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the Spring. Families like ours, however, without such means, couldn’t afford this kind of construction, and built their own, flimsier docks using lighter materials, fewer cribs, smaller rocks, and pilings driven in by hand using a 10 lbs. sledge. In the tradition of island construction, our boathouse was built in the least expensive, most expedient way, by my uncle, Fred, who had built the cottage, and my father. During the period of construction, my brother and I toddled around, getting covered with poison ivy, which old photos show was treated by Doc Davis with some kind of orange lotion (tincture of ferric chloride?).
The boathouse followed no formal plan and had many design and construction flaws. It was cantilevered on only 3 cribs rather than the 4 or 6 that would normally be required. Although it looked impressive from the water (see photo), it was too wide for one boat and too narrow for two. Moreover, Its berth was about 20’ long, too short for an 18’ or 20’ boat. It had heavy doors made of 1x6’s or1x8’s nailed to 2x4’s and hung on large hinges. To open them, one had to pull them up from the inside with ropes and pulleys. If you slipped while doing this, or released them on purpose, the unwieldy door would slam down dangerously. The amazing thing is that when it was finished the boathouse didn’t look all that bad, and, even more amazing, it lasted for 30 years before collapsing and becoming a dangerous eyesore. Its chief claim to fame was that it figured prominently as the “haunted boathouse” in one of Bob Lytle’s island stories.
Eventually, in the 1970’s, it began to slowly lean to one side and sink into the water. We couldn’t leave it like that,
a dangerous eyesore. Nor did we wish it to collapse the way the Wertel boathouse had leaving a hazardous mess: it had to be dismantled. So, in the summer of 1977, my brother and I along with my teen-aged nephew, Bill and a stepbrother, took it apart piece by piece. Because the water was high that year, we were able to toss all the nails, after pulling them out of the boards, into large washtubs and float them, along with the salvaged boards, back to the shore. Despite our efforts, many nails fell into the water; I could pull them out of the sand in the area for years afterward. After we dismantled the boathouse, we hired new cribs built where the boathouse had been, creating a strong, stable platform at which we could dock a boat. These better cribs, protected by large pilings, have lasted.
By that time all the other boathouses along Holbrook plat with the exception of the one next door had collapsed from neglect. That one survives because Doc Davis invested in huge cribs that extended out in front of the boathouse on the northwest side to protect it from damage when the ice breaks up in the Spring and ice floes blown by the wind crash into it like battering rams.
Boats, and More Boats
I don’t know what type of boat the family used in the late 1930’s. Photos from 1936 show my parents, sister (age 3), grandmother and uncle Bill (age 12) at the cottage with family friends, holding up strings of fish, but there is no boat in sight. I doubt it was still old Daisy; it may have been a Lyman outboard, which I heard talked about but have no memory of ever having seen. In 1952 my parents
My grandfather fishing in Daisy in the early 1930’s
Volume 74 • Number 2 Washtenaw County Medical Society BULLETIN 19