The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County

by Jerry Apps

  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:

  Everything’s going smoothly in Link Lake. No talk about the coming sand mine. People have turned to other matters. The money spent on the two major weekend activities appears to have clearly made a difference. Even the handful of protestors has backed off. People continue to talk about the good times they had, and how the events brought more people to Link Lake than they would have ever imagined.

  Suspect your advance people will have no problems when they begin test drilling—when did you say? First week in September?

  Karl

  33

  Busy Summer

  Ambrose 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.

  34

  Thresheree

  The following Saturday, cars were lined up a half mil
e down the road, waiting to park in Ambrose Adler’s field and attend the annual Link Lake Historical Society Thresheree, one of the largest events held in Ames County. The Ames County Fair was probably the only event that drew more people, and that was because it ran for four days, while the thresheree was only one day long.

  Historical society volunteers wearing orange vests pointed people toward where they could park after they paid the two-dollar entrance fee. Soon scores of people were walking by the exhibits—gasoline engines that once powered farm water systems, Delco generators that provided thirtytwo-volt electricity to farms before regular electrical service became available, exhibits of broad axes of various sizes, the kind used to fashion logs into barn and church and house beams before sawmills came to the community, lamps and lanterns of various shapes and sizes, reminders of the days before electricity.

  Old-timers and kids, farmers and former farmers all enjoyed seeing history and chatting with each other. Grandfathers pointed out to grandchildren what various items were and how they were used. “See that barn lantern,” an older gray-haired gentleman said to the young person with him who was fiddling with a cell phone. “I used to carry one like that to the barn. We milked cows with the light from one of those.”

  “How could you see anything with something like that?” the younger person asked.

  The old man chuckled. “We could see enough. Could see enough to milk a cow.”

  Curious people from urban areas asked questions, “What’s that? How do you use this thing? How did farm folks survive without electricity? What’d you do in winter? Did you have air-conditioning in the barn?” Some were dumb questions—whoever heard of air-conditioning in a barn when nobody had air-conditioning in their farm homes?

  The lineup of antique tractors attracted considerable attention. A long line of old tractors was parked in a neat row starting with a big green John Deere R, then a John Deere A, a model B, and an H. The International Farmall tractors were lined up next, a super M, an H, a model B, and an

  A. Then several orange Allis-Chalmers tractors, made in Milwaukee. A gray Ford 9-N and an 8-N—the gentleman’s tractor, it was called. Several Case models, also made in Wisconsin, three or four Massey-Harris and Minneapolis-Moline tractors, plus a couple of steam tractors that predated all of the gasoline models.

  By eleven a long line of people waited to buy tickets for the thresher’s dinner, which drew several hundred people each year. Chairs and tables were set up under the trees in front of Ambrose’s house. The meal was prepared by members of the historical society, some of whom remembered helping their mothers with threshing dinners when they were children growing up on farms in the community. The meal consisted of two kinds of meat—roast beef and pork chops—mounds of mashed potatoes, bowls of thick brown gravy, carrots and peas, and thickly sliced homemade bread with fresh butter. The desserts included two kinds of pie, cherry and apple, as well as devil’s food cake. Emily Higgins made sure the pies were cut in five pieces. “Nobody wants one of those skinny pieces of pie the restaurants serve,” she said.

  A portable generator sat off to the side, providing electricity for the big electric roasters filled with meats, mashed potatoes, and vegetables, as no electricity was available at the Adler farm. Historical society volunteers began serving the thresher’s meal at eleven thirty, and continued until one thirty—in time so everything could be cleared for the signal event of the day, the demonstration of threshing grain with a J. I. Case threshing machine powered by a John Deere R tractor. The threshing demonstration was scheduled to start at 2:00 p.m. and continue until the five acres of oat shocks were threshed. The threshing machine was set up near Ambrose’s barn, so the straw stack could be easily reached from that structure. Ambrose used the straw to bed his horses in the winter and to make things more comfortable for the few laying hens in his chicken house. He also used the straw as mulch for his vegetable garden, especially the tomatoes.

  Oscar Anderson, as he had done in previous years, was in charge of explaining the process of threshing grain. Using a microphone so the enormous crowd could hear him, Oscar began by talking about how grain was threshed with a flail or having an animal walk over it before threshing machines became advanced enough to do the job. He explained how the early threshing machines were permanently situated and farmers hauled their grain to the machine for threshing, sometimes several miles from their farms.

  “But when inventors like J. I. Case of Racine began manufacturing threshing machines like this one, everything changed. Now the threshing machine came to the farmer, instead of the farmer traveling to the threshing machine,” intoned Oscar. Mr. Jerome Increase Case was also the first manufacturer to make a steel threshing machine, a vast improvement over the older, wooden models, which occasionally caught fire when a spark from a stone ignited them.”

  Oscar went on to talk about threshing bees and how neighbors helped each other as the threshing machine moved from farm to farm. He explained that the threshing bees were social events as well as a way for neighbors to help neighbors. He talked about the huge threshing dinner, reminding people that the dinner served here today resembled the threshing dinners of earlier days in nearly every way.

  Karl Adams had never attended a thresheree, but as he listened to Oscar talk he found the idea of threshing bees extremely interesting. Karl had arrived at the thresheree early enough so he had a chance to walk around Ambrose’s place, as other people were doing. He looked through the open door of Ambrose’s barn and saw the stalls where Ambrose’s horses stood. He walked by Ambrose’s house, past the porch with a rocking chair, past a bed of old-fashioned orange day lilies. Everything was neat and tidy. Karl knew that Ambrose lived without any of the modern-day, taken-for-granted conveniences that almost everyone else had. He heard people describe him as strange, not only because he stuttered, but because he did not own a car, farmed with horses, and had no electricity. Karl thought, This is someone I’d like to learn more about.

  We are ready to begin the threshing demonstration,” Oscar said when he saw the owner of the big John Deere R climb on the tractor and pull back on the throttle so the quiet “pom, pom, pom” of the idling machine became a much louder “POM, POM, POM.” He slowly backed the tractor until the continuous belt that connected the tractor to the threshing machine was tight. Then he set the brake and engaged the tractor’s belt pulley so the belt began moving and the threshing machine came to life with pulleys and belts turning this way and that.

  Meanwhile the first load of oat bundles, stacked high on a wagon pulled by a team of Percheron horses, lumbered up to the machine.

  “Whoa,” the teamster said as he wound the harness lines around the ladder at the front of the wagon, grabbed up a three-tine fork, and motioned to the man on the tractor that he was ready to fork oak bundles into the machine.

  The speed of the tractor pulley increased, the threshing machine began shaking a bit, and the man on the wagon began pitching oat bundles, heads first, into the machine. Soon straw was flying out of the blower pipe, landing on the ground, where there would soon be a straw stack. Freshly threshed oat kernels came tumbling into a container on top of the machine that when filled would send a stream of kernels into grain bags attached to the bagging device that thrust out from one side of the machine. Volunteers soon began carrying filled bags of grain into the oat bins in Ambrose’s granary—winter feed for his horses and his small flock of chickens.

  The oat crop had been good this year. The threshing machine worked through several loads of bundles hauled from Ambrose’s oat field to the threshing machine. Everything was going well: the straw stack was growing in size, the oat bin in the grain bin was filling, and those watching were gaining an authentic look at what threshing from an earlier day, before grain combines came on the scene, looked like.

  Noah Drake, who had been working in the granary and had come outside for a breath of fresh air, saw it first. “What’s that coming out of the straw stack?” Noah asked.

 
“Looks like steam,” one of the bag carriers said.

  “That’s not steam,” the second carrier said. “That’s smoke. The straw stack is on fire.”

  “Turn off the machine,” the carrier man yelled to the man on the tractor. “The straw stack is on fire! The straw stack is on fire!” Someone called 911 to alert the Link Lake Fire Department as men scrambled to remove the drive belt connecting the tractor to the threshing machine. The tractor driver quickly turned the tractor around, and someone helped hitch it to the threshing machine so it could be pulled away from the now flaming straw that was threatening to engulf Ambrose’s nearby barn.

  Within ten minutes, a very long ten minutes for those watching the event unfurl, the Link Lake Volunteer Fire Department arrived and in another fifteen minutes the fire was out. More than half of the straw stack had been burned and that which wasn’t had been ruined by the water. The old former dairy barn had been saved; its only harm was some blistered paint from the heat of burning straw.

  Those who had been working on the threshing crew were muttering among themselves as to what might have started the fire. Someone suggested it probably had been a small stone in an oat bundle that caused a spark.

  People trailed off to their cars, thankful that no one was hurt and that the only damage was to a straw stack. Ambrose shook Fire Chief Henry Watkins’s hand when the fire was out.

  “Th . . . thank you,” said Ambrose. He had tears in his eyes. To lose his barn would be losing an important part of his family’s history. For Ambrose, and for most farmers of his generation, a barn meant much more than merely a structure to house animals and store feed.