< PREVIOUS ] [ 2008 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Fraser, Colo., is no longer The Icebox of the
Nation.
Don't blame global warming -- blame
International Falls, Minn.
International Falls sits just south of the Canadian border; Fraser is a couple of miles down U.S. 40 from the Winter Park Ski Area. For years, the two towns have battled in court for the trademark to the phrase.
The rivalry between the two cold towns started back in the 1950s, and the legal disputes revolve around which one first described itself as the nation's icebox. In 1986, International Falls got a trademark, and Fraser accepted $2,000 to drop its claim. About a year ago, though, Fraser discovered that International Falls had apparently let its trademark registration lapse, and filed for it.
But in February of this year, International Falls
received a federal trademark, and so it is officially
The Icebox of the Nation.
Fraser has lost its
motto.
Why would anybody want this title, aside from perverse
bragging rights? It can attract some business as a
cold-weather test site for products, as well as other
freebies. One year, Fraser residents got free antifreeze
for their cars in exchange for naming their main drag,
Zerex Street,
and in another year, they had free
studded snow tires from Goodyear so the company could
advertise how well they worked in The Icebox of the
Nation.
Even so, real-estate developers around Fraser had
suggested dropping the slogan a couple of years ago, since
they would rather the town be associated with winter skiing
and summer fishing -- President Dwight D. Eisenhower was
fond of area creeks half a century ago. I can see their
point; it's hard to imagine someone saying Let's buy a
condo in place with a annual growing season that's all of
four days long.
However, traditionalists wanted to keep
the icebox motto.
After its victory, International Falls said that Fraser
could use the term Icebox of Colorado
without
infringement, but the truth is that Fraser is likely not
even the coldest spot in Grand County, where I lived from
1974 to 1978 while editing the newspaper in Kremmling. Back
then, Fraser was a ramshackle sawmill town with perhaps
half a dozen business buildings, including the post
office.
All of Grand County gets as cold as a banker's heart on winter nights. Lows routinely hit 30 or 40 degrees below zero in January and February. The old-timers said that Tabernash, a couple of miles downriver from Fraser, was the coldest of all. Back in the days of steam locomotives, giant articulated mallets would freeze to the rails as they idled in Tabernash, waiting to help push trains up to the Moffat Tunnel.
However, Tabernash never had an official weather station, so it was nearby Fraser that made the news. If it wasn't Fraser, then it was often Big Piney, Wyo., Cut Bank, Mont., or Gunnison, Colo. Despite the claims of International Falls, the West can hold its own in the icebox competition.
Why is this based on icebox,
though? Iceboxes are
from a different era. Before electricity and electric
refrigerators came along, the icebox kept food cold. It had
a compartment on top for the ice (delivered by a man from
the local coal and ice company), a food compartment in the
middle, and a drain tray on bottom. The ice might have been
cut from a local pond during the previous winter and stored
in sawdust at the local icehouse, or it could have been
produced by mechanical refrigeration.
My dad recalls preferring the latter, since it was clean and clear; pond ice was rather murky and sometimes reeked of decaying fish.
My homesteader grandfather in rural Wyoming once cut his own ice in the winter and stored it in a dug-out. He never had electricity, but by the time I knew him, he had succumbed to the propane-powered refrigerator. He still stored food in his icebox, though -- its insulation and tight doors meant it was the only spot in his kitchen that was impervious to mice and rats.
In other words, the term icebox
might remain
relevant to a few Amish farmers, but it is meaningless to
the vast majority of modern Americans, who have never used
an icebox nor seen one outside of an antique store. The
household icebox went away with the clinkers from the coal
stove and the player piano in the parlor.
Fraser, or any other town that wants to brag on its hard
weather, ought to get into the 21st century: The
nation's deep freeze,
America's longest winter,
Home of the cryonic climate,
Nobody gets closer
to absolute zero,
The biggest chill,
The
super shiver,
Ultimate cool
-- any of these
would work better. Enough with the bygone icebox.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2008 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >