Life in Omena

Teams of horses would roll it over snowy roads to make the roads possible for horses and sleighs to travel on. Tough job for the horses! How were the roads cleared before snowplows? Before the 1800’s there really was not any effort to get the snow off the roads. To get from one place to another people just put on their snowshoes and made the trek on foot. Then in the 1880’s teams of shovelers did the work, working together. They would actually throw snow onto covered bridges so sleigh travel would not be interrupted. Later teams of horses or… Read More »

Harbor Bar in the mid 1950’s after Keith Brown bought it from his stepfather, John Putnam and made some additions. The service bay is visible on the right and the bar on the left. Courtesy Omena Historical Society. Kori Wheeler remembers that on Monday mornings when she was growing up her dad would come out and swim with the kids. He was a perfect diver and taught his children to dive and swim underwater. They laughed at his white legs…. white because he did not have a tan there, he never wore shorts as he worked all the time. For… Read More »

Photo Credit: Flickr. The pumpkins we carve today are descended from the Jack-O-Lanterns of the past, which were a blend of immigrant custom and Native American harvest crops, according to The Henry Ford Museum. Early Halloween parties were, back then, matchmaking parties for young people with games to “predict” marriage futures and much opportunity for flirtation. You can see that in this photo from the Henry Ford, and in this chapter of the book “Spells, Charms, and Incantations.” Happy Halloween everybody!  

It still happens at least once a summer, but in the early years of cars, the quiet of the night would often but broken by the screeching of tires, and a loud splash as an old car missed the corner of M-22 in Omena and splashed into Omena Bay. Speeding in Omena is not a new thing. Speeding through town, and the resulting consequences, has happened ever since the early 1900’s. It was against the law then and still is now. But this is Omena. Other crimes happened as well in this peaceful little hamlet. Saturday nights when the migrants… Read More »

The Marbachs – Rob, Will, and Rev Marbach standing on M-22 in front of the parsonage. 1930’s. Courtesy Omena Historical Society. M22 was a busy road in 1928, but unpaved. The road grader went by twice each day, up the hill to Northport in the morning, and back south to Suttons Bay each afternoon smoothing out the ruts. It raised a lot of dust, but that did not bother Bob and Effie Barth, or their cows who crossed the road twice each day to get to pasture and back. And it did not bother Bill and Rob, two little boys… Read More »

The little house Janet lived in for most of her life is across from Omena’s historic Presbyterian Church. Kathy and Mike Bosco now own it and are preserving it from future development. Photo credit: Omena Historical Society archives. “Mr. Bushman” often made the Omena Column of the Leelanau Enterprise in the 1980’s. Who was this Mr. Bushman? We had a homeless man who had come to the village to work at the cherry processing plant during the cherry harvest for a few years. He probably worked nights and usually spent his days sleeping under a bush near the Omena Public… Read More »

Preserved Fruit – Photo Credit: Don Lee Aldrich. I remember my mother and grandmother sitting at the kitchen table talking loudly over the radio as they peeled peaches for canning. No doubt my grandmother did the same with her mother before that. I think about them as I peel apples for applesauce. Without preserving fruit back then, you had a pretty fruitless winter. The farmhouses in this area mostly had root cellars or Michigan Basements where they stored their canned fruit, potatoes, apples, and other things. They had simple dirt floors and fieldstone walls which held the frost at bay… Read More »

Jacob Ahgosa, Elder and grandson of the first Chief Ahgosa, and Reverend Plymate deliver the service one Sunday morning. Usually, the townspeople sat on the east side and the Native Americans, and a few local residents sat on the west side so Jacob Ahgosa could translate the service for the Native Americans assembled. Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful for our Native American neighbors who have shared our long history in this wonderful place. In 1867 the Presbyterian board of Foreign Missions ceased its financial support for the Omena church, Rev. Dougherty sold the mission buildings, retired from the… Read More »

Beginnings and Endings. There is a line in the Robert McCloskey children’s book “One Morning In Maine” that says, ” A little bit sad about the place they are leaving and a little bit glad about the place they are going.” I think about the children of Omena leaving in the fall to go back to school, how they must be feeling, and how they have felt every fall through the ages. Laurie Remter recently shared some of her wonderful old photos of the many cousins, uncles, and aunts who shared the cottage called “The Pioneer” since the 1950’s and… Read More »

David and Sally on the front porch of Tamarack in 1992. Courtesy Traverse, the Magazine, January 1992. Driving around Chicago, looking for work in their little Volkswagen loaded with everything they owned, and having no luck, they parked the car on the street for a short time only to come back and find someone had broken into it and stolen everything they owned. They had hit rock bottom. No jobs, and everything they owned was gone. David and Sally Viskochil were college graduates, had served three years in the Peace Corps, and were down on their luck. They decided to… Read More »