Ice Shilling

This story is all about my dear neighbor Albert Mullins, a wonderful warm hearted old man and my favorite on our street, he had served in two world wars with distinction and had been a master bricklayer in his younger years, his wonderful work still on display in ornate gardens, brick archways and red brick walls throughout our town. Our entire street was council owned and we all paid the same rent regardless of your status, working or retired. This was hard on Albert who had only his war pension as income, yes the council gave him coupons to subsidize his rent but it did not amount to much at all. Everyone paid their bills with cash back then, not many had a use for banks as their wages and benefits were paid in pound sterling. The post office was the place for most transactions, you could pay the rent there, draw benefits and have a savings account, it was also a great place to catch up on the latest gossip while standing in line. Utilities such as electricity or gas were metered, which leads me to heart of this story GAS. Every house on our street had a gas meter, it was how your usage was measured, it had to be fed shillings to keep the gas on, one shilling gave you X amout of therms so you could cook, heat the bathwater and keep your house warm, I’m guessing back then one shilling probably was just enough to cook one family meal on the stove but not much more.

One very cold February night I was walking home and noticed Albert’s living room curtains open, looking in I saw Albert huddled around a small heater with his overcoat on, I tapped on his window and he signaled me to come in through the kitchen door. My intention was to thank him for the recent card he had sent me for my 17th birthday but was taken aback by how cold his house was. “Are you okay Albert, I saw you huddled around your heater and wondered if you had caught a chill or something” No no” he replied, “I’m two days away from getting my pension and I’m down to my last couple of shillings to feed the gas meter, so I have to make it last, I am already turning it off before I go to bed, thank goodness for the extra blankets my sister sent me, plus, I wear my socks to bed so I can dart quickly to the kitchen and turn on the stove.” Wow, what a miserable way to live I thought.

That night I lay in my warm bed wondering how Albert was going to survive all winter as temperatures had been hovering just above freezing with no let up in sight. I felt almost guilty that I was snug in a warm bed and wondered how I could help him. Giving money wasn’t an option, I was a no-income student and was surviving on my Mum’s generosity, Then it dawned on me.

A few weeks earlier I had attended a class on “The Theories of Moldmaking”as part of my college engineering course, that ONE class gave me a brilliant idea on how to solve Albert’s heating issues. I decided to make a mold exactly the size of a shilling, fill it full of water, freeze it overnight thus producing a replica coin, only it would be ice.

If it could foil the slot detector device then it would proceed to drop to the bottom of the meter box and evaporate, leaving no trace. Brilliant I thought, now I need to be able to use the college machine shop to make the mold, undetected. That turned out to be more difficult than I thought, our machine shop classes were three hours each day but our teacher patrolled the machine shop with eagle eyes. I eventually finished two sets of molds and conducted a test run at home. Over the next few days I tested different waters to see which was producing a tougher shilling, tap water with a splash of white vinegar won that one.

I took the molds to Albert and showed him the method, he was delighted to see his meter go to credit at the drop of the ice shilling. Each mold produced two, thus four could be made and inserted at the same time. I instructed Albert to only use them when money got really scarce, it will be obvious to the meter man that something is wrong if the amount of gas used was more than his coin count.

I didn’t see a whole lot of Albert for the rest of that year, once in a while we’d cross paths and he would grin and give me the thumbs up from across the street or at the Red Lion, our local pub. Winter was upon us again and one night while walking home from my girlfriends house I spotted something that made me cringe, It was so cold that the daytime moisture had frozen and a thick frost carpeted everything that stood still, as I turned the corner I saw our row of houses in a neat semi-circle, a picture postcard indeed as the glistening frost reflected a blue glow from the full moon in the clear sky, every house shone except Albert’s, his house was so warm that he had melted the frost from the inside out! I rushed to his kitchen door wondering what prison life was like. Albert answered the door in his underwear !

“Albert, are you crazy, it’s like the Bahama’s in here!” I cried. Albert ushered me in to the kitchen table and proceeded to put the kettle on for tea. He went on to tell me that the bottom rusted out of old meter (for some reason) and they were in the process of switching them out so his gas was free until they returned with the new meter. More importantly,his wartime buddy had contacted him and was to move in with him to share the costs, Albert had a big grin as he poured the tea.

I slept really well that night, I did mumble an apology to the Eastern Gas Board, but I had a grin as wide as Albert’s as I faded into la-la land.