Sounds like the guy may have been well off at one time and lost it, maybe the crash of ‘29?
Hard to tell, it was such a small town at that time. The years leading up to that were primarily the end days of the logging industry that dominated northern Michigan........
As a side note, back in the 1950's there was an old guy I remember as Cedrick who actually had a car that he had built the body out of wood....true story.
He worked in the town lumber yard down by the lake (Charlevoix) and one day the lumber yard warehouse caught fire and burned down along with Cedrick's car........