This is a system South Aust had way back in the 1950’s This is a photo of a page in a very very old recipe book I have in-the drawer If you wanted a Cooker / Fridge / wall mounted hot water above the kitchen sink you had to hire them
What a novel idea that must have seemed to people when it first came out ! Being the suspicious type though, I would certainly have wondered about the 'free freezer v inflated food prices' and come to the conclusion that you would actually be paying a 'hire charge' for the freezer as part of the higher food cost - but how did this idea work out in practice ? I'm assuming it was a case of shops providing the freezers and customers have some kind of 'account' with the shop to keep track of how much they had spent. If I'm right on my above assumption - it isn't an idea that I would have been interested in as I doubt I would have liked to be 'tied' to one shop for my frozen food.
I remember those plans for getting the freezer and buying the food. I think we ended up just returning the freezer because the cost of the freezer/food was way too expensive. It was when I was first married, and sounded like a good idea at the time, but turned out not to be affordable for us. It seems like we ordered and they delivered the food , like the Swansons people do that come around with the big truck load of food each month.
Yes @Yvonne Smith that’s how I remember it working here in Australia but because I didn’t sign up for it I was never 100% sure how it worked
Because I didn’t take part in the “ free” freezer scheme I was never 100% sure how it worked but I do know it wasn’t successful for allot of people . @Reen Davis
I don't recall any freezer lockers when I was a kid; we had a chest freezer for as long as I remember. I remember my mother calling it a "deep freeze," and the refrigerator was "The Frigidaire." Sometime in the late 60's we got a bottom freezer Kenmore refrigerator in avocado green.
I can remember the refrigerator we had before the electric one. The appearance was mostly the same, except there was a place at the bottom for a block of ice, and a pan beneath that which collected the water that melted from the ice. I was very small when it was replaced, but that's how I remember it.
Houston had a big Ice House at the North end of downtown and it was open up until the early 60s. I do know people were still using the Block Ice boxes into the late 40s early 50s. The ice business finally shut down and the last main source of customers were the Beer Joints or Juke Joints. None had electric ice boxes and I was around 6 before they started disappearing. Most of those old joints were once garages converted into the joints. It was a huge ice house and like other things the property became worth more than the business. It was down in the old business district where PEDON Iron and steel had their main building or just on the south side of the Bayou off North Main. All that area has been totally razed and reclaimed even the historical PEDON building was torn down. I guess the city council couldn't find a way to stuff their pockets with money by keeping historical buildings. They tried to steal the Dome and wanted to make more pay parking lots, and of course the owners are all those thieving city council hanger-ons for decades. For a while the Dome was looking at a grim moment when the bulldozers started to unload, then the Judge in charge of Historical sites in Texas stood up and declared it a Historical structure. That was a great day when it happened because the people living in Houston at the time and voting were mostly not natives but people who had moved to Texas with their companies they were working for in their own home towns and states. It was those people voting to destroy the Dome. It was the first Domed Stadium and deserves to be treated like any other historical site. The property the Dome sits on was sold to the city for 1 dollar !!!
We are drifting from the frozen food in cold locker discussion, but I have to say that I do not agree that the Astrodome is an "historical structure." It's just an aging sports arena that cost the taxpayers millions to maintain... and for what? The annual home and garden show? Sorry, but that eyesore needs to be bulldozed.
The reason it is or was an eyesore was because none of that money was ever used to maintain it. The roof leaked the first day it opened and over the decades it constantly needed repairing. It was in terrible shape 15 years ago with standing water in the lower areas due to not being maintained. It does not use taxpayer money to maintain it today because there is a special fund to care for Historical properties and probably with Federal funds also. The cost to a Houston Home owner was at 2 dollars per year, if you were a home owner because they are the only ones paying the tax that would be used for the dome. Not all taxpayers would have been required to pay a tax to take care of the dome. It is an Historical Structure, you will find it as the 7th wonder of the World no matter how much of an eyesore it might be. That tax base would have been used had it not been declared the Historical site it is, and only if the vote had been enough to ask for the tax. It failed in the vote because a lot of people such as yourself don't like it. I do understand and respect that, however that was the reason I had mentioned a lot of voters paying taxes in Houston are not there for the long haul and soon as retirement comes in a lot of corporations those that came in with their jobs will go back to their own states and homes. In the meantime the Dome would have been gone now. All the old historical buildings downtown Houston have been destroyed for the space to build all these glass towers. It all started when Texas Eastern moved into town and started buying up all the lower or north Houston downtown areas. There is one sitting on the block I worked in at Mike Persia Chevrolet in 72, even then it was already news that the property had been purchased. I like the way it looked in the early 70s.
Thomas--this is interesting but has nothing to do with the thread topic. Also, the Dome was the 8th wonder of the world and I'm not sure they are still doing that "wonder of the world" thing. And lastly, the renovation of that eyesore has a pricetag of $105 million as of April 2018. That is serious money for nothing in my world, especially when some Houston children are living on the streets and hungry.