The two-story store building, next to the post office, is over a hundred years old. It is very tall for a two-story building and has a steep, peaked slate roof. Slate is very heavy, very strong and protects the building from rain and wind. It probably accounts for why the old building is still standing strong.
Long ago, before automobiles had been invented people came to town to shop or go to the bank or post office in buggies or wagons drawn by horses. The horses had to be tied to a hitching post so that they didn't wander around while their owner shopped. A long hitching post and rail was built along side the street next to the long side of the store building.
One winter there came a deep snow, maybe as much as 8 or 9 inches. The snow piled up high on the steep roof of all the buildings in town, including the tall store. People needed to shop or go to the bank but horses could come through snow even that deep. Several wagons parked alongside the hitching post and the horses were tied to the rail waiting there for their owners to return. It had turned quite warm, the sun had come out. Heat from inside the store and the sun on the outside heated up the slates on the roof and melted the underside of the snow. Then, all of a sudden, all the roof snow slid off the slates, just like an avalanche, and dropped down right on top of the horses tied to the hitching rail. Snow can be very heavy and there was lots of snow on that roof. It was a terrible accident. All of the horses were frightened. They tried to break free. Two of the horses were killed, several of them were knocked down and some had legs broken. The buggies were badly crushed. People came running to help free the horses and treat them if they could. The accident story was soon in the newspaper. People quickly learned not to ever tie their horses to the hitching rail next to the tall building if it had snowed and it was still on the store roof.
The second story of the store was built to be a large lodge hall. For years there was a KP painted on the front denoting Knights of Pythias Hall. Amesville had three lodge halls where people, mostly men, most of the time, could get together to learn, to socialize, to discuss issues of the day and to promote the welfare of the community. A far greater sense of community than exists now.
Doing the family laundry was once an all day, once a week job. To dry the clothes, they were hung with clothespins outdoors on lines for the sun and wind to take out the water. Women took great pride in keeping their homes, their children and their clothes clean. A line full of clean, sparkling clothes was evidence of a good housekeeper, homemaker living there. Washday on Monday was so traditional it became enshrined even in nursery rhymes. Some people made judgments about a woman's skill in housekeeping by what they saw on the clothesline and getting the clothes out early in the morning earned high praise.
The homemaker who lived at Harrison Drive took every opportunity to boast of "having my wash hanging out on the line before any other woman in Amesville". People were mystified how she could get the wash water heated on the stove, collect the clothes, wash and rinse them and get them out almost at daybreak. And then, quite by accident someone visited her on Sunday evening and discovered that she had taken one load of clothes and dipped them into a bucket of water to have them "wet" to hang out at day break--but they hadn't been "washed" at all. Later in the morning she would take them down and really wash them and hang them to dry a second time. And of course this story quickly made the rounds in Amesville and later, after her death, it became a way of describing a rushed, half-done job, "like Mrs. Crawford's early wash.
"Behind the big store building was a small, one-story building with very thick walls and a very thick door. It was the Amesville Ice House. Manufactured ice would be brought by wagon and then by truck from the "ice factory” in Glouster and be stored in the Amesville ice house. The sawdust insulation between the double walls did such a good job the ice could last as long as two weeks, even in summer. People would come and buy 25 or 50 pounds to take home to their ice boxes. The engineer of the train that ran through Amesville would blow the whistle as it came down the valley in time for the store owner to load a 100 pound block of ice onto a little wagon and take it to the train station just as the train pulled in. It was a standing order. It was never explained to me why the train didn't take on ice in Glouster where the ice factory was--perhaps that train didn't come from Glouster?
Affluent people who lived in the country usually had a pond from which they "cut ice" in the winter time and stored it in their own ice house. But most people depended on the factory ice, available 12 months of the year from the little Amesville ice house. I tried to save the building. I thought it was historic but the floor had rotted out and it had been used for junk storage. I couldn't get anybody else interested in saving that little building that I thought children should know about. Ice was so important in lowering fevers and keeping milk and meat from spoiling. It was almost never put in a glass of drinking water. The only thing I could save were the giant hinges that supported the very heavy, thick door. The hinges are on the gate in the privacy fence that I had put at the west side of my house on Harrison Street.
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