jefferson ice factory - barrington, Il
My summer job during college (1968-71) at the Jefferson Ice Factory required me to join Teamsters Union Local 781. Here are my dog-eared union cards...
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My job title was Puller, because I ran the overhead crane which pulled metal containers that each held five blocks of ice from beneath the floor boards (the photo above of the crane was taken in 1976 after the ice factory had been converted into shops). The containers were immersed in a brine that contributed to the freezing process. Using the crane, I lifted one container at a time up out of the brine and then moved it forward to the front of the room, where I lowered it into warm water and ran more water onto each frozen block until they all floated loose, sometimes using an ice pick and tongs to help persuade them. Then I moved the container over to a platform that could be tilted to permit the ice blocks to slide out onto a metal floor, after which the empty container was filled with more water and returned to its place under the floor boards. Other workers then used tongs to wrestle the ice blocks over to several sets of heated coils, which slowly cut the blocks into cubes. The cubes then moved by conveyer belt into a cold room, where they were bagged and stacked on pallets for shipping.
My brother Don and several of our friends (Steve Crowe and Don Dixon, among others) also worked there at various times. We usually worked the night shift, starting around 4:30pm, supposedly until 1:00am, but our night shift boss, Hughie Cameron, always let us leave once we'd fulfilled whatever the quota was for that night. So we'd usually hustle to get the job done as quickly as we could so we could go home. Some nights, however, we'd drive home in the middle of our shift for a quick dinner break, and one evening as we arrived I recall our father wanted us to come see what was happening on television: Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon for the first time.
Because the demand for ice was so great in the summer, we'd work seven nights a week for weeks on end. One year Steve Crowe got us a gig playing music at somebody's party on a Saturday night, and Don and I asked the factory manager, Harvey van Buskirk, for that night off well in advance. When we showed up on Sunday after our first night off in weeks, however, we discovered that we'd been fired, even though Harvey had said we could have the night off, because he'd had to come in and work that night himself in order to keep up with the demand for ice. Our unemployment only lasted a couple of days though before Harvey hired us back, having discovered that we were a better night shift crew than anyone he could find to replace us.
There were also some periods when I worked the day shift along with a crew of mostly Mexicans. I particularly remember two brothers, Raul and Samuel, who periodically would get fed up with being ordered around by Harvey and others, and they'd walk out, complaining that there were "too many bosses."
I saved most of the money I made each summer to help pay for college and living expenses, but I recall making two major purchases with some of my ice factory money -- one was a ten-speed Schwinn bicycle, which I often rode all over Chicago's northwest suburbs during the day, until it was time for work. And Don and I both bought Martin guitars from the Chicago Guitar Factory. I still have that D-18 today. My bike, however, was stolen, after I took it with me back to college in the Fall.
My brother Don and several of our friends (Steve Crowe and Don Dixon, among others) also worked there at various times. We usually worked the night shift, starting around 4:30pm, supposedly until 1:00am, but our night shift boss, Hughie Cameron, always let us leave once we'd fulfilled whatever the quota was for that night. So we'd usually hustle to get the job done as quickly as we could so we could go home. Some nights, however, we'd drive home in the middle of our shift for a quick dinner break, and one evening as we arrived I recall our father wanted us to come see what was happening on television: Neil Armstrong was walking on the moon for the first time.
Because the demand for ice was so great in the summer, we'd work seven nights a week for weeks on end. One year Steve Crowe got us a gig playing music at somebody's party on a Saturday night, and Don and I asked the factory manager, Harvey van Buskirk, for that night off well in advance. When we showed up on Sunday after our first night off in weeks, however, we discovered that we'd been fired, even though Harvey had said we could have the night off, because he'd had to come in and work that night himself in order to keep up with the demand for ice. Our unemployment only lasted a couple of days though before Harvey hired us back, having discovered that we were a better night shift crew than anyone he could find to replace us.
There were also some periods when I worked the day shift along with a crew of mostly Mexicans. I particularly remember two brothers, Raul and Samuel, who periodically would get fed up with being ordered around by Harvey and others, and they'd walk out, complaining that there were "too many bosses."
I saved most of the money I made each summer to help pay for college and living expenses, but I recall making two major purchases with some of my ice factory money -- one was a ten-speed Schwinn bicycle, which I often rode all over Chicago's northwest suburbs during the day, until it was time for work. And Don and I both bought Martin guitars from the Chicago Guitar Factory. I still have that D-18 today. My bike, however, was stolen, after I took it with me back to college in the Fall.