The Deep Freezer......

In my 1900 Victorian we have a big old chest style deep freezer that we hope to fill full of vegetables and such for the winter months.  My BFF (who has actually become a sister to me), Tam and I live here with my kids and our 8 dogs!!

Nearly every time Tam and I go out into the mud room to do laundry, sort through another unpacked box or to smoke a cigarette I gravitate to that freezer and hop right up on top of it to sit.  Having this deep freezer has brought back so many childhood memories for me. 

 

The first vivid memory is when I was about 5 years old and Mama was making me a beautiful robin’s egg blue dress.  I hated that dress!  It was wool and it itched.  I remember mama standing me up on my grandmother’s deep freezer to pin up the hem of that dress.  Mama has a painting of me in her living room wearing that dress.

 

When I was around 9 or 10 years old I remember cutting out patterns and fabric on the deep freezer in our house.  Mama was sewing clothes for my younger siblings and I was the helper doing the cutting out.  I remember also, that the deep freezer was a good place to just sit and talk. 

 

 

When I was approximately 10 years old Pa and Mama Crouch moved out of the “Old House” where they had lived and birthed many of their children, including my mother the baby of 7.  Mama Crouch apparently wanted a new house so Pa Crouch got her one.  This house was a 1 story and it had a huge utility room where they put 2 stand up freezers and in the long hallway leading from the house to the garage they had a huge chest style deep freezer.

 

The chest style freezer was full of beef where they had fed and slaughtered their own beef.  We were eating Black Angus before it became such a big deal with all the restaurants.  They would always have part of the hamburger meat made into pre-formed hamburger patties!!  They thought there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do so, by that time I was allowed to cook anything I wanted while at their house.  I loved to go and get a hamburger patty out of that big freezer and fry it up in the iron skillet.  Also, Mama Crouch and I would make a big bowl of Jell-O and add a can of Fruit Cocktail and put it in the freezer to jell faster.

 

When I was about 12 years old Pa and Mama Crouch gave Mama and Daddy the “Old House” and 20 acres for Christmas.  Of course, all of Mama’s siblings received 20 acres too!   I remember we worked our tails off remodeling that house.  I thought there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do and unfortunately, Mama and Daddy discovered I was darned good at re-glazing all the panes of glass and I turned out to be a decent painter too.  It was so exciting when we moved into that house.  I had spent the first 10 years of my life with Pa and Mama Crouch in that house and I loved it.  I still love it to this day.  When I go to Mama and Daddy’s it is the best feeling.  I feel safe, loved, protected, and just plain happy.  I can almost feel Pa Crouch sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and I can see Mama Crouch in the den sewing on her Singer making something or the other.  Well, anyway the good old chest style deep freezer went right into one end of the large den (where we hung out and watched tv.  Hey, it was an important part of our lives.  We were country people and we always had a cow in the freezer! 

 

Mama would go to the Sunbeam Store and buy the day old snack cakes.  They were the ones that had the Peanut’s characters on them and she would put them in the freezer.  I remember pulling out a cherry pie and biting down on a cherry pit and breaking off a piece of one of my back teeth.  I probably didn’t tell Mama because I was afraid I would have to get a shot.  I was terrified of shots!!

 

I guess I must have been about 14 or 15 when my brother, sister, and I got off the school bus and the yard was full of chicken feathers.  Upon entering the house the table had a big  platter of fried chicken on it and the kitchen sink was full of naked and headless chickens!!   Seems like we had lots of chicken in the freezer for a while!!

 

It was also around that time or maybe a year or so later that I came home from school and my cow we had raised on a bottle was missing.  Her name was Flemingtine, in honor of one of my greatest high school teachers, Mr. Fleming.  I asked Mama where she was and she responded that they had sold her and offhandedly made a statement about cows raised on the bottle are never good for anything.  Well, two days later I answered the ringing telephone and it was Mr. Lecroix, the meat processor wanting me to tell Mama and Daddy their cow was ready.  I couldn’t believe they killed my Flemingtine and put her in the freezer.  I refused to eat one bite of my cow! 

 

Pa and Mama Crouch always kept one-hundred dollar bills in the deep freezer for safe keeping.  Now, I don’t remember how many of those bills would be in the freezer, but they were most always there. In 1980 lightening struck the propane tank at the back of Pa and Mama Crouch’s house.  The garage, utility room, and front bedroom were a complete loss.  The remainder of the house was a mess.  The fire was so hot it melted the finish off the kitchen cabinets.  Believe it or not the deep freezer survived even though it was in the middle of the fire and the one-hundred dollar bills were untouched.

 

Mama and Daddy now keep the deep freezer outside in an enclosed porch so it is no longer used as a piece of furniture to sit on.  You can most always count on the fact that it is going to be full of good food. However, I rather miss having it in the middle of the house!  Its funny how something as simple as a deep freezer can evoke so many fond memories of ones childhood.