I don't know why, but a lot of my family history/stories revolve around those floor casket type freezers with the big lift up lids. These stories are true...you can't make this up!
So I won't double post I'm boring you with two stories in one post.
Story one:
My father's first car was a 1970 Chevrolet Impala. He wanted a Corvette of course but my grandparents wouldn't go for that so he picked the next best thing thus the Impala.
My father took his own money and upgraded the wheels from the
ugly stock ones and hubcaps that came with the car to Rally wheels they put on Corvettes and Camaros which looks great on the car. Dad's rationale was that if he couldn't have a whole Corvette at least he could have its feet.
When my mother and father got married they didn't have a lot of money to begin with, and my brother came along and they had even less. But my father always had pride in that car and he loved it and wasn't in too much of a hurry to get rid of it even though my mother tried to talk him into it and parley that money into a down payment for a house.
One day mom and dad were at some appliance store in Hickory, NC where there was a contest that if you could guess how many goldfish were in one of those floor/locker freezers you won it. My mother wasn't nuts about the idea of winning the freezer because some of the fish had already died in it and it stank. My father said at least those were easy to count and hopefully more would die while they were there and they'd have an edge.
While my mother was counting fish she said that my father ran out of the appliance store cursing and running. Mom followed and a man was running towards a slowly moving red pickup. It finally dawned on mom that the stuff the guy was carrying were the beauty rings and center caps of dad's Rally wheels. The guy's window was down and by then a crowd had gathered and mom said that dad was waving a piece of paper and screaming, "That's okay you (male offspring of a female dog) I got your license number!"
A week later mom and dad were back in Hickory to get the rings and caps back from the police and serve as witness to what had happened. The men plead guilty so there was no trial. While they were in the courthouse three people got into a fistfight in the hall during a recess and some woman's purse had been stolen. They haven't been back to Hickory since.
I have the Impala now, I had it painted and restored the interior myself except for the passenger side inner door vinyl. I teethed on it as a baby, learned how to drive in it, went on my first "real" date in it....blah blah.
The second story:
This takes place in the mid 50's, my father wasn't much older than five.
My grandparents had one of those big floor freezers (yeah again) but it didn't work anymore so they put it into the basement and used it as a safe/bank putting their valuables and rolls of change in it. As a child my father liked to play with the money in the freezer but once got into it and the door accidentally closed shut on him. If my grandmother hadn't been in the basement with him, my father could have very well have suffocated to death.
After that incident my grandmother demanded that mygrandfather get the freezer out of the basement and take it to the landfill. Even back them there was a white goods disposal fee....... and my grandfather who at times was so cheap he wouldn't spend a lovely evening...didn't want to pay the fee so the freezer sat in the backyard for a week while he tried to find a free way to deal with it without breaking the law.
One night a family friend arrived for dinner and asked why there was a freezer in the backyard, my grandfather told him why and about not wanting to pay a fee.
The friend said "Give me a dollar, I'll be right back!" My grandfather did and when the man got back he had cleaning materials and a "For Sale" sign.
My grandfather and his friend cleaned up the freezer and they even went as far as put a coat of Simoniz on it. When they were done it was beautiful clean shiny and white.
After that they hauled the freezer down to the edge of the road and put the nice brand new FOR SALE sign on it.
My grandfather before going to bed that night made sure that the porch lights were off and all the curtains were drawn. The house they lived in was in a pretty rural area and when it got dark...it was
dark.
The next morning the freezer was gone.
I can't tell you how many times I laughed at that as a child and adult thinking of thieving idiots wrestling that gargantuan mammoth sized hernia fabricating freezer into a house, plugging it in and finding that it didn't work.