This lady was lucky. I was 6 in 1948 and still remember the ice man delivering blocks of ice at 2351 Belmont Ave, Bronx, N.Y. He put a large ice block on his shoulder as he walked up the 3 or 4 floors to an apartment.

In the mid-1970s, my ancient Crosley needed a start relay. At the local appliance parts store, the old guy at the counter said "Oh, an old sulfur box". Huh? It seems that the old girl used sulfur dioxide as the refrigerant. The Crosley was quiet and efficient. The circa 1963 Amana that replaced it nearly doubled my small apartment electric bill.
¡Oy!

This is the exact refrigerator that my parents received as a wedding gift from my grand parents in 1947 (they ordered it before the war ended so they had first dibs). This refrigerator is still working as good as the day it was new. It only had one repair to the thermostat in 1970. Ours still looks brand new as well.
I see the door thermometer is missing from this one.
Best fridge ever made.

I too own an old fridge. In fact I own 2 fridges, one stand up freezer. One in the garage is a '55 Norge, one in the kitchen is a '53 Frigidaire and the stand up freezer is a '54 Admiral. They just keep on going and going. All they need is a defrosting ever so often. Note: Anyone who gets one of these, whatever you do, don't use anything other than a hair dryer to defrost them. If you puncture any of the coolant lines the fridge will become a paperweight as no drop-in replacement coolants are available anymore.

Not necessarily. Perhaps on your fridge. It depends on the fridge layout. You might think the bottom would be coldest since cold air falls and warm air rises, but if you have an overhead freezer compartment, very frequently the coldest shelf in the fridge section will be directly under the freezer compartment. I took note at first glance that the milk, cola, and beer were on the shelf nearest the freezer and figured in this unit, the coldest part of the fridge would likely be right there where those are.

Most user manuals indicate where that coldest area is. On all my various fridges in my various houses, it's the shelf nearest the overhead freezer. Water bottles sometimes freeze on that higher shelf and I have to put steaks and turkey at the bottom for refrigerator thawing. If I put them on the higher shelf, they'd take days and days to thaw.

I'm planning some tile work in the near future. I'm liking that "subway tile".

It's a 1947 GE model ND-8-DC. Mine is missing the top shelf but it's still got the original glass lids for the produce bins. Still works great - and looks great, too!

I see my mother was not the only one who re-used those sturdy glass Skippy jars for everything. They had markings on them indicating one cup, two cups, etc, for you to use them as measuring cups after your PB was gone.
I see at least two Skippy jars in this refrigerator.

And though I don't keep emulsified peanut butter in my refrigerator, such as Skippy, I do keep non-emulsified PB there (Laura Scudder, for example) because the oil will separate from the nuts in the non-emulsified brands, and you will get a greasy, yucky top layer, and an un- spreadable clay layer after that, if you store it at room temperature.

Peanut butter in the fridge? Try spreading that, on a slice of Wonder Bread, as a exercise in frustration

The subway tiles never went out of style

Beer goes on the bottom shelf, the coldest part of the Fridge.

I believe I see a familiar item that we used to use in these old refrigerators. Up high over the apples or tomatoes on the half shelf over the milk is a tool that was like a solid steel ice cube "crowbar" to loosen the ice in the aluminum ice trays that had no automatic release lever. It was about 6" to 8" long and one had to clamp the two claws onto the lips of the divider over each pair of ice cubes and remove the metal divider to separate the cubes. I don't know the technical name but I still have one.

And yet --

... tomatoes will go in the "fruits" bin.

A Pyrex #501 Primary Colors storage dish? Yes, it ought to warm up just fine. Give it a few minutes on the counter to get closer to room temp, then straight into the oven.

I recall that in the days before frost-free refrigerators you could leave food items uncovered in the fridge. The frost-free process blows air inside whereas the old models did not have this. Does anyone else recall hearing this?

I'll skip the leftovers, but stock up on the drinks.

Sure, Saran Wrap is few years away from reaching grocery shelves, but Tupperware was invented six years ago.