The Lake Bluff Ice Truck That Could ...

Editor's note: This is a story about a Lake Bluff Ice Co. truck from the 1920s that recently was donated to the Vliet Museum. Vliet wants to restore the truck for the Fourth of July Parade and other community events. But it needs help transporting, storing and fixing it up. This is a tall order for a truck that's been around since the year before the stock market crash that launched The Great Depression. But the historians are thinking big. Read on...

By Adrienne Fawcett

Everyone knows "The Little Engine That Could," that timeless children's tale about a train who channels the power of positive thinking to cross a mountain. The Vliet Museum is working on its own real-life version of the story, although instead of a locomotive the subject is a Lake Bluff Ice Co. truck that has been gathering dust in a DeKalb warehouse for nearly 50 years. Vliet wants to bring the ice truck home.

The historians learned about the 1928 International truck recently when a man named Tom Wisdom offered to donate it to the museum because he is preparing to move to a new home and can no longer store it. (In a story about positive thinking, isn't it fitting one of the main characters is named Wisdom?) The vehicle is an open-bed truck with green lettering that says "Lake Bluff Ice Co." Mr. Wisdom has been storing it in his family's warehouse since his grandfather, Stephen Meutescu, gave it to him in 1960. Prior to that, his grandfather kept the truck in the garage of his circa 1860 Lake Bluff home on Mawman Avenue, out near the shed that housed the family pony.

If you've never lived without a freezer, you may be wondering why Vliet would go to the trouble of raising money to transport an old truck to the Village, find a place to store it and recruit a mechanic to fix it up. What's all the fuss?

Kathy O'Hara, Vliet historian, said the truck is a tangible link to the simple, pre-appliance years of the early 20th century when people considered ice chips a treat and didn't need a permit to keep chickens in the yard. But the truck represents even more than that. It's the story of Lake Bluff, perhaps even of America, as mirrored through the life of a Romanian immigrant with a strong will, an entrepreneurial spirit and a deep love of the village in which he made his home.

Stephen Meutescu as a young man with his first Lake Bluff Ice Co. truck. He replaced the Reo truck shown here with an open bed International truck in 1928, which his grandson recently offered to donate to Vliet.

Stephen Meutescu (pronounced Meh Tes Que) emigrated from Romania to Chicago in the early 1920s as a young man and found his first job in Chicago's meat-packing industry. But the factory world was not for him, and by 1928 he had moved to Lake Bluff to start The Lake Bluff Ice Co. All year long for many years, Mr. Meutescu traveled door-to-door throughout the Village delivering large blocks of ice that people placed in iceboxes to keep perishable food from spoiling. (Click here for a bit of history on the icebox.)

Mr. Wisdom explained: "My grandfather cut ice out of local lakes and then would deliver the ice to people's houses in Lake Bluff. People would put cards in their windows saying if they wanted 50 pounds or 75 pounds or 100 pounds of ice. The cards say Lake Bluff Ice Co. and offer a phone number with just three numbers: 193." He said his grandfather broke the ice with a metal shaft, used a saw to cut it and used a large set of tongs to carry the blocks (the tongs are still with the truck).

"He used to talk about being on lakes and cutting ice, and a couple of times falling through the ice. This was during prohibition, and I had heard maybe he sold some beer off that ice truck. But he said no, that wasn't so," said Mr. Wisdom. "He didn't really talk about the ice business much more than that." When refrigerator/freezers became the norm, Mr. Meutescu parked the ice truck in his garage and changed with the times: he became a landscaper. As proprietor of Lake Bluff Landscaping Co., he worked on the Armour estate, took care of a lawyer's expansive lakefront property and was instrumental in building the road that goes down to Sunrise Beach, said Mr. Wisdom.

"He was very into Lake Bluff," he said about his grandfather. "He would do anything for the Village. He was a volunteer fireman, and they made him honorary captain. He did a lot for the orphanage, too." Mr. Meutescu was so well known throughout the Village during his day that children called him Grandpa Steve. He retired from landscaping after having a heart attack in 1962, at which point he moved in with the Wisdom family in DeKalb. He died 10 years later.

Mr. Meutescu was married for a time during his early years as Lake Bluff's "Ice Man," and he had one daughter--Sylvia Meutescu--whom he raised in the big white house on Mawman Avenue with the help of his ex-mother-in-law after his ex-wife moved to Lake Forest and started another family. How did he wind up living with his ex-mother-in-law? Mr. Wisdom said she would take young Sylvia to visit her father after the divorce, until one day when he told them it was too painful to say good bye. "He said either stay or don't come back," Mr. Wisdom remembered. So they stayed. Sylvia was in the first class to graduate from Lake Forest High School, went to college to become a teacher and moved to DeKalb when she married Mr. Wisdom's father, Robert.

And that's where Tom Wisdom was raised. He was just a kid in 1960 when his grandfather gave him the truck. "Owning a truck with the words Lake Bluff Ice Co. seemed like a really fun, really good idea," he said. When he was about 18, Tom set out to restore it, with the goal of honoring his grandfather and using the truck in parades, just as it had been used in Lake Bluff's Fourth of July Parade from the 1920s to the 1940s. "I was working under the supervision of a man that worked for my dad's trucking company," he said. "The engine was torn apart to be restored. And then the man left the company and I didn't have the time or the money to finish the job."

What's involved in restoring the Lake Bluff Ice Co. truck now? "Sand blasting and painting, most of the parts to it are in pretty good shape. The engine is torn down but all the parts are soaked in oil or have been greased to preserve them. It's like a car engine, only this is probably a rather simple one," said Mr. Wisdom.

Ray Kracic, a retired LFHS driver ed teacher and car restorer, examined the truck with Ms. O’Hara. He said it's possible to restore the truck, but it likely will be costly. The Vliet historians know this is a tough time economically for a lot of people, but they're thinking positively and hope members of the community will donate time and/or money to help restore the Lake Bluff Ice Co. truck. Those who volunteer will not be working in vain. "They'll get a prime spot in next year's 100th Anniversary Parade; names on a permanent plaque on the restored truck and in the Vliet Museum, and the undying gratitude of the Lake Bluff community," said Ms. O'Hara. But time is running out. Mr. Wisdom is retiring from his job at Verizon and plans to move with his wife to their lake home in Wisconsin.

Remember "The Little Engine That Could" and its most famous line? "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can ..." Do you think you can help save the truck? Contact the Vliet Museum.

Comments

[Benita Myles]

I think I can, I think I can, donate some $$$$ to the Vliet Museum. What a great story. I knew Steve Meutescu he was a neighbor of mine. Good luck. Benita Myles

[Marne Holstein]

What a terrific story. I remember Steve(as we kids called him)growing up in the neighborhood. He had a vegetable garden,and he was always patient and kind to us. Marne Holstein