THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507190054
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: MY JOB
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
EVERYTHING ABOUT Everick L. Davis is cool.
He's wearing an ice blue pen tucked into the neck of his ice blue shirt, cool blue shorts, and white cotton socks tucked into his running shoes.
The man never breaks a sweat. Even when it's 90-some degrees outside and he's heaving bags - 180 of them at 8 pounds each - out of a truck and onto a handcart, he's still the picture of cool.
After all, he's the iceman.
``The backbone of the company,'' his supervisor says.
Davis drives an ice delivery truck for Cassco Ice and Cold Storage Inc. in Norfolk, bringing a little chill into the stores on his route. He moves fast - ice won't keep.
On this particular day, he's just pulled up to the Great Bridge Food Lion store on Great Bridge Boulevard. Davis strides in, opens the door to the upright freezer and quickly figures he'll drop off nearly 200 bags at this stop. As he slams it shut, a white cloud of super-cooled air puffs into the aisle.
Back outside at his truck, he slips on insulated black rubber gloves and starts unloading. A trainee helper, barehanded, climbs into the dark, frigid rig and rips open sealed stacks of blue and white plastic bags full of ice chunks and bangs them on the truck floor one by one for Davis to haul out into the sunshine. In the truck, the air is subfreezing, outside the temperature is in the mid-80s and climbing.
Thump, thump thump. . . the bags of party ice hit the handcart one at time as Davis stacks them up 11 to a row.
Some he shoves aside.
``If they have a hole in them or they don't look right to me, I just toss them,'' he says, stopping a second and grinning. ``This is what I do all day, same-o, same-o.'' A full cart can easily weigh 800 pounds.
The work builds muscle. Davis is 6-feet-2 and weighs 198 pounds. He doesn't work out after hours. He doesn't have to.
``You don't gain much weight doing this because you're always moving, always doing something,'' says Davis, 26.
He's been delivering ice for more than a year after spending five years in the U.S. Navy, part of it in Hampton Roads. The Newport News resident is from St. Augustine, Fla., but liked this area enough to come back as a civilian. An offer by the ice company to help him get his commercial driver's license sounded good to him.
The job's not carefree. In summer, even ice on a refrigerated truck is dicey cargo.
``I've never had a load melt on me, but it has on other new guys,'' he says. He keeps a close eye on the temperature, inside and out. On very hot days he pulls up close to the front door of a store to keep the ice from staying in the heat too long and getting wet in the bags.
Inside the store, Davis and his helper whisk the bags off the handcarts and into the freezer. No time to waste. They have about a dozen more stops to make, and the day's not getting any cooler.
People are happy when he shows up - ``especially if they don't have any more ice,'' he says.
Davis jumps up into the cab of his truck, ready to head for the next stop. His shirt's dry, not a trickle of perspiration on his brow. He says he never gets hot no matter how high the thermometer climbs.
``I'm from Florida, so this isn't hot. The reason I don't sweat, though,'' he says, a gleam in his eye, ``is because I'm the iceman.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MOTOYA NAKAMURA/Staff
People are happy when Everick L. Davis shows up in his delivery
truck - ``especially if they don't have any more ice.''
by CNB