THE ICEMAN COMETH

In 1947 I was three years old. I remember the iceman coming into our house to deliver ice for our ice box. We did not have a refrigerator we had a wooden cupboard with a section at the top in which was placed chunks of ice. Rectangular chunks. The iceman had an ice pick which with he would chop off sections of ice from larger blocks in his truck. He had some ice tongs with which he carried the ice into the house.

This was normal for our neighbourhood of inexpensive wood frame houses in a respectable but non-affluent section of Miami. Even after the ice box was replaced in the 1950s with electric powered refrigerators, we still called the refrigerator the ice box.

There was a play called The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, produced after the war in 1946. The title shows that the regular arrival of an ice man to perform a mundane but essential service for the housewife was still part of the daily lives of ordinary Americans.

The initial meaning of the title is bathetic, as it is a parody of the Biblical verse, “The Bridegroom cometh” meaning the Saviour or Messiah. Which is another indication that the past is a foreign country where they speak a different language. The author of the play would expect his audience to be familiar enough with the New Testament so as to recognise a verse from the parable of the Ten Virgins. As if the Iceman is our Saviour.

I seem to remember that at the age of 2 and 3, we were allowed to spray DDT over each other with the hand sprayer as part of healthy good fun. Weed and insect killer poisons were part of life in Miami, where all kinds of insects and weeds could sting you, or even eat your house if it was wood.

Our street was very quiet, with an occasional car. One day out front, some local teenage boys were standing near or leaning against a parked car, very relaxed, talking softly, occasionally laughing. Very respectable. And they were tossing an American football to each other very casually, lazily, as a kind of twiddling of the thumbs, almost unconsciously, but very skilfully, as they talked. Three years old, I thought, “I’ll never be like them.” They seemed to me, though I did not know the word for it, demi-gods.

They wore penny-loafers, again, to me, a sign of almost god-like status. So it was that the habits and style of mature males, such as smoking and drinking as well, became for me, magic talismans or emblems of power and an adulthood, which I would never achieve. So when I did finally wear penny loafers, or toss a football in a real game of football, or smoked and drank, I still felt a child who had not managed to put away childish things.