Deep Freeze(r)
An alignment of the best possible circumstances and necessary variables led to a spontaneous pre-dawn defrosting of the freezer Saturday morning. I was only two days into my vacation, six inches of snow and drifts on the driveway kept us happily homebound, and the high that day didn’t even clear 28 degrees. A look ahead showed Sunday’s temps soaring all the way up to 41, so now was the time; we’d best be quick about it. While Patrick slept off a quiet Christmas upstairs, I got to work.
Thirty minutes later and emptied of its contents, the harvest gold Montgomery Ward Signature Deluxe sat with its rectangular mouth open, spitting droplets of chilled water onto a thick layer of old bath towels strategically placed on the floor as chunks of ice melted randomly from each bright silver coiled shelf. Earlier in the fall, we’d smartly set up plastic bins to hold our arctic larder by category—meats, fish, poultry, grains, ice cream/desserts—making it easy to unload it all and carry it to the front porch defrosting staging area. For the better part of six hours, the deck resembled an impromptu rummage sale of edibles for which we had no customers. Surrounded by a half-foot of snow drifts, it was almost Country Living photo shoot-ready. Almost.
As farm auction purchases go, that upright freezer we lugged home on a sunny August afternoon some sixteen years ago holds a proud place near the top of our Most Excellent Auction Scores list, a bargain at $125. It’s been with us so long, I can’t recall the grunting logistics of unloading it from whatever truck we owned at the time, sliding it across the front porch, through the carpeted living room and finally pushing it into the far corner of the bathroom/storage area where it has hummed away since. Like she was born there.
A note about our home’s layout and room arrangement is necessary at this point. The bathroom fixtures used to share space with an old massive coal burner until the previous owners upgraded to a modest modern form of propane-fueled somewhat-central heat. It only reached the rooms on the first floor, so we quickly learned the value of a few strategically-placed space heaters in the upstairs bedrooms during our early years here. After a series of unfortunate furnace events of our own, we’re now on our third one and haven’t regretted shelling out the extra cash to bring a measure of that warm air into the bedrooms upstairs. Somewhere in the house’s construction evolution, a half-wall was installed to separate the old coal burner from the “business” side of the bathroom, providing at least the intention of privacy, and resulting in more than a few guests scratching their heads when we’d direct them to the facilities and the first thing they’d see was the freezer. Now when folks come to visit, they know the closed door to that space is the Signal that someone is in there, tending to the necessary. A few years ago, we slid a primitive flatback cupboard up against the freezer side of the half-wall, thinking it would blur the appearance of keeping food in the bathroom. So far so good.
It seems silly to even write the words, but that freezer has given us some great memories, and (if such a thing were possible) has become a beloved and reassuring member of our family. When we raised meat chickens, that retro golden food locker kept our poultry harvest safely stored until Patrick found a way to make it delicious (now we let Costco manage most of our inventory, and as I type this, there are five one-pound packages of pork belly waiting for a Korean garlic marinade spiced with fresh ginger to land atop a bowlful of long grain brown rice). When he was in school for his suture technician certification (to be used at the emergency room of our metropolitan children’s hospital), Patrick stored his practice pigs’ feet in there, making dinner prep a “double-check what you’re thawing” adventure until he graduated. We stocked the wire basket at the bottom of the unit with a summer’s worth of wild berries and shredded zucchini, and two summers ago with frozen grapes and washcloths for our niece’s 50-mile charity bike run that conveniently cycled past our driveway. There could be an entire chapter on ice cream alone (which reminds me, honey, we're out of spumoni).
Occasionally we’ll talk about getting a new one, but that idea soon loses steam in the presence of such reliability and nostalgia. How can something so cold make us feel so cozy? One look at her as we pass through the living room to the kitchen and we’re back in the moment when the auctioneer banged the gavel in our favor. Then more memories of other auctions and our good fortune come surging to the surface and soon we’re chatting happily from our view of the past, making note of how something that once belonged to someone else graces each corner of our home. We can only begin to wonder how many people she fed, how much venison was stored next to the peas and carrots, and whether her previous custodians kept cartons of chocolate or vanilla on the top shelf (we don’t torture ourselves with choosing; we stock them both).
Six hours after I turned the dial to “off”, the ice was gone from the shiny silver coils on the shelves, the walls and door pockets wiped clean and the tubs of food returned to their precise locations. She hummed back to frozen life overnight, greeting me with her mechanical song this morning before the daily walk, our cauliflower pizzas and green beans tucked safely in her icy embrace.
Let winter keep coming. Old Gold Montgomery is on the job.
