George Webb was still chuckling when he walked into the Record-Herald office. It was nice to see Sam LeBlanc on the receiving end for once, and he hoped that Gil and Frank would be able to somehow pull off a win in the great grudge match Saturday evening.

He would have liked to go out and watch it, but he knew it was out of the question. Kathy would have a hernia if he even suggested it.

It was a Friday morning, and it looked like it would be a good weekend. The weather should be nice, and as long as he stayed away from the chili festival, things should go well. Fortunately, Kathy was a member of the North Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club, so there would be no pressure on him to go to the festival, but probably he should look in on it for a few minutes, just to get a flavor of the atmosphere.

This would be an easy day, he knew. He leafed through the mail, pitching two-thirds of it as usual, but even that was light. There was a letter from Donna Clark, castigating the city council, but thanking the Spearfish Lake State Savings Bank, Spearfish Lake Appliance Center, and the Spearfish Lake Super Market for their generous donation in paying for the cleanup after the festival.

Webb had to think hard about that letter. Obviously, Donna had written it Wednesday, but with her hospitalized since, did it still apply? Finally, he decided that it did, and put it in a pile for Carrie to typeset.

After a while, with the mail sorted, Webb started his rounds to distribute it around the office. There was a good stack for bookkeeping, several items for Virginia and Carrie, quite a bit for Kirsten, some stuff for the press room, and even a few items to direct to Mike.

Mike, Kirsten, Carrie, and Virginia were sitting around in the middle of the room, sipping coffee around a box of doughnuts when Webb finished his mail run. “Want a doughnut?” Virginia asked.

“Sure,” Webb said, grabbing one out of the box and sitting on the corner of the desk. “What’s the gossip this morning?”

“Donna Clark,” Virginia said. “It’s all over town.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. Well, we’ll still play it straight. There’s no point in our printing that she’s in the psych ward. What caused her to flip out, anyway?”

Virginia nodded. “Pretty much the same as last time. She saw the story about Frank’s hole in one and got mad, and Frank read her off for once, then took the family and headed for the club.”

“And Donna got so mad she couldn’t think straight,” Webb finished the statement. “I will say that Frank seems concerned about it, but he doesn’t seem to let it bother him.”

“You saw Frank? When?” Virginia asked.

“Over at breakfast. He and Gil came in together.”

Carrie nodded. “He and Gil decided to go to breakfast today. Frank’s going back out to the club to practice for the big game, tomorrow.”

“I almost think I’d like to see that,” Webb grinned. “Are you going to be there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Carrie said.

Kirsten smiled. “I’m going, too,” she said. “After the chili contest.”

“Well, that ought to be interesting,” Webb said. “OK, we’d better get our signals straight about tomorrow. “Mike,” he called, and the reporter looked up from his typewriter. “You’re going to cover the parade, at eleven, aren’t you?”

“You want photos of the parade?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Webb said. “I’d say, try to get a good picture of the color guard. The Legion kind of got pissed off at us since we didn’t get a good one of them at either Memorial Day or Independence Day.”

“Where’s a good location?”

“Try the Main four,” Webb told him. “From the south side, so the light’s on your side. The location is a little trite, but what the hell?”

“OK,” Mike said. “Then the contest?”

“Right, get over and get some photos of the chili cooking, and make sure you get recipes. Judging’s at two, but you know that. Try to get a picture of the winner, and a cute kid or a pretty girl or something. The band will be playing after the judging, while they’re serving up chili to the crowd, so try to get a picture of them, too. We’ll probably want three or four pictures, and we might want some on file for next year. Film’s cheap, so shoot plenty.”

“No problem,” Mike said.

“Look, stay loose. Have a beer or two, get into the swing of things. There’s no point in being real uptight about it. This stupid thing will either fly or it won’t.”

“It’ll beat sitting around watching a ball game.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Webb said. “I plan to be watching a ball game, although I may stick my nose in over at the festival during the seventh-inning stretch. Kirsten, you’re planning on being there too, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m planning on going out to the club after the judging.”

“OK, then. Try to help Mike where you can. The contestants are supposed to file the recipes with the woman’s club, but with Donna in the hospital, things will probably be screwed up.”

“They’ll probably go better,” Carrie said.

Webb grinned again. “That was a Matson talking, folks.”

“Right, we Matsons know what we’re talking about.”

The editor brushed her off. That could get sticky if he let it get too far. “Mike, Kirsten,” he said, “there’s one other thing.”

“What?”

“I’d advise both of you to take a full dose of antacid before you start to eat any chili. That way, you’ll be ready.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Mike said.

“I will treasure your opinion on that subject on Monday,” Webb replied. “Anyway, what else have we got on tap this weekend?”

“Not a heck of a lot,” Mike said. “Something’s bound to happen. County Commission meets Monday, so I suppose the Amboy Township bridge will be on the agenda. They want to get a new snowplow truck, too. Nothing real big, that I know of, but it’ll be a story.”

“Might want to keep your scanner on Saturday night,” Webb said.

“Anything coming up?” Mike said.

“No, just a feeling that something might happen. You could have people get drunked up at the beer tent at the chili festival, get carried away with the band, and wrap their pickup around a tree. Hell, you never know, on a Saturday night.”

“You want a story on the great grudge match?” Carrie asked.

“No, that’s a private affair,” Webb told her. “However, I would like to hear your version of it Monday morning. After today, I know for sure that what I’ll hear over at Rick’s won’t bear any relationship to the truth.”

After a second doughnut and a cup of coffee, Webb headed back to his office, and the staff returned to work. Frankly, things were pretty quiet, and Mike messed around a while, trying to look busy and not succeeding very well. Finally, he got up and went into Webb’s office. “You got anything around here for me this afternoon?” he asked.

“What to take some time off?” the editor asked.

“No,” Mike said. “I thought I’d hop in the car and run over to Warsaw and Hoselton, just to nose around and see what I find.”

“Yeah, hell, go ahead,” Webb said, understanding Mike perfectly. A drive to Warsaw, maybe a stop at the pizza joint, a couple of beers along the way, and possibly some kind of a feature story to dig out. Slow Friday afternoons were like that; sometimes, they were worth the effort.

“I’ll get back oh, three or four, if you need me,” Mike told him.

“Have fun,” the editor said, envying the young reporter his afternoon of screwing off. Mike grabbed a camera and was out of the front door in seconds, in case Webb changed his mind.

George watched him go, and realized that Mike didn’t have a bad idea. If he left now, he and Kathy could drive down to Camden, have a good meal, and catch an afternoon movie and go shopping, and still be back to Spearfish Lake at a decent hour. There wasn’t that much to do here, and there weren’t many nice summer days left.

Finally, he got up from his chair, cleaned off his desk, and walked out into the hot part of the office. “Carrie, can you and Virginia watch the shop if something happens?” he asked.

“Sure, no problem,” Carrie said, reading him as perfectly as he had read Mike.

“I think I’ll sneak out of here this afternoon,” he said. “With Mike gone, you and Virginia keep an ear on the scanner, in case there’s a fire or a P.I. or something.”

“No problem, George,” Virginia said. “You and Kathy have a good afternoon.”

Mike’s car didn’t have air conditioning, so he kept the windows rolled down as he drove down County Road 351 past the summer cottages on the northwest arm of Spearfish Lake. He wasn’t driving fast, and he kept one eye out, studying the lake between the cottages. Occasionally, he could catch a glimpse of a girl in a swimsuit very occasionally, a bikini, and the mental image from last weekend of Kirsten in a bikini came to him again. How nice it would be to have her arms around him! He hadn’t really realized how lonely he had been in his first weeks at Spearfish Lake. It would have been so much easier if he had someone to share his days with, to bring home stories from the office, someone to love. Kirsten, maybe, but someone.

It did not make it easier being an outsider; everyone else at the office had their friends, and they knew everybody and everything. Half the stories they told around the office made no sense, because he didn’t know the people involved, and everybody else did. It would have been nice to be back in college, where he knew people and had friends.

Mike knew that those kinds of thoughts could only lead to him getting very depressed, so he forced himself to think of something else, and the obvious topic was the Matson-Clark thing.

Virginia had let something slip that morning, inadvertently, and it had immediately struck Mike as a possible key to the situation. So Donna Clark resented Frank Matson going out to the West Turtle Lake Club? Everybody must have known that she did, and that’s why Webb had made a big deal about the story of the hole in one. Naturally, that was one of those things that everyone knew, except him.

Mike had been mulling over the question for an hour before he got Webb’s permission to take off, and he mulled it again as he rounded the broad curve around the north end of the lake and headed west, and shortly came onto the intersection for County Road 919.

Curious, he headed down 919 for a ways, over the D&O tracks past the bait shop, and a mile or so past East Turtle Lake. All of a sudden, there was an intersection with a lesser road, still gravel; on a tree, there was a small sign, with an arrow, that read “WTLC ?”. Mike turned down the road, a mile, then more.

All of a sudden, to his right, a well-graded road led off to the south. Mike slowed and looked: fifty yards down the road was a closed gate, made of brick and iron grillwork. Woven into the grillwork in the arch over the road were the words, “West Turtle Lake Club”. Just short of the gate, Mike could see where the road split around a post in the middle of the road, and he understood its purpose: it was a box to operate the gate remotely, from a key in the lock at the box. He had seen similar key boxes at parking lots, but it confirmed his suspicions that the place was rather exclusive.

Mike thought for a moment about snooping his way through the woods to get a better idea of what was happening, but instantly decided against it. He really wasn’t dressed for it, and the low, second-growth brush land would not be fun to try to walk through. He thought for a moment; he didn’t have time today, but perhaps Sunday, he could hike a mile or two down the D&O tracks and scope the place out from across the lake with his binoculars.

But that wouldn’t really be necessary he realized as he turned his car around in the mouth of the driveway. He was fairly satisfied with his conclusion. From what he could make out, it was some kind of a ritzy, schmintzy resort, with a helluva golf course. Some kind of a super country club, with a flair for privacy. He couldn’t think of any other explanation as he headed back out to 919, drove down it to 351, and continued his trip to Warsaw.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 20, 1975

Letters to the Editor

THANKS TO BUSINESSMEN

Dear Editor:

I wish to extend my thanks to some members of the Spearfish Lake business community who care about our city enough to help out when the Spearfish Lake City Council was too short sighted to care for the community they profess to serve.

My thanks, and the thanks of the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club, go to the Spearfish Lake State Savings Bank, Spearfish Lake Appliance, and Spearfish Lake Super Market for their concern over making the community a better place to live, with their generous donations to help clean up after the Chili Festival.

The community needs more upstanding businessmen like these, businessmen who are interested in what they can make of the community, rather than what they can take out of it.

Our thanks, gentlemen, for making Spearfish Lake a better place to live.

Very Sincerely

Mrs. Wayne Clark

As he drove through the swampy area around the north end of Spearfish Lake, Mike wondered why Donna Clark would resent the West Turtle Lake Club, and because the place obviously reeked of money and privacy and class, he jumped to what he thought was an indisputable conclusion.

There was, however, a fly in ointment, and Mike knew it: Carrie.

It wasn’t hard to explain it away. There she was, working next to him each day, tanned and pretty, but working. If she was loaded enough to belong to an exclusive private club, why would she be working, unless maybe she were bored? Gil, running the appliance store, also kind of fell into the same category. But, Mike knew, they were both workers, not the kind of people to spend time sitting around on their asses. Carrie could have a lot of money, too; her dad was the bank president, and there had been money in the family for a long time, so who knew what kind of inheritance she might have had, how rich she might be?

Then, too, the club was started by her father. Frank’s father, too. Could that be it? A ritzy, rich, exclusive private club, started by Garth Matson, with the specific purpose of excluding Donna and Wayne Clark, but welcoming her son? Of course, she’d be jealous. It would explain all her social and community activities over the years, possibly; she wasn’t exactly hurting for money, and she’d want to put Garth and the West Turtle Lake Club members in their place. Over the years, she would accumulate friends and allies.

You take a custody battle that got out of hand, Mike thought, and that would make a real lifelong feud. And it would explain a lot of the other things he’d picked up.

But how did the business about the hole-in-one story coming out of Frank Matson’s typewriter fit in? It certainly had something to do with Donna going off her nut. Garth Matson was reputed to be a sneaky old cuss. Could he have written it up on Frank’s typewriter? If he did, why did he? Or did Frank do it himself? If he did, what purpose could it have? Whoever wrote it had the intention of lighting Donna’s fuse, that was certain. From what Mike had heard, Garth would have done it for spite, while it would be an obvious pain in the butt for Frank. The circumstantial evidence favored Garth, but not all the way.

It also settled something in his mind about Kirsten. He knew she wasn’t a member of the club, but was a frequent guest of Carrie’s. She must really get a thrill out of hanging around all the money types, he realized. He suspected that she would be very happy to score on one of them, which explained why she was always brushing him off: she had her sights set on higher things, despite the story that Carrie had told him about Henry Toivo. Possibly Carrie had told him about that just to let him down easy, although he had checked out the Toivo story in the clip file, and it jibed with what she had told him, as far as the clip file went.

In his head, he went back over what he knew about the Garth Matson-Donna Clark story. The pieces seemed to make sense. He couldn’t think of a way to find out for sure that Wayne and Donna Clark had been blackballed from the West Turtle Lake Club, and it would have to have happened twenty-five or thirty years ago, anyway. He’d have to gloss over that detail, but in his head, the way to write his story for George Webb began to take shape.

If Mike could have seen through the brush about three quarters of a mile to the southwest of where he turned around at the gate of the West Turtle Lake Club, he might have seen Frank Matson, although he still would have been no wiser. Frank was out on the golf course, fully dressed and wearing a floppy straw hat, strictly for protection from the midday sun; he hadn’t built up a West Turtle Lake Club all-over tan, and despite the available sunscreens, it was no time to risk an all-over sunburn.

Although Frank was alone, he had his golf clubs and a bucket of golf balls, trying to work out the approach to the fifth green, something that he had never gotten right.

He was trying to keep from overdoing it and getting muscle aches, but even last night, a clear mind and the practice of the day before had cleaned his game up considerably, as had a couple of hours with Gil at the driving range in Albany River just after breakfast.

However, if Mike had been able to check out the same sight ten minutes later, he would have reached some considerably different conclusions when he saw how Garth Matson was dressed when he drove a tractor pulling a gang mower up to Frank. “How’s it going?” the older man asked.

“This damn dog-leg,” Frank said. “It seems like no matter where I place the ball, I can’t quite get my distance right to make the fairway to the green.”

“Let’s see,” Garth said. Frank teed up a ball, and hit it fairly straight down the left side of the fairway, but it rolled to a stop short of the dogleg.

“See what I mean,” Frank said. “It’ll take a chip shot to get out where I can drive for the green, and that’s a stroke down the tube.”

“You don’t want to try to cut that corner tight,” his father said, “or, that’s exactly what’s going to happen. If you’re over on the right side of the fairway, you can get on in two, if you’re lucky.”

“Yeah,” Frank said, “but every time I try to hit something over there, it heads for the woods.”

“You don’t want to get too close to the right,” Garth admitted, “but try to stay right of center. Even if you wind up in the center of the fairway and short of the dogleg, you can take about a six iron to get over the trees and still be pretty close to the green.”

Frank nodded. “Hadn’t thought of that.”

“Why don’t you go out and pick up some balls, while I mow this hole?” Garth said. “Tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to leave the grass long over on the right side of the fairway, especially farther down, and I’ll cut it short on the left. That way, if LeBlanc rolls a little long, he’ll go off into the woods, but if you play it to the right, the ball will die on you.”

Frank shook his head. “How many holes are you going to trick up that way?”

“As many as I can,” Garth said. “Some just don’t respond to tricks too well. After Gil gets out here this afternoon, I’ll play a round with you two, and show you how it’s tricked up, although I won’t get them all done till tomorrow.”

“You know,” Frank said, “I think I begin to understand why you are harder than hell to beat on this golf course.”

“Son,” Garth smiled, “if I hadn’t been a banker, I’d have made a hell of a groundskeeper.”

George Webb was right, Mike soon found out. The pizza at the little pizza joint in Warsaw was some of the best he’d ever tasted. If he ever got Kirsten to go out with him on a real date, maybe he’d have to bring her over here. The ice-cold beer he had with it on this hot day made it perfect.

Actually, the trip had worked out real well. He had stopped in Hoselton when he saw the door of the old fire barn open and found fire chief Wally Borck and his son Clint trying to tar up a leak on the bottom of the fire department’s old tanker, utilizing as much cussing as tar, and neither one nor both together providing any success. Between curses, Mike had come to understand that the village council was a bunch of cheapskates, and if they wanted to avoid having to build a new fire barn, they’d better be thinking about burping up the cash for a new tanker. Mike made a mental note to attend the Hoselton Village Council meeting Monday evening, or if he couldn’t make it at least to make a phone call on Tuesday to find out what had happened.

By the time he got to Warsaw, though, he was again preoccupied with the Matson-Clark story. He kept turning it over in his mind, trying it out from different angles as he sat and ate his pizza. There were a few little things that didn’t quite add up, although they made a lot of sense by themselves, and better information would probably clarify them. However, he didn’t see how he could settle some of them without talking to Donna Clark or Garth Matson or Virginia Meyers. He had hoped to get a chance to talk with Donna Thursday after she had seen the paper, when she might have been disposed to be nice to him after his mention of getting someone to help clean up after the chili festival, but her accident, and its aftermath ruled that out.

Like the way she kept calling the West Turtle Lake Club “immoral.” Though Mike knew that Donna had money, he’d never seen her as the type of person to show it off. Possibly throwing money around, like having an expensive club membership, might seem to her as a flaunting of wealth, and that might insult her sense of dignity. Then, too, she was big in the Methodist Church. Back down in Overland Heights, the suburb where Mike grew up, the Ladies of the Methodist Church had been a hotbed of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and there was no reason to doubt that things might not be the same at Spearfish Lake First Methodist Church. That might indicate the West Turtle Lake Club might have a reputation for some serious boozing.

Even so, the theory seemed to fit the whole pattern. Now, he was going to have to write it up, fairly briefly, but still vague enough that any minor errors would be covered up in the fuzz.

Mike finished his beer and his pizza, then got in his car and drove back towards Spearfish Lake. It was not a short drive, but the story developed in his mind most of the way. As he passed the corner for County Road 919, he again thought about taking a hike up the D&O tracks with his binoculars, but decided against it. There wasn’t enough time left, today, and he wanted to get the story done and out of his hair, right or wrong. Besides, who knew? Maybe Carrie would invite him out there some day; he could scope the place out then.

Only Virginia and Kirsten were in the office when Mike got back, his head full of the story he wanted to write. “How are things in Warsaw?” Kirsten asked.

“About the same as last time, as near as I can figure out,” Mike said. “Good story brewing in Hoselton, though.”

“Is Wally Borck going to take another run at getting a new tanker?” Virginia asked.

“It looks like it’s either that or a new fire barn,” Mike said, pleased that he had at least beaten Virginia to the question, if not to the story.

“He’s been trying for a new tanker for about ten years,” Virginia said. “I think he’s to the point where he really needs it.”

“Did you check out Millie’s Pizza in Warsaw?” Kirsten asked.

Mike nodded. “They make a righteous pizza,” he said. “Best one I’ve had in a while.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been out there for one,” Kirsten said. “I don’t see how we can do it this weekend, but maybe next week, we can run out there some evening.”

“I’m ready when you are,” Mike said, surprised that Kirsten would show some interest in him without his pushing and prodding every inch of the way.

“Maybe Wednesday,” Kirsten said. “Look, since you’re back, I’m going to get out of here. I’ve got a lot to do before tomorrow.”

Mike wanted to know if she was going out to the West Turtle Lake Club again but decided it was better not to ask.

“Well, have a good time,” Mike said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. You coming to the parade?”

“Maybe,” Kirsten said, pausing at the door. “I do want to poke around while they’re making the chili, though. I got us a bottle of Mylanta, by the way.”

“I hope we don’t need it,” Mike said as she left.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 27, 1975

HOSELTON FIREMEN TO HOST SPAGHETTI SUPPER

by Mike McMahon
Record-Herald Staff

The Hoselton Volunteer Fire Department will host a spaghetti supper at the Hoselton Methodist Church on Friday, August 29, in order to start to raise funds for a new tanker for the fire department.

“I don’t care whether the village council thinks we need a new tanker or not,” Fire Chief Wally Borck said, following the decision of the council to not advance funds to the department’s equipment replacement fund to replace the ancient tanker the department is currently using. “If they don’t want to come up with the money, we’ll just have to raise it where we can.”

The Spaghetti Supper is intended to be just the first of several the department plans over the coming months, in order to raise a $20,000 war chest to put toward the purchase of a new vehicle, to replace the 1951 model truck, which leaks water badly. “Our purpose is to give the community the best fire protection we can,” Borck said, “Whether the people on council think they want it or not.”

Tickets for the Spaghetti Supper are $5.00 for adults, and $2.50 for children. They will be available at the door, Borck said.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.