Friday, October 31, 2008

In Another Light


I haven’t yet run an electrical line to the hen house yet so my morning feedings are done with a flash light. This morning on my way back to the house I shone the light beam through my hand. I recalled how interesting this was to me as a child to actually see the dense look of the metacarpal bones through the red glow of my skin.

Flash lights are tools of discovery for children. It is when we first become aware of the meaning of “seeing things in a different light.”

My favorite story of illumination happened while I was a lad one summer in Canada. As I’ve described in past articles, the place where we stayed was primitive. Refrigeration was an ice house.

For those of you too young to have ever experienced an ice house, they are small barn-like structures. Ice is cut from the lake and hauled by horse carts and stored in a massive block pile and then covered with saw dust as an insulator.

My brother and I returned after fishing one night. We cleaned the fish at the dock and carried them into the ice house. He had his burlap sack of fish and I had mine. We jumped down into the ice pit. He brushed the saw dust away from the area where he stored his fish and I did the same on the other side of the ice block mound. One of us put our flashlight right up to the ice and the light shown out as a mysterious glow on the other side. It was a soft blue-greenish glow.

We placed our burlap sacks on the ice and covered them with saw dust. Then we went to another area of the ice pile, placing our flashlights against the blocks and swept saw dust away from several places which was like opening windows. The entire inside of the ice house glowed like a fire fly. It was the coolest thing had ever seen at that young age. I would love to find an ice house somewhere again and share the experience with others.

5 Comments:

Blogger loopymamain06 said...

the closest thing I've probably seen to that, are the ice sculpture contests that they have here....some artists will install lights in their sculptures, and if you walk past the rows of sculptures during the night, it can be a beutiful sight,
loop out & needing more coffee

5:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Guy was into the harvest again...tsk tsk. Ice cold...tongue frozen on the railing of the school steps - last guy in from the recess. You knew it was gonna happen but you did it anyway. Thankfully not cursed with a lifelong lisp...care for thome theefood thailor?

I am reminded of the toys called kaleidoscopes...haven't seen them in years. Ton of fun when they had the black stuff on the eye piece. Damn...is the best to come turned into something else?

Moose

1:33 PM  
Blogger JustRex said...

Unfortunately, I think the only icehouse you will find these days is some tawdry commercially brewed non-oregon beer. I can't imagine anyone taking the time or the energy to do that sort of thing anymore. That's too bad. I'd liked to have experienced one myself. It would have been.........
Cool.
(grin)

4:53 PM  
Blogger The Guy Who Writes This said...

Loopy, you get it. Cool, eh?

Moose you know what happens when it's over 18% moisture content.

Darev,someone probably has one in a museum in New England. They were everywhere when my father was growing up, and I've only been in one working icehouse in my entire life.

4:40 AM  
Blogger loopymamain06 said...

There is a working "icehouse" at crossroads village
building #13
http://www.geneseecountyparks.org/crossroadsvillage.htm

6:22 AM  

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