Westside Ice & Fuel Co., 1801 Two Notch Road: October 2015 (Moved) 27 comments
Two Notch stalwart Westside Ice has now moved to 1001 Idlewild Boulevard off of Bluff Road.
This building has that classic "ice house" look, with the long open deck. Their web site says the business dates from the 1930s -- I wouldn't be surprised if horse drawn ice wagons once pulled up here..
(Hat tip to commenter Frank Mancuso)
UPDATE 23 August 2021 -- Commenter Frank Mancuso (who has apparently had an eye on the place) sends these pictures of the demolition of the building:
Also adding map icon.
UPDATE 2 September 2021 -- Some more pictures of the demolition a bit further along:
UPDATE 13 September 2021 -- Demolition is complete:
27 Responses to 'Westside Ice & Fuel Co., 1801 Two Notch Road: October 2015 (Moved)'
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Westside Ice & Fuel Co., 1801 Two Notch Road: October 2015 (Moved)'.
-
Justin
3 Nov 15 at 8:10 am
-
Back in the 70's, the son of the owner was delivering ice for Westside. He told me stories about restaurants that he would not patronize after he saw the condition of the kitchen!
Robert
3 Nov 15 at 9:46 am
-
My brother in law worked for Pet Dairy as a delivery driver back in the 70's and he said the same thing. Pet Dairy was on Bluff Road.
One restaurant I remember him telling me about in particular was the IHOP's around Columbia. He said the kitchens were so nasty that if you saw them you would NEVER eat at IHOP.
I'm sure things have changed now.
I also remember a couple of brothers that went to the same high school I did and worked for Shoney's as cooks. I had heard a story from some friends that the two brothers would play hockey with frozen steaks they dropped on the floor kicking it back and forth between them, and then pick the meat up afterwards, cook and serve it, so I asked them one time about it. Their response floored me, they said "When we cook it, the heat kills the germs."
Wait, What?Rick
3 Nov 15 at 4:39 pm
-
The summer of 2006 was hot. The water in my pool felt like bath water. After a few Jose shots my buddy and I went to Westside Ice and bought a block of ice that hardly fit in the back of my small pickup. We did not think about how difficult it was going to be getting it into the pool as I could not back my truck right up to it. We had to use 2X6 boards to get the block out of the truck bed, it almost killed us, and then slid it into the pool. It looked like something you might see at the polar bear exhibit at the zoo. We had a blast trying to ride on the block of ice.
GO JOSE!Rick
3 Nov 15 at 5:46 pm
-
So, Rick, is this you or Jose in this clip?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czl8fPJSxg0badger
3 Nov 15 at 7:21 pm
-
@Badger - Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
I have not laughed in the past two days.
My only son just moved to Alabama this past Saturday and my wife and I have been going through the empty nest syndrome, also known as separation anxiety.
We are just heart broken.Rick
3 Nov 15 at 7:26 pm
-
@Rick - the first stages of the realization of mortality seems to be setting in as it is with me. Me, being the confirmed bachelor, with only my elderly Mom to take care of leaves me pondering about my future. One of my friends at work is going through the same thing. He and his wife never had kids, so one of them will be left alone at some time in the future, as will I. My best friend has been on his own since the mid 90's as his only sibling is estranged to him. I don't like to dwell on such things as they are so very depressing. That's one of the reasons why we are always reminiscing about the old days on here; trying to recapture the past and our youth.
OK, enough of being a sad sack. Your story about the ice block is funny as hell. It sounds like some crazy ideas that can only come about when alcohol is involved. Badger's link gave me a chuckle as well, so I looked some other Little Rascals videos up and, lo and behold, I found the one where The Wild Man From Borneo (Uncle George) came to visit. Yum Yum Eat em Up!! I was laughing my butt off!!
Hang in there, my internet friend!!
Homer
4 Nov 15 at 1:52 am
-
I have to comment on Homer's post as I have had similar feelings lately. I'm still young but share some of the same thoughts as my wife and I do not have kids, and probably won't, and I have no siblings. I think about one of us being alone at some point in the future. While it might be a long ways off, it is still something that's been on my mind for some reason lately....
Justin
4 Nov 15 at 1:25 pm
-
Our son is an only child. I'm sure that has something to do with the way I feel. Others I have talked to that have two or more children did not seem to have the feelings I have to the same degree when one of their kids left. I contribute this to the fact that they did not go from having a child or children around to not having any at all in one fell swoop. They had one move at a time but still had another around, this helped acclimate them to being totally without.
I'm so pathetic now, I check my cell phone dozens of times a day to make sure I did not miss a text or call from him.I rarely called my Dad after moving out, and when I did call, I now understand why he was so happy to hear from me.
What a hard lesson to learn. Damn, hurts deep.
The best I can do now is to try and tell my son someway, somehow, that if he ever has a child, what to expect, without making him fell guilty about not calling me.
My little bird has flown.Rick
4 Nov 15 at 4:39 pm
-
The comment Rick made about the Shoney's cooks reminds me of when I used to work in a restaurant back in the early 70's.
The five second rule was alive and well in this place. If anything came out of the deep fryers and was accidentally dropped on the floor, we just dropped it back in the fryer for about 30 seconds and served it.
We had 8oz rib-eye steaks that were individually frozen. They were stored in a freezer that was right next to a mop station (don't ask me why). I went to get a steak one time and someone had closed the door to the freezer with part of a mop head inside. Several of the mop strands were frozen to the steak. The owner told me to run it under warm water until the strands came loose and then grill it.
The shrimp and the 'fresh' fish were delivered in the back of a pickup truck, on ice, covered by a tarp. I have no clue where they came from but you know that none of them were ever inspected.
I mixed cole slaw and hush puppy mix with band-aids on my fingers. No one had ever heard of gloves back then. If a band-aid came off you just fished around in the mix until you found it.
Anyone want to go out for dinner??
Homer
5 Nov 15 at 12:23 am
-
Eh. . . I'm not impressed. Sounds like the same kind of cooking my mother, aunts, and grandmothers did for all our 'home-cooked' meals, (lack of) sanitary conditions and all.
When they talked about 'making the meal with their own hands,' they really meant it!
badger
5 Nov 15 at 9:05 am
-
I watched some little rascals on you tube last night, remember the kid that about all he would say was "Re-mar-cable"? And how about the kid named Uh- Huh, because that's all he would say. If some one wanted to confirm something they 2ould ask Uh-Huh. Ain 't that right Uh-Huh? Uh-Huh.
Rick
5 Nov 15 at 6:04 pm
-
In real life, the 'Re-mark-a-ble' kid was Wheezer's little brother.
Uh-huh never contributed much in his few appearances, but he got the job because he was the son of Hal Roach's casting director.
Read up on the actor who played 'Uncle George' (John Lester Johnson). In real life he was a former heavyweight boxer who gave Jack Dempsey the hardest fight in his career--according to Dempsey himself!badger
5 Nov 15 at 8:32 pm
-
Classic stuff. One of these days I'm going to buy the box set of all of the shorts to add to my collection. I've already got the Three Stooges and Laurel & Hardy box sets. What I would love to see are some of the lesser distributed 2 reelers form Columbia. Like Buster Keaton, Charley Chase, Andy Clyde, etc. I think channel 19 used to show them way back when I was a kid. Rick probably remembers what I'm talking about.
Homer
6 Nov 15 at 1:10 am
-
Have you seen the poster of Moe Howard standing with his arms crossed and a devilish smile and below it reads
WITH A REBEL YELL
SHE CRIED MOE MOE MOE!
Joe Shlabotnik
6 Nov 15 at 1:20 am
-
I remember watching Keaton's "The Camera Man" in the Russell House Theater and thinking it was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. Not one of his best known, but a good one.
ted
6 Nov 15 at 1:54 am
-
@ted - was this a silent or a talkie? I believe Keaton was old enough the span the two formats.
Homer
6 Nov 15 at 2:09 am
-
It was a silent. In fact Keaton was playing a down-on-his-luck silent newsreel cameraman. He accidentally gets great footage of a Tong War in Chinatown but everything seems to be conspiring against him as he tries to get the film to market. Or that's what I recall anyway -- it's been a long time. I actually liked it better than "The General".
ted
6 Nov 15 at 2:16 am
-
I found a set of Charley Chase videos on Amazon. But they turned out to be his silent features. I never realized that he had been around since before the talkies. I may have to buy it even though I'm kind of impatient when watching silent films.
Homer
8 Nov 15 at 2:14 am
-
A lot of the silent movie comedians had a hard time making the transition.
TCM has shown a number of Buster Keaton films this fall. That guy was a hoot. And without computer generated animation.Homer, I have noticed the older I get the easier it is to watch silent films.
Joe Shlabotnik
8 Nov 15 at 2:39 pm
-
@Joe Shlabotnik - Interesting thought about it being easier to watch silent films. I believe silent films cause our brains to work a little more than being fed all the info.
Also, interesting last name you have. Where does it originate?
Rick
8 Nov 15 at 2:46 pm
-
He bought it for peanuts..
ted
8 Nov 15 at 6:00 pm
-
Could have been a lyrics from "Take me out to the ball game".
Rick
8 Nov 15 at 6:32 pm
-
Good one Ted
Joe Shlabotnik
8 Nov 15 at 6:58 pm
-
I noticed Aug 22 2021 that it is being demolished.
23 Aug 21 at 8:58 am
-
If I've gotten the correct info:
This building was built in 1941 by Claude Ross Zachary from Charlotte. And if you're wondering why something on the eastern side of Columbia was called "Westside," well, that was the name of the company in Charlotte, as the original location was (back in the 1940s) in the western part of the city on West Trade Street .
badger
31 Aug 21 at 4:28 pm
-
I feel that the old adage "location, location, location" played a part in this building's demise. If it had been in Five Points or the Vista, I can easily imagine someone turning it into a restaurant, sports bar or an antique mall.
Tom
1 Sep 21 at 6:51 am
I've always thought the same, Ted, about the look of the building. Also, check out that old school coke machine on the deck.