The Thornapple, The Icehouse & The Cannon

It turned up in a shirt box Marian filled with old family photos and gave to me: an old envelope, empty now, but saved for its return address on Thornapple River Road. The name captivated me. I have studied maps of southern Michigan and I have not been able to find a Thornapple River, but my husband assures me that it's there. A river with a name like that should exist, and I was glad to know that it does. Ada, Michigan lies on the evocatively named Thornapple River.

The fact that the town is on a river is important because of the icehouse.

Before electricity, people had iceboxes in their houses instead of refrigerators. An icebox contained a big chunk of ice -- twelve to eighteen inches or so to an edge -- that would keep food cool as it slowly melted. When it was gone, and the meltwater was dutifully collected and thrown on the rosebush by the housewife, a fresh block of ice would be put in its place and the process would repeat throughout the hot summer days. Ice was delivered in cities and towns from horse-drawn wagons, and carried into the house with specially designed enormous ice tongs (which can still be found in junk stores and antique malls by sharp-eyed, knowledgable shoppers) by a service-sector employee known as an "iceman". Yes, as in the play title The Iceman Cometh .

The ice was cut in the dead of winter, every winter, from lakes, ponds, and in the case of Ada, Michigan, from the Thornapple River, with special saws. It was hauled on sleds to icehouses where it was stacked; the blocks insulated with straw, sawdust, or both. It would stay frozen until the following winter. Then the icemen would go to work filling the icehouses again.

My father-in-law's family had an icehouse of their own. This was not uncommon in farm communities, although they were not farmers. They had an icehouse because they owned the only store in Ada, and needed several iceboxes to keep fish, meat, and some of the produce fresh for their customers.

But this story isn't about the icehouse or the river. This story is about The Cannon.

Ada is and was much like any other American small town, despite the fact that it occupies a place on the Canadian Shield, scoured flat by a glacier during the last Ice Age, and still something of a howling waste at certain times of the year, due to its peculiarly exposed aspect -- Michigan's Lower Peninsula -- flung down like a big soggy mitten against the waters of three of the Great Lakes. As in most American towns, a celebration is and was held on Independence Day each July Fourth. In Ada, the celebration featured the ritual firing of The Cannon.

I must be truthful here. I don't know much about The Cannon. I don't know of which war it is a relic, but if Ada is representative of other small towns not in the original thirteen colonies, it was probably hauled home after the Civil War, by some members of the local military unit that went off to fight the Rebs for President Lincoln. No lazy slave owners there, no sir!

Anyway, each Fourth of July, the people in town who take care of such things would give the old cannon a good cleaning, load it with a charge of black powder, and after it became dark enough to start the fireworks display, they would fire the cannon, to start the show properly.

Some people are deeply disturbed by loud noises. My grandfather-in-law Will was one of them. He viewed the approach of the Glorious Fourth with dread each year. In an attempt to remove the shock to his nerves, he pled with the town council to dispense with the firing of The Cannon, but since he was the only person in town who disliked it, they laughingly refused to honor his request.

Life continued in its gentle rhythm in Ada for years, until one Fourth of July, the city fathers awoke to find The Cannon missing.