One item that was sold by the dairy was not a dairy product at all.  It was Dry Ice.  Dry Ice is not really ice as we think of it.  It is frozen carbon dioxide and is extremely cold with a temperature of 109.3 degrees below zero. Unlike regular ice, dry ice is a solid white color and as it melts it leaves as a white vapor and does not drip as regular ice does.  Due to its extreme cold, it must be handled with gloves to protect the hands.  The dairy bought the dry ice in Des Moines and kept it in the ice cream hardening room. This room was well below zero but even then it was much warmer than the dry ice.  The dry ice would loose 5-10% of its mass every 24 hours.  The dairy sold it by the pound.  It was handled with gloved hands and cut from a large piece with a band saw into slices as the customer wanted.  Each slice was usually ½ to 1 inch thick.

As the band saw blade went through the dry ice, the blade became very cold. This caused the sound pitch of the saw to rise dramatically as the blade contracted as it cooled.

If the customer wanted to take the dry ice with them, it was wrapped in newspaper. Meat and medical specimens were often mailed in boxes that were kept frozen with the dry ice.

In the summer, dry ice was often used to keep ice cream frozen for picnics.  For picnics, the most common ice cream was sold in paper cup containers called Dixie Cups.  Each Dixie Cup had a paper lid on it with a small tab to pull for easy removal.  Usually, a flat wooden spoon was supplied for each Dixie Cup.  For picnic use, the Dixie Cups and some dry ice were put into a large insulated bag of dark green quilted cloth.  The bag was very heavily insulated and the dry ice kept the ice cream frozen for several hours.

The most popular park in Ames was Brookside Park.  There was even a small zoo there. When the dry ice was no longer needed to keep the ice cream frozen, there was another use for it.  Everyone would take the pieces of dry ice down to the suspension bridge and toss them into Squaw Creek.  In the water, the dry ice released bubbles of carbon dioxide gas and appeared to make the water boil and release white vapor above the surface. This amused everyone for several minutes until the dry ice was gone. The insulated bag was then returned to the dairy.

In the late 40’s, when I was 7 or 8 years old, I would ride my bike down to the field house. This building was located east of the D. O. T. and south of Lincoln way. Hastings and Hy Vee are located there now. The whole area was rather low and wet and had weeds and tall grass everywhere.  It had one other feature, garter snakes galore.

One day I took a heavy paper sack with me and went down to get some snakes. It didn’t take very long to catch 15 or 20 snakes and put them in the sack. I took them home and thought I would surprise everyone with my big catch. Well, surprised is probably an understatement when it came to mom and my sister. Very shortly after the snakes and I were told to get out of the house, my dad appeared on the scene.  He explained that not everyone appreciated a sack full of snakes in the house.  This was a fact that I had obviously overlooked.

After a short family meeting, we decided on the proper method of releasing the snakes.  Dad would drive the car into the country while I held the sack out the car window as far as I could. My sister would sit in the back seat and make sure that I kept my arm out straight.  Some where in the country the snakes were released and I never brought snakes home again.

Back in mid 1970’s we were being warned of an oil shortage. Everyone was being told of severe increases in gasoline prices and shortages of home heating gas. Ceiling fans were being installed in most homes and wood burning stoves were making a come back. To keep up with the times, I bought 4 ceiling fans and begin to research books and articles on wood burning stoves. Soon, I owned several books and learned more about wood burning than I ever wanted to know. We had a large family room with French doors to the dining room and another door into the kitchen. This seemed to be an ideal place for a free standing stove. By February of 1980, I had ordered a Defiant stove from Vermont Castings in Randolph Vermont. This was a highly recommended air tight cast iron stove and looked very pretty.

Installing a wood burner requires a lot of work and money. I learned about the safety codes required, how to buy a stainless steel chimney, how to lay bricks and ceramic tile. Soon the brickwork was complete and I was ready for the stove to arrive. When it did show up, by truck, the box was left sitting in the street. The driver told me “that’s as far as I go”.

Being all cast iron it weighed more than two people could lift. We opened the box and carried each piece to the house. After a day or two, I cut a hole in the roof for the chimney and installed the shiny 8 inch chimney. Getting the hole in the proper location takes some thought. You don’t want an extra hole in the roof. After getting the stove ready to fire up, I called the city inspector to check it out. He found no problems and passed it. Next I had my insurance company look at it. He found no problem and said it was OK to run.

Now we were ready for several small fires to season the cast iron and check everything out. Everything worked just great. The heat just poured out and I begin to understand what a powerhouse this stove could really be. I had never intended to heat our large, 5 bedroom house by wood alone. However as time went on, the gas furnace was operated less and the wood burner took on the task of keeping us warm.  I bought a chain saw and we cut wood wherever we could. Within a few years, we unhooked the gas furnace and the wood burner became our sole heat source. The house is warmer than we ever kept it when burning gas. For 28 years we have had the luxury of the abundant heat provided by our wood burning stove. It can handle Iowa’s coldest winters.

It would be hard to put a dollar figure on the amount of money we have saved over the years. It has to be several thousand dollars.

I spent about $1350.00 for the stove, chimney, bricks and etc. Many years I spent nothing for wood. Now that I cannot do all the cutting and hauling myself, I do have to buy some wood each year. Usually we spend less than $350 for wood for the entire winter. While it is more work than gas, I would not want to back to gas heat. The radiated heat from a free standing wood burner, feels much warmer than the convection heat from a basement furnace.

It is also nice to be able to heat the house if we have an ice storm or other prolonged power outage. Now, if I could get a car that runs on wood.

Gary Moore is the nephew of F.T. Moore, owner of Moore Bros. Dairy.