Schram and Bauer’s sawmill when Bob Bauer lived there around 1980. Photo Courtesy Lynn Spitznagel
Mary Louise was frightened by the spiders and scurrying little creatures in the dark, abandoned outbuilding at the end of Omena Point. Her friends liked to play there though, so she went too. When Mary Louise Vail was a child in the early 1910s, the bowling alley was all that remained of the first Omena Inn. It had burned to the ground in 1904 in a sudden and devastating fire, sending up a tower of black smoke seen all over the area. Only the outbuildings survived. The old bowling alley was dirty, littered with trash, and had holes where the windows used to be, but what a great playhouse! The bigger kids loved to play at bowling there too, and the little kids could be coerced into setting up the pins for them.
Bob Bauer and Bill Schram working their nets in Omena Bay. Courtesy Omena Historical Society
Meanwhile, out in the Bay, two fishermen were setting their nets. Bill Schram had discovered the cold, deep waters of Omena Bay by 1913, and then joined up with another Omena fisherman, John Bauer, by 1919. Schram and Bauer were one of the main fishing operations in the 1920’s and 30’s. Perhaps as they set their nets at the end of the Point, they wondered why the shed like bowling alley remained standing, alone in the woods.
Bowling Property Sold
John Santo bought the bowling alley property along with the surrounding land at a public auction. He was hoping to sell the property for future cottages. In 1920, four years later, Carmichael saw Omena Point for the first time. He immediately bought the bowling alley land for his future cottage, building Birchwood Terrace on that spot the very next year. At some point before 1920 the bowling alley had been removed.
Those two fishermen, Schram and Bauer, lived a little closer to the village on Omena Point at Fire lane #2. Near their little house, they had a boat house with rails going down into the water to haul their large fishing boat up out of the water for repairs or for the winter and a storage shed. They had a use for the bowling alley wood. The men wanted to make boxes to ship their fish in, icing the fish up with ice they had cut from Omena Bay in the winter and sending it by train or boat to Chicago.
They bought or were given the bowling alley. Took it down and loaded it up, trucking it down to their property. They wanted a sawmill with a nice wood floor which would be warmer in the winter when they made their boxes. The wood floor of the bowling alley certainly would be warmer and cleaner than a dirt floor. And they could use the siding from the bowling alley for the sides of their sawmill.
Fishing Industry to Sawmill
Schram and Bauer’s sawmill, house, and boathouse. Courtesy Omena Historical Society
In the 1940’s the fishing industry declined due to pollution and predators like the lamprey eel, as well as too many fishermen in the bay. Making boxes for cherry growers in the area supported Schram and Bauers when the fish were scarce, becoming their salvation. Cherries were doing well, and the boxes could be used for shipping cherries as well as fish.
The sawmill was used for many years until the fishermen died. Bill Schram dying suddenly in 1949, and then John Bauer dying in 1965 at the age of 90. Neither had any children. John Bauer left the property, with its sawmill and little bungalow, to his nephew, Bob Bauer. Bob was from Saginaw but spent time in the summers at his uncle’s place, making improvements as time went on. But eventually the drive back and forth and the constant maintenance was too much.
The tumbled down sawmill, and the old boathouse with its tracks leading down into the water were of no use to him, a city dweller. By 1980 he wanted to sell. He took down the sawmill with its caved in roof. The tumbled down warehouse and old empty boat house, and sorted the wood into piles. One pile for the salvageable siding and one for the old flooring from the sawmill. All that was left was the little bungalow and the tracks leading into the Bay.
The Spitznagel’s Cottage
Lynn’s kitchen cupboards made from wood from the old sawmill ca. 1990. photo courtesy Lynn Spitznagel
The Spitznagel’s were building a cottage on the property behind the Bauer place at the time. They were reconstructing the Barth barn which had once stood behind Barth’s store in town. The project interested Bob Bauer. He used to come up and watch Lynn and her carpenter, Tom Mastick, hard at work. One day he said he had some old lumber we could have if we wanted to look it over. Lynn went down with her rusty wheelbarrow. There was a treasure of old wood neatly piled in piles, much more than her wheelbarrow could hold. She had no idea how she would use the bowling alley wood. Lynn knew they needed the siding so she loaded up what she could carry in her wheelbarrow. She asked her builder to come with his truck and get the rest.
They used the aged siding wood on the north side of their cottage. They were running out of usable siding from the Barth barn. The wood from the sawmill floor would take some work before it could be used. She took it to Andy Thomas, who was just starting up his millworks in Northport to see what he thought. Could it be used for butcher block counter tops once it was cleaned up? Andy discouraged that, saying that between the stacked boards was so much mold and dirt that he could not make it “sanitary” enough for counter tops. However, he said, he could separate the boards, plane, and sand them down, and make them into some fine kitchen cupboards for her little cottage.
So, over the winter of 1982 Andy cleaned up the boards, and worked on the cupboards in his garage. Come spring he and his dad, Mac, loaded them up and installed them into the unfinished cottage. Lynn was thrilled! She loved them so much that when the kitchen was remodeled and expanded later, she had Ray and Coby, the carpenters, use that old wood again. It is still there in her kitchen, preserved forever, although no bowling balls have touched it in over a century.