Scissors grinder, ice man vanish
Home tradesmen held special niche
By DONNA QUICK
Special to the Argus
The clear staccato chime of a bell ringing in rhythm with the turning of the wheels of his cart announced the arrival on our street of the smiling, walrus-mustached scissors grinder.
He and other tradesmen peddling their wares were a welcome sight when I was a child. We neighborhood kids gave to each one considerable and appropriate attention, since we knew we would somehow turn their business visit into our pleasure.
They served an advantage if only to summon the gang together.
Until yesterday, when my dressmaking shears failed to cut cleanly the full length of the blades, I had forgotten how much fun it was to watch blades being sharpened. What happened to the jolly grinder?
My playmates and I would follow him as he pushed his two‑wheeled cart, and with his first job we crowded near the big whirling wheel to watch it spit sparks as the blade of a scissors or knife was guided across the wheel's spinning surface by his deft fingers.
Up and down, up and down went his foot on the pedal that turned the wheel. We never exchanged conversation, but we knew by his smile that we were welcome spectators to his skill.
If our clustered scrutiny annoyed any of the traveling tradesmen, it would have been the iceman. His job not only required speed and brawn but patience with children.
The number of stops he made was determined by the number of ice-cards placed in front windows. Each one indicated an amount of 25, 50, 75, or 100 pounds on the upside.
Before he made his second delivery we were aware of his presence on our block, and we quickly gathered at the rear of his truck to watch the ice‑pick turn loose flying chips as he chiseled the specified amount.
As soon as he hooked the chunk with his tongs and headed for the rear of a house to drop it into a waiting ice chest, we collected chips to suck, to throw and sometimes stick down the unsuspecting neck of the new kid on the block.
The ice truck didn't come by every day as the milk truck did; however, the milkman was spared the mischievous audience since he arrived on our street early in the morning.
All the same, we knew he had been there because the empty bottle placed on the front porch at night was replaced with a full bottle before mushtime the next morning.
In winter's freezing weather, the milk expanded causing the cream to push the paper cap upward several inches exposing a frozen treat which I tasted with caution and care so Mother couldn't detect a change in its shape.
An extra bottle of milk was ordered by placing a note in the empty bottle. With two bottles, Mother had enough cream to whip into a thick icing for her company sponge cake. My job was to lift the cream from the bottles with a ladle‑shaped spoon made especially for that purpose.
Her sponge cake was a prize-winner and sometimes I bake it, but it never tastes as good as hers, because I cannot frost it with whipped cream. Isn't it curious that the cream that arrived at our door in a glass bottle was so much heavier and thicker than the cream purchased today in a paper carton?
A regularly scheduled outside visitor to our block was the man who cleaned the globe of the arc light on the corner of Northeast Seventh and Sumner. We critically watched his actions with a tenant's eye, not because a clean globe was important but because we claimed possession of the area beneath it that the arc light lit.
In that lighted circle we played Kick the Can late into the summer's night, and the wooden pole that supported it was our home base for Hide n' Seek.
Just beyond the perimeter of the light's image, we told such terrorizing ghost stories that I was afraid to run home past four neighborhood houses even though I was the swiftest kid on the block.
Yes, after dark the arc light and the space it lit belonged to the neighborhood gang.
An itinerant merchant who made unscheduled trips up our street blew into a long horn to announce to everyone that he had fresh-caught fish to sell. Womenfolk, with kettles in hand, met him at the rear of his small panel truck (complete with a fish painted on the sides), and there he weighed the cut of their choice on a scale hung from an overhead hook.
Mother didn't buy fish, since our meat supply came from our backyard where I raised rabbits, but a schoolmate, Dorothy Coulter, reminded me that her mother always bought a fishtail - the cheapest cut - from which she made a family favorite by baking it in milk with potatoes and onions.
Dorothy is of German-Russian descent as were most of the folks who lived in the Albina Homestead area. Grenfell's grocery store on Union Avenue near Skidmore was nearest to them, but the Albina residents often preferred Holderman's store near Failing, where they could transact business in their native tongue.
It was Gaylord Brother's store on the corner of Union and Roselawn where Mother sent me for needed staples. She would tell me what to fetch, and I would begin a sing-song chant of her list which I repeated as I ran the two blocks to the store, where I quickly recited it for Glenn, the grocer. Any item forgotten meant a return‑trip, and so I made certain that the sing-song system never failed.
Anyway, Mother did not need me to run grocery errands, since groceries were promptly delivered upon call. It was fun to see what she had ordered and guess what was intended for supper.
Porkchops in the bag meant company was coming, and lots of milk gravy would be made so much that there would certainly be some left over for the next meal to spoon over bread. Even today, I consider "soppy" broken bread and porkchop gravy a dining delight.
One summer a photographer walked up our street with a spotted pony in tow. In true Pied-Piper fashion he gathered children, and we became many and walked for over a mile before he found a subject with sufficient coins for a picture to be taken.
We watched with envy as he placed a cowboy hat on the boy's head and tied a red neckerchief loosely about his neck and took several pictures. We had to be content with stroking the pony's chest, and nurturing a feeling of importance because we had been a part of the unique parade.
My brother became a peddler, too, when he began delivering the Oregonian. Even Mother became involved when one Sunday he had an earache, and she had to pull his Red Racer wagon loaded with papers through his route a job she did unabashedly.
Newspapers are still delivered door to door on my street, but I never hear the ringing of a grinder's bell. So now, 50 years later, it is I who will do the walking through the Yellow Pages in search of a scissors sharpener.
He may not be walrus-mustached, but he will smile, because I will manage to turn my business visit to him into pleasure by telling him about the beckoning bell that once gathered the gang together to watch the whirling wheel spit sparks as it sharpened shears.
(Donna Quick is a free-lance writer who lives in Deer Island. Several of her articles have appeared in the Argus)
Vol. 94, No. 123 1 Section 10 Pages