I don’t own a DVD of the movie North by Northwest, so I only get to see it from time to time on Turner Classic Movies .

In that movie, there is the famous scene where Cary Grant is being terrorized by a crop dusting plane. You know the scene. It is described in Wikipedia this way:

“Thornhill (Grant) travels by bus to an isolated crossroads, with flat countryside all around and nobody in sight. Another man finally arrives, but then takes the next bus. Before he leaves, the puzzled stranger observes that a biplane is ‘dusting crops where there ain't no crops.’ Without warning, the plane flies towards Thornhill and the pilot begins shooting at him. He flees to the only cover, a cornfield, but the plane dusts it with pesticide, forcing him out. Desperate for help, Thornhill steps in front of a speeding gasoline tank truck, which stops barely in time. The plane crashes into it and explodes. When passing drivers stop to see what is going on, Thornhill steals a pickup truck and flees.”

My question, “Isn’t that a refrigerator standing up in the back of the pickup?” You only see it from distance as Grant drives off in the truck and then as the truck is parked outside a Chicago hotel at twilight.

I’ve read some commentaries and reviews of the movies, but nobody seems to mention a refrigerator.

Am I wrong? Or is that a piece of refrigeration equipment? If so, why a refrigerator? The director Alfred Hitchcock said he liked icy blond women in his movies? Could there be some symbolism between that point and the refrigerator? If it was a refrigerator.