Ice Cubes

     I just bought something that might be entirely foreign to anybody born after the Reagan administration: ice cube trays. We may be the last living people who use them. I had to go to four different stores to find them. The old ones had sprung leaks in several of the little compartments and you had to fill every other one like you were playing hopscotch with running water.
     It's not that we don't have an ice-maker. When we bought our new refrigerator a few years ago I tried to purchase one without, but apparently they don't even make ice maker-free refrigerators anymore, in spite of the fact that they take up valuable real estate in the freezer section. So when they came to deliver the new fridge I just did not have them hook it up to the water line. We have to be careful to keep the wire that trips the filling mechanism in the off position or you hear the poor fridge making a "whrrr whrrring" sound as it struggles to fill the apparatus with imaginary water.
     I don't like ice maker ice. It is wimpy. It melts too fast. I want ice in a good, solid cube. Square and sturdy and long lasting. It stays in your drink until the Diet Coke is gone instead of disappearing after your second swallow and watering down the whole thing.
     The plastic ice trays now available, the few of them that are made, are much easier to use than the old metal trays that were operated with a lever that froze shut and had to be forced open when you wanted ice, and you had to use the whole tray at once. And SOMEONE in your house never refilled them and either left them in the sink, or stuck them back in the freezer empty which you wouldn't KNOW until you needed ice and then it was just too darn late wasn't it??? Oh, sorry. Where was I?
     It was no wonder that the trays got left empty---although never by me!  I was always responsible---because  filling those metal trays was a talent unto itself.  It took nerves of steel and the grace of a ballerina to get the tray from the sink to the shoe box sized freezer compartment that had only enough room for the trays, without spilling the water all over the floor and having to start again. Or worse yet, spilling half the water out of the tray just as you got to the little freezer, thus insuring that after the ice was frozen the trays would also be frozen to the bottom of the freezer and require a machete to dislodge them.   
     The rubber ice trays I just bought don't seem to spill so easily, or maybe I have practiced filling and loading them so much that I've gotten skilled at it. And all you have to do is twist the tray and out pops the ice. I empty them into a container each evening and usually have plenty of ice, retro as it is.  (Here is a tip if there is anyone else out there still as old-fashioned as I am: To prepare for times when you might need larger quantities, empty your trays into a paper bag a few times a day and store the bag in the freezer. Don't use plastic bags.They will make the ice stick together.)
     Lest you think I just don't know what I am missing, we did have an ice maker in the past. Then our house was struck by lightening and---I am not making this up---the ice in the ice maker was burned!  It actually had singe marks across it. It may have been that God was trying to tell us something, what with the lightening strike being directly over our refrigerator and all.
      At least I'm not taking any chances with the ice.