On Sun, 30 Jun 2019 13:35:58 +0700, John B.
wrote:

When I was a little kid my maternal grandmother used to make a drink
from vinegar, honey and water. I can't for the life of me remember
what she called it but any time any of the grand kids showed up she'd
make up a batch, put it in the "ice box", and we could drink all we
wanted :-)

My maternal grandmother had a real ice box in her summer cabin. She
had a fridge in the main house, and a pump on the back porch. I don't
know what cooler she had in the trailer, but it had a water tank for
when you weren't hooked up.

Our trailer had a refrigerator that could be operated as an ice box
when you couldn't plug in. (You could still buy a fifty-pound block
of ice almost anywhere back then.) There was no provision for water
on the road. The fridge was easy to defrost: just turn it off until
the frost fell onto the ice shelf, then clean it and turn it back on.
When we were plugged in (which was all of the school year) we kept a
gallon of milk in the ice compartment.

I don't recall any special beverage at Grandma's except the water in
the bucket. My mother diluted and sweetened rhubarb juice in hot
weather.

I like a bit of raw rhubarb ground up in a glass of ice water.

--
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
The above message is a Usenet post.
I don't recall having given anyone permission to use it on a Web site.