The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County (21 page)

T
he following Saturday, cars were lined up a half mile 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
.

W
e 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.

35

A
lazy summer sun slowly climbed above the horizon, making the waters of Link Lake sparkle. The sun awakened Karl Adams from a deep sleep. When Karl worried about something he didn't sleep well—and when he started on a new job by a mining company, sleeping was especially difficult. The first couple weeks he was in Link Lake the pro and con factions about the new sand mine coming to town had declared war on each other. He had to figure out how to smooth things over and so far he was making progress.

Karl had years of experience working with divided communities when a new mine came to town. As he sat on his patio, looking out over the lake, he felt good. He knew that with some of Alstage Sand Mining Company's monetary help, he had come a long way in taking people's minds off the sand mine through the various community activities held over the past couple months. People were smiling again, even laughing.

He climbed in his car and drove to Increase Joseph Community Park. Emerson Evans had informed him that morning that one of their new, highly sophisticated drilling machines (“It cost us more than a million dollars”) had been delivered to the site yesterday. “They had a little trouble bringing the machine through the narrow entrance, where that old oak stands in the way,” Evans told him, “but they made it okay. Next week we'll begin some test drilling so we know exactly what kind of sand we've got, and how difficult it will be to get at it.” Evans had also asked if any problems were brewing, protests, that sort of thing.

Karl had replied, “Everything is cool here. Nice bunch of folks. I anticipate no difficulties.”

Karl had a bad feeling, though, when he drove by the park's entrance and saw not a half-dozen protesters marching, which had been the earlier case, but at least twice that many, maybe more, walking back and forth carrying Stop the Sand Mine signs. He didn't stop to confront them, but he guessed they were out-of-town agitators who enjoyed getting in the way of a community's progress.

He drove past the village hall, where the big sign showing the exact location of the sand mine had been posted for several weeks. This morning he noticed a big red circle around the mine site with a line through it and the words “No Mine” scrawled on the bottom of the map.

Karl stopped at the Eat Well Café for breakfast and noticed the place was all abuzz. Others had seen the protestors as well and wondered what it meant. Someone said, “I saw a huge semi delivering a fancy machine at the park yesterday.”

“Must be they're gonna start mining any day now,” someone else said.

“Nope, they're not supposed to start until October.”

“Wonder who them protestors are? Where they came from?” the first person asked.

Beyond talking about the protestors at the park, he also overhead a couple of fellows who were quite livid that someone had “messed up” the mining map, as people referred to it.

“Police ought to arrest whoever did that and throw the book at 'em. We don't do things this way in Link Lake. We don't run around spray paintin' things we don't like.”