Let’s saw some ice

As we move into 2025 and take up the zoning code rewrite, I remain pretty darn optimistic. Thanks to those who have sent over your ideas. I have forwarded them along, please keep them coming.

This morning, I was reading a great story about Guy Ingalls. From 1911 until he retired in 1948, Mr. Ingalls cut ice from our harbor every winter. The article from the Emmet County Graphic is full of awesome terms few remember. Listen to this, "A sawman would cut a lane of ice he would "spud off" into the open channel. The "floats" were then pikepoled to the shore, broken into cakes, and picked up by an endless conveyor lift to the load dock. The cakes were loaded on trucks and taken to the icehouse for storage."

Mr. Ingalls, and his hearty band, would stock the icehouse for summer back when our harbor actually froze solid. With no refrigeration, the ice collected would be delivered by cart to homes, restaurants and hotels for use when the weather warmed. Sawing ice was hard off-season work and it took place when many were not thinking about what was happening in Harbor Springs. But the difficult and often dangerous work was required to make the summer comfortable.

Thank goodness we don't have to saw and pack away ice any longer. On a side note, my own family was involved in the ice trade. My great-grandfather founded an ice company about the time Mr. Ingalls was cutting ice here. He'd take ice cut in the Great Lakes off trains and run ice cart routes chipping off pieces for customers in my hometown of Kansas City. My grandma (94) still owns the company, though the ice business has changed a bit.

Cutting, pikepole-ing and packing ice for the summer is perhaps the very best example of what some have rightly called the "symbiotic" relationship between our summer and local residents. Back in the day, if you wanted to enjoy cold drinks on wide porches while taking in the gorgeous lake views, someone needed to cut that ice in the frigid cold of winter.

So, what's the point of this frosty little story? In towns like ours, you do what you can do when you can get it done. Some have asked why code rewriting is happening in the winter. For those of us who serve on the city's committees, it is frankly when we have the time to do this kind of thing. When everyone comes back in for the summer, things get real busy real fast. When we are not working, who in the heck wants to spend summer evenings in Northern Michigan in meetings? I mean, we live here for the same reasons others visit.

So, we do what we need to do when we can get it done. You saw the ice when it's cold so your drinks can be cold come summer.