Photo of the Day: Gleason & Co. Sign Unearthed

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Tim and I stopped by Bowers Harbor Boat Works this weekend and chatted with owner Jeff Fouch for a few minutes. He runs the boat storage facility on the corner of Center Road and Eiman Road.

Of course, the guys were talking cars while I wandered around with my camera and shot a few photos of the building, which used to be Gleason & Co. back in the old days.

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This was in the days before cherry shakers, when all the cherries were picked into lugs by migrant workers and then taken to Gleason & Co., where they were stored in plastic lined pits in the ground. I’m not sure where they went from there, but Tim and I think they might have been processed and canned at Kroupa’s down the road (on Center Road near Carroll Road). Or maybe that happened right there. If you know, tell us in the comments below.

It wasn’t until I wandered back over to the guys that Jeff asked if we’d noticed that the Gleason & Co. lettering was back along the top of the building. He’d just had that part of the building uncovered – I’m not sure if it was wood or something else there – and the original Gleason & Co. letters was still there, intact and waiting to be unveiled again.

I clearly remember riding with my dad in our old 1952 Chevy stake truck, hauling lugs of cherries to Gleason & Co. and waiting in long lines to be unloaded. And then waiting in lines into the night to be loaded up with lugs. When I cleaned my parents’ house out a few years ago, I came across a few shoeboxes of lug tickets.

mexicans, migrant workers, cherries, cherry harvest, mexican migrant workers, h2a program, walter johnson, johnson farms, crescent hill fruit farm, cherry lugs, cherry lug tickets, old mission gazette, old mission peninsula
Cherry Lug Tickets from Johnson Farms/Crescent Hill Fruit Farm, circa 1960s | Jane Boursaw Photo

Jeff said he plans to have the letters repainted, which will be super cool and a great reminder of that part of the OMP’s farm history.

And if you have a boat that needs to be stored, Jeff’s your guy. Stop by or call him at (231) 223-4288.

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5 COMMENTS

  1. I worked in the office at Gleason’s for several summers while in high school. After long hours of weighing the trailers and trucks filled with lugs of cherries I could close my eyes at night and all I could see were lugs of cherries!!!!

  2. I lived on Bill Gleason farm when I was a kid ,Now I’m looking for information about the Children to see if they live around there ,coming up north though I would bring my brother who has cancer to visit the old boys

  3. I found an old wood crate 21 1/2 long by 11 in. wide 6 in. deep. It says Pratt & Gleason / old mission on the side . Could this be an old cherry crate ? Please send an e mail . I dont want to throw it out .

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