The Dumb Waiter

In my grandmother’s house there was a dumb waiter which was operated by a long continuous loop of rope. When I was in the rope-splicing part of the manual training class I must have discussed this with my uncle Carl as he challenged me to located the splice in the loop of rope, he having made the splice. I recall I located the splice on the first pass, I think somewhat to his chagrin. It was a very good splice but even a long splice as this was is rather easy to detect because of the increased diameter of the rope inherent in the making of the splice.

The dumb waiter at my grandmother’s had its opening door just off the kitchen and it would ascend/descend between the cellar and the door by pulling on the rope. I can remember my grandmother operating it. The purpose of the dumb waiter was of course to store food items in a cool place. When the house in town was built about 1915 iceboxes or mechanical refrigerators were not in common use in Gowrie. It was later on that my grandmother got her first refrigerator, probably in the mid 1930s. My parents never had a refrigerator until they moved back to the little brown house after the years on the farm.