The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County (20 page)

T
he weeks following the highly successful Trail Marker Oak Days were quiet in Link Lake. These August days were mostly clear and warm, with the daytime temperatures reaching the mid-eighties and sometimes low-nineties. An occasional thunderstorm in the evening freshened things up and kept the farmers happy but did not dampen the spirits of the summer tourists, who reached record numbers in recent weeks.

By mid-August, workmen completed the remodeling of the Link Lake Supper Club, and the new Lake Coffee Bar opened. Bicyclists traveling the nearby railway bike trail began to find the place and passed the word along to their friends, who were also stopping by. Marilyn Jones had succeeded in hiring a new chef, Pierre Le Page. She hired him away from a top-shelf restaurant—mostly because he had once vacationed in Link Lake and liked the community. He spoke with a heavy French accent, which added a bit of mystique to the supper club. She promoted Shirley Noble, one of her longtime waitstaff, to be in charge of the Lake Coffee Bar.

Marilyn's life had once more become easier. Crowds at the coffee bar, though not yet outstanding, were respectable and growing. Customer numbers for dinner had increased considerably, even more than before the Great Recession. Pierre Le Page had added several new French items to the standard menu of steaks and fish. A favorite was
boeuf bourguignon
, a special recipe of Le Page's that included beef, dry red wine, Cognac, and several secret ingredients. It was fast becoming a favorite, especially among tourists.

Marilyn mused about how well Karl Adams's tactics of creating a series of events to take people's minds off the sand mine had worked. She had been highly skeptical, but she had to admit, he knew what he was doing. Of course it didn't hurt that the Alstage Sand Mining Company had poured several thousand dollars into backing the events, from paying for advertising and covering expenses to offering generous amounts of prize money for the various competitions.

She also had to admit that the eagle cam idea turned out far better than she had anticipated. She had a computer screen set up in the new coffee bar, which continued to attract considerable attention as the two eaglets continued to grow and could often be seen peering over the edge of the big nest.

She was also pleased that she had not heard anyone talking recently about the plight of the Trail Marker Oak. People had either forgotten about it, or they had accepted the fact that in the name of progress and bringing new jobs to the community, some minor sacrifices had to be made. She was becoming more certain that when she retired from operating the Link Lake Supper Club, she would be remembered for how she had turned the community around. The new sand mine would clearly put little Link Lake on the map, and she would be viewed as the person who made it happen, the person who brought economic security to a little backwater town that feared facing the future and resisted change at every turn.

K
arl Adams was feeling good too about what he had achieved in the few short weeks since he moved to the Link Lake community. He continued to eat breakfast each morning at the Eat Well and listened to the banter. Trail Marker Oak Days were all the talk for several days, especially because of the large crowd the event brought to Link Lake. Karl overheard Henrietta say to one of Eat Well's regular customers, “Our little Link Lake is really doing well this summer. Never saw so many people in town since my years of living here. Lots of community spirit. Lots of good times.”

Karl smiled to himself. His plan to take people's minds off the new sand mine was working beyond anything he had hoped for. He even noticed people stopping by to look at the big map outside of the village hall, where they could see exactly where the mine would be located. Sometimes two or three people stood in front of the map, talking to each other about it and pointing to various places on the map.

Karl read the Stony Field columns each week and observed that lately Stony Field had made no mention of sand mining or hydraulic fracturing. He was writing about climate change and how it was affecting the polar bears in the Artic; another column was about water problems in southern California. Karl thought,
At least we've got Stony Field off our backs. Guys like that can be a real pain
.

The Eat Well, like other Link Lake establishments, had a monitor where people could watch the eagle nest and the progress the eagle family was making. Karl found it fascinating—he watched it online for a half hour or so every evening when he returned to his cabin.

With everything going according to plan, Karl went fishing nearly every afternoon and was catching fish as well. One day he caught a bass larger than the one that took the prize at the recent bass fishing tournament. He was a catch-and-release fisherman—mostly because he really didn't know how to clean a fish and even worse, he didn't have the first idea of how to prepare one to eat. He could have asked Pierre Le Page at the supper club; Marilyn had introduced him to her new chef, but he was satisfied with the pleasure of hooking a fish, struggling to land it, and then letting it go.
A fish that fights that hard to live deserves another chance
.

In his weekly report to Evans at the mining company headquarters in La Crosse, he wrote:

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A
mbrose Adler couldn't remember when he had experienced a busier summer. Sales at his roadside stand had soared—in fact nearly every afternoon he sold out most of the vegetables and fruits he had available. He was thankful for a good growing season. The strawberry and raspberry crop had been outstanding. The sweet corn and new potatoes were excellent, and the cucumbers and zucchini continued to do well.

One day back in July, when Noah Drake had stopped by to talk and play with Ranger, Ambrose asked him if he'd like to help out with the stand. Noah said, “Sure, I don't think Pa will care; the corn crop doesn't need much attention now, nor do the soybeans. So sure, what do you want me to do?”

Ambrose explained that Noah could help pick strawberries and raspberries, gather the green beans when they were ready, snap off ripe ears of sweet corn, cut the leaf lettuce, wash it and put it in little bags, and dig some carrots and beets. Noah did all of this and seemed to enjoy doing it. He rode his bike over to Ambrose's farm each morning and worked with Ambrose until noon.

Noah appreciated the opportunity to make a little extra money, but he also liked spending time at Ambrose's farm. It was so different from the farm his dad operated with big diesel John Deere tractors, huge John Deere combines, tilling equipment, and all the rest that had become standard on large commercial farms. Ambrose had none of these things. He still plowed his big vegetable garden with a team of horses and a one-bottom, sixteen-inch walking plow. Likewise he smoothed the garden's surface with a horse-drawn disc, marked the rows with a person-powered marker, and controlled the weeds with a hoe and a strong back. He used no commercial fertilizer but did spread ample amounts of horse manure on the garden site each fall before plowing it.

Noah also found it interesting that Ambrose did not have electricity and lighted his house with a kerosene lamp that sat in the middle of the kitchen table and lighted his way to the barn with a kerosene lantern. Noah couldn't understand how someone could live without electricity, without a telephone, without a TV, and without an indoor toilet. Ambrose did have a battery-operated radio.

Noah had his own cell phone that he used regularly to call his friends and let his mother know where he was. He wondered how anyone could get by without having a telephone in his pocket.

Ambrose simply couldn't do all the work associated with his fresh vegetable stand by himself anymore and very much needed the help that young Noah provided. Ambrose discovered he was increasingly out of breath, and often, in the midst of doing a task such as digging potatoes, found he had to sit in the shade every few minutes and rest before returning to work.

Ambrose also enjoyed Noah's company. As they worked together each morning, he learned about Noah's interest in wild animals and that he planned to do something related to nature when he graduated from college. Ambrose encouraged him, telling him that these were great ideas and that he should let nothing get in the way of his dreams.

“Pa doesn't think much of what I want to do,” Noah told him one day. “He says that people interested in nature stand in the way of those who want progress in the country. He says nature lovers are a bunch of ill-informed kooks.”

“D . . . don't think so,” said Ambrose. He and Lucas Drake had lived a half mile apart for more than forty years, but they really didn't know each other at all. Ambrose knew that Drake was chairman of the ultraconservative Eagle Party, but Ambrose didn't know until now how much Lucas Drake despised anyone concerned about nature and the environment.

“I started reading Stony Field's column every week after we talked about it in school,” said Noah. “I kind of like what he has to say, most of the time anyway. Do you read Stony's column?”

“I . . . do,” said Ambrose.

“Pa just hates him. He says that people should get together and shut him up. Pa says that if people listened to guys like Stony Field there'd be no jobs, everybody would be on food stamps, we'd all have higher taxes, and the country would just plain go to hell.”

“P . . . retty strong words,” Ambrose said.

“Pa gets all red in the face when I mention Stony Field, so I don't talk about him. But I still read his columns. Stuff like climate change, and how clean water is the big issue in much of the world today, and how some animals probably won't survive if we keep doing what we're doing.”

The old man and the boy worked together quietly for a few minutes, each with his own thoughts.

“Did you see the eagle cam of the eagle family in the park?” Noah asked, breaking the silence.

“I . . . did,” said Ambrose. “Saw it at the library the other day.”

“Pretty interesting, huh?”

Ambrose nodded his head but then interrupted the conversation. “I . . . I think we've got enough vegetables for this afternoon,” Ambrose said as they began hauling the produce to the little stand, where a car was already parked, waiting for the new day's fresh vegetables.

Once the vegetables were all nicely displayed in the little stand, and they served the waiting customer, both Ambrose and Noah sat down and in turn took long sips from the brown jug of water that Ambrose brought along. He was out of breath and welcomed the rest.

“You ready for the thresheree next week?” Noah asked. Big signs were posted all over Link Lake and the surrounding communities announcing the Link Lake Historical Society's annual thresheree, held each year at Ambrose Adler's farm in late August.

“M . . . mostly,” said Ambrose. Noah noticed that Ambrose had cut the hayfield across the road from his buildings with his team and mower, a second cutting, and had hauled the sparse crop to his barn. That, along with the first cutting he had put in the barn in early July, was usually enough to feed his horses through the winter. The field would be used during the thresheree for parking cars.

That afternoon Noah watched when Ambrose hitched his team to the ancient McCormick-Deering grain binder that he stored in his machine shed most of the year and then cut the five-acre field of oats that he planted each year just for the thresheree. Oscar Anderson, Fred Russo, and other retired farmer members of the historical society would stand the oat bundles into shocks that were lined up in rows across the field, waiting to be threshed.

The next day Ambrose mowed the grass around his buildings, clearing a big area where the various exhibits, including the threshing machine, would be set up.

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