Remember When: Strawberries, ice, seeing the light

By Guest Columnist Mary Jane Boutwell

Right around the middle of May, a neighbor went to a local farm with a produce stand just north of Gluckstadt for strawberries. Several of his workers went along, as he wanted enough berries to make jelly for four or five households- strawberry cobblers, pies, fresh berries or whatever. Most were frozen or processed for later jelly making, but they surely tasted good fresh. My chickens enjoyed the trimmings. I was told or taught that Madison was known as the “Strawberry capital of the world.” Recently, I was told the Germans who settled in the Gluckstadt area were the first in the area to grow and sell large amounts of the berries. Over time, the growing of the strawberries moved further south until it was centered around Madison.

One of my early memories after Leon and I moved back to Canton was getting Maw to go with me to pick berries at a small patch in Madison. As a child, she and her family picked berries, at ten cents a box for family income. Today, that box would be a crate. She liked to eat the berries but she would not pick them again. That day, she picked a handful, ate most of them and put the rest in my basket. That was it! 

At one time, there were a number of ice houses along the railroad tracks. I was young enough to not question why Canton had such a large ice house. As time has passed, I have learned that ice houses were spaced along the railroad tracks. Spacing was different, but the necessity for ice to keep this chilled was as important as water for the steam engines. This was before the invention of mobile refrigeration for trains and tracks. I have discovered that a number of the ice houses did not make their ice but trucked it in. One ice house bought their ice in Arkansas. Canton’s ice was on West North Street on the west side of the tracks. After it closed, TWI used the building as a warehouse and office space. We would stop by the ice house or go by to get ice for homemade ice cream.

When my family moved from Camden to Canton in the early 1940s, we had a kerosene-powered refrigerator. There was no electricity in Camden. After the move, it was converted to electricity. One time I asked a brother what was the best thing about the move from Camden to Canton. His reply was, “you could walk into a room, reach up, pull the string, and there was light.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mary Jane Boutwell is a passionate historian and is thrilled to share stories about “way back when.”