Title	Ice Wagon-Pearl Packing Company
Subject	Business enterprises; Transportation; Horse-drawn vehicles
Description	Pearl Packing Company was one of the largest pork packing producers in the area and an offshoot of that business was an ice producing plant. In the early to mid 1900s ice wagons plied the streets with huge blocks of ice. Citizens and businesses would tell the driver how much ice they needed and he would take out his ice pick and score a near exact block of the correct weight. The most common requests were for 25 to 50 pound blocks. With a light tap on the score line he would break off the ice and grab it with his ice tongs and carry it to its destination. A complicated procedure to be sure, but today's refrigerators don't give you the local news and town gossip, either. In this picture, Jim Bailey is the congenial driver of the ever patient mule. The location is Main Street in front of the Kroger, Todd Peters Hardware and Anger Plumbing Stores. In the latter part of the ice wagon history, trucks carried the ice.
Creator	Harry Lemen, photographer
Contributors	Madison-Jefferson County Public Library
Date	Picture taken 1927
Type	Image scanned from prints created by Harry Lemen
Format	Scanned photograph, 1200 DPI, online JPG saved at 72 DPI 1000 pixels on long edge with a MicroTek ScanMaker 9800XL. Scan is full frame of photograph. No correction of film errors. Slight sharpness and contrast adjustments.
Identifier	"Lemen1212-icewagons"
Source	Harry Lemen recollections
Rights	Permission to reproduce this image for other than personal use must be requested from the Director of the Madison-Jefferson County Public Library. Please contact at 420 W. Main Street Madison, IN 47250 (812) 265-2744