This continues a series adapted from the book, “A Port Oneida Collection,” Volume 1 of the twopart set, “Oral History, Photographs, and Maps from the Sleeping Bear Region,” produced by Tom Van Zoeren in partnership with Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear. Here we have a look at the old Warner Farm, which was along Thoreson Road across from the Thoreson Farm.
August Warner, the “bastard” son of Katie Poertner (previous chapter), grew to manhood on the Richard Werner Farm in Port Oneida. He married Rosie Haas of South Manitou Island and began a new farm along Thoreson Road. Like other large areas of Port Oneida, this land and the virgin forest it supported had been acquired by lumberman Thomas P. Kelderhouse. After being stripped of all timber, the ravaged landscape was sold off “dirt-cheap” to (overly) hopeful farmers.
In 1922 Mr. Warner purchased this new 36’ fishing boat, just completed by neighbor/boat builder Fred Miller (Ch. 30). “I don’t think he was making out”, commented fellow Port Oneidan Jack Barratt. “Most of the farmers around here didn’t make a living off the farm. They went to the woods in the wintertime, or they had a sideline.” August Warner adopted the sideline occupations of fishing and running the mail route between Glen Haven and South Manitou Island. Jack, who sometimes assisted him, remembered motoring west for two hours to pick up chub nets from 600’ deep, “right in the middle” of the lake.
While modern fish tugs are a very practical answer to the needs of today’s fishermen, the earlier fishing boats retained a certain grace while answering the needs of their time. The Lenor and other fishing boats of its era had cabins that didn’t go all the way forward. “This was before the time of (net) lifters, and they would stand on that front deck and manually pull the nets in. They had a roller on one side, or maybe both sides.” The nets were paid out from the stern of the boat. Most tugs were powered by “one-lunger” (1-cylinder, 2-cycle) gas engines. “They were big cylinders, probably eight-inch bores . . . and they had a big flywheel on them.”
The Warners raised four children on this farm (See genealogy chart in previous chapter) before, in the early 1920’s, selling it to August Brammer, a bachelor who had grown up at the Brammer Mill in Glen Arbor. (His sister Hattie had married Charlie Olsen and lived just up M-22.) Neighbor Leonard Thoreson remembers that August would “chase cattle” between his farm and the home place in Glen Arbor. Leonard recalls him passing by after helping out at the mill: “He looked like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. His clothes would be all white” from the flour.
Leonard also remembered this incident: “In the spring of the year, I’d say March, on a Saturday, we were up in the woods cutting wood—skidding wood—had a team up there, cutting up a buzz pile.” In those days before chain saws, firewood was cut up with a buzz rig—a big circular saw mounted on a table, powered by an old car engine or a tractor. You’d usually place it near a little hill, with “skid poles” suspended in between. That way you could drag the logs to the poles with horses, then roll them across and onto the table without having to lift them.
“And we come home, come down from the back eighty, and we no more than got in the yard, and here come August Brammer, riding one of his horses. Never saw him ride a horse before in my life. And he said, ‘I need some help. I think I broke my leg.’ So we helped him in the house. He crushed one ankle, and I think he broke a leg, both. And how that man got on that horse to ride him, I’ll never know today yet. I don’t know if that horse had ever been ridden before, but some way or the other, he managed; he got on that horse with a crushed ankle.
“He said he had been skidding wood east of our place, up on top of that flat on top of that hill. And he must have caught the skid (pole) with the log, and he got his leg between the two skids, and broke his ankle. Crushed it.” Skidding and buzzing wood was the sort of work that two or three men would normally get together to share in Port Oneida, but that day August was working alone. During following weeks, the Thoresons helped August out, doing his chores while he mended. “We went up there and done his chores. He had a couple pigs, didn’t have but two or three cows, a team of horses and a few chickens. And the manure was pretty deep in there. And the cows kind of stood with their heads down. The horses stood with their heads down, too. There was so much manure in the back that wasn’t thrown out or cleaned up, that it just kept getting higher and higher. It gradually worked up to the front feet, too. He had one pig in the corner of the barn. He had kind of a little wooden fence around it — some old slab lumber and stuff. When it got too deep, he’d nail another board on it and go up a little higher. It was an old log barn. Pretty rickety. It was just a place to keep in out of the cold. They weren’t cold in there, not with all that manure. When you went in there, if you wore glasses, they’d steam up.”
To be continued
