Ice Houses, San Antonio, 1950s

 

By Richard Hardin, Lawrence KS

The other day I was thinking about the equivalent, in my youth, of  quick-stops along the road. In Texas they were different and were called "ice houses". An ice house:

--sold ice, first in blocks then in bags (paper then plastic, crushed)

--could be found throughout town, not out on the highways.

--was rarely entered; you parked head-in right off the street and were waited on by a guy or less often a woman, who brought you your order, sort of like a "drive-in" restaurant

--sold lots of beer, which you sat in your parking spot and drank, sometimes with 3 or 4 friends, sometimes for hours. Conversations, fights, pickups, etc. occurred from one car to another

--sold groceries, valuable on nights when stores all closed at 6 or7PM and Sundays all day (grocery stores started staying open at these times in the early 1950s; Sunday opening was very controversial).

--When I went in the army (1959) guys from outside Texas did not know what I meant by "ice house."

I have to note, for color, that my friend Eddie Garza, starting point guard on the St Mary's Univ basketball team, went to Lincoln's Ice House in San Antonio everyday one summer and drank at least a six-pack. He didn't have to work, as I did, because he had a b-ball scholarship. The motto of Lincoln's ice house was "where light and dark meet," because it was right at the spot where "the colored section" of town started (New Braunfels at Commerce). Texas now has, along the highways, liquor-store drive-ins.

[Note from Wiki, added by WP:] 

Southern ice houses

In Texas, former ice houses are a cultural tradition. Ice merchants diversified to sell groceries and cold beer, serving as early convenience stores and local gathering places. The widespread 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores in the U.S., first known as Tote'm Stores, developed from ice houses operated by the Southland ice manufacturing company in Dallas and San Antonio in the 1930s.^[12] Many Texas ice houses have since converted into open-air bars. In central Texas, southeast Texas (especially the Houston area), and the Texas Hill Country, the word "icehouse" has become a colloquialism for an establishment that derives the majority of its income from the sale of cold beer.^[13]

Southland was not the only company in the Southern U.S. to develop a convenience-store corporation from an ice business. Munford, Incorporated, of Atlanta began in the early 20th century by vending both ice and coal from mule-drawn wagons, as the Atlantic Ice and Coal Company.^[14] By the 1970s, Munford, Inc. was operating a large chain of convenience stores with the name Majik Market (the company was sold in 1988 and filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1990).^[15]