This is John and Bills house with the sawmill on the left where they made their fish boxes and cherry lugs.
Beyond the house is a garage, ice house, and dock shed.
The Eclipse is alongside the dock, ready to make another run out into Grand Traverse Bay.
Every so often while the two of us were building our cottage in the 1970’s from an old barn, an old man would come up the hill and sit on a stump or a pile of wood and quietly watch. After a few years, when we were putting on the barn wood siding, he said, “I have some old wood you might use down the hill. It is in a pile ready to burn. Help yourself.” I wheeled my wheelbarrow down the hill and there in a big pile were the remains of the Schram and Bauer sawmill.
John and Bill
In the picture to the right, John and Bill outside their front door about 1937. Bill did all the housework and cooking, and John managed the fishing operation, at least in later years. They were the unofficial Omena Coast guard often coming to the rescue of folks in trouble on the water, and through the winter the unofficial guardians of Omena Point.
John lived on alone in the little house by the sawmill after Bill died 1949. After John died at nearly 90 years of age in 1965, he was buried next to Bill in the Omena Cemetery. Taken in 1937
Our silent friend was Bob Bauer, John Bauer’s nephew who had inherited the property and was getting it ready to sell. Many of the boards ended up on the side of our cottage, the chimney bricks went into our hearth, and the flooring, which came from the bowling alley of the Omena Inn, ended up as our cupboards.
Started as a fishing operation
Schram and Bauer were one of the main fishing operations in the 1920’s and 30’s. The train that brought resorters to Omena, took fish caught by the two men back to Chicago. The boxes used to transport the well iced fish were made right there in the sawmill. They cut the ice from Omena Bay in the winter with their big bog saws, stored some of it themselves, and Anderson’s Store would store and deliver the rest of it throughout the year for local ice boxes.
Making these boxes, which were used not only for fish but also for cherries came to be Schram and Bauer’s salvation. In the 1940’s the fishing industry declined due to pollution and predators like lamprey eel as well as too many fishermen in the bay. Making boxes for cherry growers in the area supported them when they needed it.
Courtesy of Omena Historical Society
For more about Schram and Bauer click on the photos below
