Random Consumer Item

If you are "of a certain age," you will remember when it was a luxury to have an icemaker in your refrigerator.





If you are MORE of a certain age, like me, you will remember when it was not even imaginable to have an icemaker in your refrigerator.





That is when you had ice trays in your freezer. Not PLASTIC ice trays, they did not yet exist.





But, aluminum ice-cude trays. What you did was, you filled 'em with water and put 'em into the freezer. Simple, henh?





The trick was getting the ice OUT of the trays after freezing!

http://i371.photobucket.com/albums/oo152/MarkAAlfred/2010%August/AluminumIceTray.jpg

The first thing you would do was turn the frozen tray over and run cold water from the sink onto the bottom of the tray. The idea was to loosen the ice from sticking to the bottom of the tray. Then you'd turn the tray right-side-up.



The thing running left-to-right was a handle to grip. You'd set the tray on your kitchen counter and try to hold it down with one hand while you lifted up on the handle with the other.



You see, the handle was hinged and when it was pulled up, the ice-cube dividers, which were hinged together with the handle, would turn a little and thus break the ice into the cubes formed by the dividers.



That was the theory. In my house, the next step was knocking the partial pieces of ice loose from the aluminum dividers and trying to find the biggest pieces for your drink. In other words, it didn't work too good.

You also had to be strong enough to crack the ice!