Sea Isle`s IceMan is Cool

Joe Romano Jr. is an on-the-rocks kind of guy. Eight-pound bags, 10-pound bags, really big blocks for carving, he handles it all through his family's Sea Isle Ice Co.

"Untouched by human hands, until it gets to the customer," Romano said of the ice that is processed at the company's plant in Woodbine and distributed from there and a bay-view location at 42nd Street and Park Road in Sea Isle City.

In and out of both locations, Romano is more comfortable in jeans and a sweat shirt than in the shorts and T-shirts that other shore businessmen sport.

Supervising retail sales at the Sea Isle loading dock and more than 30 trucks making deliveries up and down 100 miles of the Garden State Parkway from Neptune to Cowtown, his is the voice you're most likely to hear answering the company telephone.

And he's almost always working. Seven days a week when the temperature rises above 90 degrees; six days a week otherwise.

"When it's really hot, people chase the trucks down the street, begging for ice. They stop in to buy a few bags and ask to stand just for a few minutes in the refrigerated storage rooms. Then two days later, it's cooler, and they don't even wave," Romano said.

Think of a shore vacation without ice. Nothing to keep the beer and soda chilled in the cooler; nothing to toss into the blender to make frosty coolers or tropical daiquiris; nothing to keep perishables safe at the campsite; and nothing to keep the fish from stinking on the boat.

Romano's product is a staple of life at the shore and whether it's bought at the convenience store, the beer distributor, the supermarket or the bait shop, more than likely it's produced and bagged at his Woodbine plant.

Want some ideas of how many bags of ice get delivered on a hot summer day? Steve Davis, manager of the Wawa at 38th Street and Landis Avenue, said the ice cooler inside his store is always loaded up by 10 a.m. daily in the summer. More deliveries, of 20 to 30 eight-pound bags in each batch, are made at least three times during the rest of the day.

"And they're always 10 minutes away if we're running low," said Davis.

A new half-million-dollar piece of equipment at the plant pours out 70 tons of ice. The machine then weighs the ice, makes a plastic bag to hold it, dates it and seals it. Forty bags a minute, according to Romano. The equipment practically runs itself, he said.

Three storage rooms, where the temperature is 20 to 25 degrees, can hold a million bags of ice.

"Our biggest customer base is liquor stores, and we do most business on Saturday and Sunday," Romano said.

A manager at LaCosta bar and liquor store, who would identify himself only as Bob, said the ice truck stops there at least twice a day. "If it's 90 degrees, we'll see a driver four times. It's like an exclusive on the product. Who else are you gonna call?" he said.

Sometimes the Romano family opens its gigantic ice chests to outsiders. Last winter, Vivat Hongpong, who lives in Absecon, was set to participate in an ice carving competition at the Winter Olympics in Utah. He stopped at the Woodbine plant regularly to hone his skills. The figure, titled The Sound of Paradise, won first place and a gold medal and was 13 feet high and 8 feet wide.

No local residents saw Hongpong's piece of work, but about 5,000 visitors could spot a Romano contribution during Presidents Day weekend in February, in the ice throne that carried the Polar Bear Queen, Irene Jameson of Sea Isle City, to the beach for a quick dip in the 42-degree Atlantic Ocean. It was the eighth time Jameson, 77, led the parade. "Let me tell you, that's the coldest ice," said Jameson.

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Author: 6 ABC-AP