that Ms. Brady's eye for such hidden connections is sharp and her curiosity is infectious.

Amy Brady is also the executive director of Orion Magazine and a contributing editor to Scientific American and co-editor of The World As We Knew It: Dispatches From a Changing Climate. Amy, welcome to All Of It.

Amy Brady: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want your hot takes on ice, cubes or crushed. Where do you stand on specialty ice trays? Do you remember receiving a delivery from the iceman at your home or the first time your family got a refrigerator that made ice? What did you think about it at the time? Or when I mention ice, do you think of sports? What are your favorite activities to do on the ice? Are you a fan of ice hockey, figure skating, or ice sculpting maybe? Maybe you're an ice sculptor or a skater or a hockey player. Tell us your ice stories. Give us a call at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or reach out to us on social media @AllOfItWNYC. Hot takes on the cold stuff, ice. Ice is ubiquitous now, but it hasn't always been that way. When did Ice become an actual commodity?

Amy Brady: About 200 years ago when Frederic the Ice King Tudor landed on the idea to start selling ice out of his frozen Massachusetts Lake in the winter. It took him about 10 years before he was able to do it successfully, but eventually, he had teams of men carving blocks of ice out of that lake and others around New England and shipping it to warm climates around the world.

Alison Stewart: How was ice transported at that time? What shape did it take?

Amy Brady: It was usually in the shape of large blocks because it was easy to cut it that way and then easy to stack it. Frederic Tudor figured out how to ship ice long distances on ships by examining how it was kept in his family ice house. He basically learned that if he could stack the blocks so that air couldn't flow between them and the blocks were elevated out of their own meltwater, that as long as they were kept relatively cool, they could last months if not a full year.

Alison Stewart: You get into detail about how dangerous it was to harvest ice, and honestly not that sanitary. Let's start with the dangerous part first. What were some of the dangers of harvesting ice at the beginning of the ice trade?

Amy Brady: It was so dangerous. It involved at least dozens of men who would venture out on the frozen plains of ice in the coldest time of year. This was happening at the tail end of the little ice age, so winters were much colder then than they are now. The temperature was dangerously low, but then the ice itself was also dangerous. It wasn't easy to tell where the thin spots were, and it wasn't unusual for men and the horses that they were using to harvest the ice to fall through.

Alison Stewart: Now we get to the not-that-sanitary part, the horses on the ice doing what horses naturally do. Would you explain this?

Amy Brady: Oh, it was so gross. Horses being the mammals that they are frequently let loose their bowels on the ice, the very ice that would soon touch the mouths of thirsty Americans everywhere. One of my favorite tidbits of this research was that ice harvesters frequently employed a man who would pull what was called a shine slay. That shine slay's job was to scrape away the horse's waste and thus earned its name by the oily shine that it left behind.

Alison Stewart: Frederic Tudor made a fortune shipping ice to Cuba and Martinique, but in the book, you write that this was akin to selling television sets to Americans before the 1950s. What made this business venture seem a little mercurial at the time?

Amy Brady: Well, if you think about it, people living in warm climates where ice rarely, if ever formed naturally, wouldn't know what to do with ice. When they saw it, it was akin to looking at a unicorn. It was almost like this magical substance that could change the temperature of whatever it touched. When Tudor arrived in these places, he faced two major problems. One was that nobody knew what to do with it, but second, because nobody knew what to do with it, there was no infrastructure to support it. There were no icehouses, there were no means of shipping and bringing it to people's homes. He had to create both an infrastructure and a demand before ice finally took off.

Alison Stewart: When he went to these places, how did he convince them to purchase ice for him? What kind of demonstrations? What was his sales pitch?

Amy Brady: It took him a while to figure out what would do it, but eventually he thought, "Well, why do I love ice? Why do I Frederic Tudor love ice?" He realized it was because he used it to make the most delicious things. When he arrived in Cuba, for example, he knew that nobody in that nation trusted him, but they all trusted their local barista. He went into the local cafes and the bars and he showed them how to make cocktails using ice and then how to make desserts like ice cream using ice and milk and sugar. Once people got a taste for these icy treats, they never looked back.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity. We have an ice fan on Line 1. Nicole. Hi Nicole. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Nicole: Hey there. I am a fellow anemic who likes to chew on ice because I guess apparently, that's just something that people with low iron do. My husband got tired and my kids, of having to stop at all of these gas stations and pay for ice that for my 40th birthday, they bought me a freestanding ice machine for our counter and counter space is a hot commodity in New York City, but we found a place for it. I have this little machine that drops me nuggets of love, 24 hours a day in the form of these soft, not too hard, in the shape of gumdrops ice all day, every day. In the car, I have a cup of ice right next to me. I have a cup of ice when I go to sleep, and I am an ice aficionado and I love this hot conversation right now. Thanks for having it.

Alison Stewart: Nicole. I think this segment was made for you. Thanks for calling in. I'm going a little bit out of chronological order, Amy, but since Nicole brought it up, who invented the first ice machine?

Amy Brady: In the United States, it was a doctor named John Gorrie who lived in Apalachicola, Florida on the Gulf Coast. Not the place you think of first when you think of ice. Dr. Gorrie had gone to this tiny little port town to fight yellow fever, which was a disease that was ravaging the region every summer. Hundreds if not thousands of people were losing their lives to it. In researching how he could cure his patients of this disease, remember this was a time doctors didn't know it was transmitted by mosquitoes. All he knew was that the disease got worse in the summer months and got better in the cold months.

He thought, "If I can get my patient's body to mimic the cycle of the seasons, maybe I could cure them of yellow fever." The only way he knew how to do that was with ice. In Apalachicola, it didn't form naturally. The ice trade had only just arrived in Florida and it was extremely expensive to purchase ice then. Locals called it white gold because it was so pricey. He knew if he wanted ice, he was going to have to learn to make it himself. After years of trial and error, he finally figured out how to build a machine that can produce it. When he announced it to the world, he did not get the response he expected.

Alison Stewart: What was the response?

Amy Brady: Well, he thought it was going to be cries of gratitude and joy and instead it was cries of blasphemy. People saying, "How dare a man make ice? Only God can make ice." He ultimately died penniless with his reputation in tatters.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Amy Brady. The name of the book is Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity. We are looking for your hot takes on ice, cubes or crushed. Where do you stand on specialty ice trays? Maybe you're someone like Nicole who has a really personal relationship with ice. Do you remember receiving a delivery from the iceman at your home ever in your lifetime or maybe your family had an ice maker? That was big news at one point when people's families had ice makers in their refrigerators. What did you think about it at the time? Or maybe ice means sports to you. Do you have a favorite activity you do on the ice? Are you a fan of ice hockey or figure skating? Perhaps, you have seen someone doing ice sculpture. Amy covers that in her book as well. Maybe, you're an ice sculptor. Give us a call. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can text to us at that number or reach out on social media. We're talking about all things ice. I want to point out something I think it's interesting to lay the groundwork is that as a journalist, you also write about environmental issues. What questions did you seek to answer about the production of ice as an environmental journalist and a historian, through that lens?

Amy Brady: Well, I have heard other journalists refer to the refrigerators in kitchens as carbon bombs because they draw so much energy. In fact, refrigerators in the average American household draws more energy than any other appliance. If it has an automated ice maker, it draws even more because those ice makers never shut off. That's why [chuckles] we have ice at any time of day, day or night. I wanted to look into the toll that refrigerators were taking on the planet, and I learned it was considerable. The cooling industry contributes approximately 10% of all carbon emissions spewed into our atmosphere.

Luckily, there are experts and scientists who are experimenting with new technologies that could replace the typical or conventional refrigerators that we have today. These new technologies would require less energy and also would use a much more environmentally friendly refrigerant to keep the appliances cold.

Alison Stewart: I always wonder, with the way things go back to the future, if there's any movement towards artisanal icehouses in the United States.

Amy Brady: [laughs] I would not be surprised. Luxury Ice has already taken the craft cocktail scene by storm with bars across the country now not using ice machines like so many have done for so long, but are shipping in large blocks of ice that they could then carve into fancy shapes and different textures, freeze interesting things inside of them to make the cocktail feel more luxurious.

Alison Stewart: We are talking about the book Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity. We have some calls we're going to get to after a quick break, and we'll hear more about the history of ice, including in New York City, how we were consuming more than 285 million tons of ice per year in 1890. We'll find out why after a break.

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This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Amy Brady. She's the author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity. Let's talk to Michelle on line one who has called in. Hi, Michelle, thanks for calling.

Michelle: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I love this topic. I actually did a semester abroad in the '90s, and I was in Paris learning French. My friend and my sister sent me a cassette tape that they had recorded. I hit play, and I hear a soda can being opened and then being poured over a glass of amazing ice. I hear this crackling and popping, and I couldn't get ice in Paris because they just don't really have ice. They don't use it. I just knew that they were enjoying this amazing cold drink with this wonderful ice in it, and I could not have any of it.

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Alison Stewart: That's such a great story. Michelle, thanks for calling in. Is this obsession with ice uniquely American, Amy?

Amy Brady: It really is. Americans, of course, weren't the first people, let alone the only people to ever use ice, but the degree to which we consume it per capita every year is uniquely American.

Alison Stewart: "During the 19th century," you write, "most wealthy families living in cool climates like New England enjoyed icy around because they had these icehouses." They could afford it. When did ice start to become more accessible to middle-class and lower-income families?

Amy Brady: By the end of the 19th century, most American families could afford some ice some time of the year, and that was largely because of the rise of mechanical ice. John Gorrie's bold and blasphemous experiment finally started to catch on, and ice plants started to crop up first around the American South and then into the American Northern States as well. That greatly reduced the cost of ice, allowing more people than ever before to purchase it.

Alison Stewart: Aha. Then corruption enters the picture.

Amy Brady: As it's still [crosstalk]

Alison Stewart: Yes. [laughs] New York City was consuming more than 285 million tons of ice in 1890 more than any place else in the States. Then Charles W. Morse, who was the president of The New York City Ice Trust hiked up the prices by 100%.

Amy Brady: Yes, and by an outrageous amount, meaning that many, many, many people, particularly the poorest communities in New York City, could not afford ice. Then he blamed it on an ice shortage saying, "Oh, sorry, we couldn't harvest as much ice as we needed to satisfy you all, so we're going to raise the price." Of course, after an investigation, that proved not to be true. He was conning the American people.

Alison Stewart: Were there any repercussions for the con?

Amy Brady: [laughs] Eventually, but even those may not be too satisfying. After years of investigation, he was eventually arrested on tax fraud of all things and then while in prison, fell mysteriously ill. President Taft ended up pardoning him so that he could live out his final days as a free man. As it turned out, he ended up living more than a decade after he was pardoned. In retrospect, the doctors realized that he had drunk a bunch of soapsuds right before the examination, which mimicked Bright's disease, and conned all of the experts into letting him go free.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Jim from Ridgewood, Connecticut. Hi, Jim, thanks for calling All Of It.

Jim: Hi, Alison. It's nice to speak to you. It's Ridgefield.

Alison Stewart: Ridgefield, sorry.

Jim: Anyway, I wanted to tell you, I remember my grandfather, he was an Italian immigrant who was an iceman, and he delivered ice through Brooklyn on a horse-drawn cart. He kept his horses in Prospect Park, and he lost the business in the 1930s. I always thought it was the depression. I later learned from an aunt that the reason was they moved from horses to trucks, and he couldn't drive. That was the end of his business.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Oh, Jim, thanks for sharing that story. We have another iceman story. This is a text, "My grandmother, whose parents had died, was living with cousins in a Cinderella-like existence. My grandfather was the iceman. Her cousins would not allow them to date until he organized all the icemen who agreed not to deliver to them until permission was granted. She was 16 when they married. Grandma fell in love with the iceman, and the colleagues came together to pressure the family." You write that icemen were objects of romantic desire. When did the iceman become the it guy?

Amy Brady: Oh, man, this was one of the most interesting aspects of my research, that by time we get to the end of the 19th century, this is when the ice trade was peaking and we had more iceman working than ever before, there are so many popular songs written at the time with lyrics about women stealing kisses from the iceman. There are Valentine's Day cards with puns about the iceman. Of course, there's the Eugene O'Neill play. The Iceman Cometh is its title, which is the punchline of a joke the protagonist tells about the iceman having an affair with his wife. All of this was happening at the time when there were more icemen at work than ever before.

My theory is that when you look at all the other types of delivery men working at this time, the milkman, the mailman, the iceman is the only person to actually come inside the house. Everyone else left their wears outside. In the eyes of many people at a time when there was a lot of anxiety about women being left alone with a strange man, it was as if the iceman was crossing a forbidden threshold. We see this anxiety peak during the world wars, World War I and World War II, when more husbands than ever before were away from the home and overseas fighting.

Alison Stewart: Well, did that open up this industry to women?

Amy Brady: It did. There was so many men fighting on the front. Women were delivering ice because, at this point in history, ice was a commodity on par with coal in terms of importance. People needed it to survive, and there was no other way to get it other than by delivery. Women would often work two at a time carrying these 50-pound blocks of ice into people's homes. In retrospect, the ice industry is one of the first large industries to hire women.

Alison Stewart: Let's see. We've got a text, "In 1973, when I started commuting to Manhattan from New Jersey on the Erie Lackawanna, there was a subscription car with 'air conditioning, a fan blowing over the ice block too much." That's so funny. "Also, back in 1983, me and some fellow New York City cab drivers had finished our 5:00 PM to 5:00 AM shift. We were walking through Soho to Chinatown for some dim sum breakfast. On the way, we saw inside an ice house with a loading doors open. At the time, I didn't know such a thing existed, so it was one of those magic New York moments for me. I think it's now a multimillion-dollar condo building." Wow. Let's talk to on line 8, I believe it is Melissa calling in from Ardsley. Hi, Melissa.

Melissa: Hi. I want to share a fond memory I have from the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival. For years I went to Falcon Ridge and every morning and later in the day also, a guy would drive around in a car and he would be yelling, "Ice," through a speaker. Everyone would run to go get their cash and go buy a bag of ice for their small camping group. Just as soon as I heard you talking, I had the sound in my head and the fun memories.

Alison Stewart: Could you just say it again one more time for fun?

Melissa: All right. Ice.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Thanks for calling in, Melissa. Appreciate the enthusiasm. We're talking to Amy Brady, author of Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity. Listeners, if you want to call in with your ice tales, our number is 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can text us as well. In the book, you explore how ice is used for recreational purposes. How did the invention of artificial ice lead to the development of some of the sports we love today?

Amy Brady: Well before artificial ice became a thing in the United States, ice skating had already caught on in a big way. That's largely because ice skating was one of the few places in society where amorous couples could skate together without being under the watchful eye of a guardian. It was extremely popular. Once artificial ice made it possible to make indoor skating rinks, then the pastime just grew and grew and grew.

As it became more popular, these ice rink owners thought, 'Well, how else can I capitalize on this trend?" Soon they added breaks between skatings to put on different types of carnivals and shows, which laid the groundwork for what we might consider to be halftime shows now at various sporting events. Then those skating rinks eventually became the large multimedia entertainment complexes that we have today like Madison Square Garden.

Alison Stewart: When did it become clear for the need for a Zamboni and who invented the Zamboni?

Amy Brady: [laughs] It was Frank Zamboni who invented the Zamboni in the mid-20th century. All of that skating takes a toll on the ice. It nicks it, it scratches it so it makes it less slippery. That's bad for ice skaters who are just doing it for fun, but it's really bad for speed skaters and hockey skaters who are competing on that ice. It was really hard to fill in those gaps in the short amount of time between quarters or half times. Frank Zamboni came along with this, it looks like a little golf cart on ice that can smooth and fix the ice. What by then seemed a record time, even though today they can only go something like nine miles per hour.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Donna on line four. Hi, Donna. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Donna: Hi, there. I grew up not in New York, but in Kansas City and pretty poor. We had an iceman who came with a horse and wagon in the early 1940s. The kids would run outside. We would all run outside with a little piece of cloth, a handkerchief, or a washcloth or something to beg for a little speck of ice. Absolutely the iceman comes into the house, puts the ice into the ice box, which is terribly messy. You have to have a basin at the bottom to catch the dripping water. My mother was just thrilled beyond your imagination when we were able to afford a refrigerator.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. I'm going to dive in because I want to get one more memory in here. Thank you so much for calling, Donna. Alice in Bronxville. What does ice mean to you?

Alice: My first kiss was on a frozen pond in the moonlight when I was 12. The dear boy, who was my good friend and I skated off into the shadows, the moonlit shadows, and exchanged our probably, his too, first kiss. That's my lovely memory of skating.

Alison Stewart: Oh, love that story. Before I let you go, Amy, is there anything you'd like people to think about, especially when they go to the icebox soon and take out a piece of ice, something they might not have thought about, an industry, something important that ice has meant to our culture?

Amy Brady: Most people today, if they need to get a bag of ice, they're going to go to a local convenience store. What most people don't know is that the convenience store is based on the Southland Ice Company in Texas, which had depots all across the state. By the time we get to World War II and the rise of refrigerators, this ice company is looking for new ways to rebrand itself because refrigerators are replacing their product.

They start stocking milk and bread and other kitchen staples. This combination of buying those staples alongside ice proved to be so popular they had to expand their hours. When they eventually rebranded, they named themselves after their hours of 7 to 11 and the 7-Eleven was born. Today you can still buy ice at the 7-Eleven.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks--a Cool History of a Hot Commodity. Thanks to everybody who called in. Thanks to author, Amy Brady, for joining us. Amy, this was a lot of fun, and thanks for all your great research.

Amy Brady: Thanks for having me. This was great fun.

 

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