“You know how to make a person of the black persuasion nervous?” LeBlanc smirked.

“No,” someone around the breakfast table at Rick’s said.

“Take him to an auction,” LeBlanc replied.

Bud Ellsberg groaned to himself. LeBlanc’s ethnic jokes had long since lost a lot of their humor, and he wasn’t in a very good mood, anyway. He had been up to all hours Saturday night and all day and half the night Sunday cleaning up the mess at the Spearfish Lake Super Market, and he wasn’t done yet. He shouldn’t have bothered coming to breakfast this morning, except for the fact that he was sick of the damn place.

Frank Matson came in and sat down across from Bud. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“You don’t want to know,” Ellsberg replied.

“Heard you got kind of a mess over at the store.”

“Got a sprinkler salesman I’m going to string up by the nuts,” Bud said. “I’ve got to give the guy credit, if a fire had started, the system would have put it out, but hell, it would have been easier to clean up from a fire.”

“What happened, anyway?”

“Sensor in the system went bad and touched off the full response. It should have only touched off that sector, but for some reason it dumped on the whole store. About half the stock is ruined; virtually anything in a cardboard box has to go to the dump. Most of the stuff in cans is OK, but unless it was back on the shelves, the labels have come off. Guess we’re going to have a white elephant sale.”

“I tore the system down a little,” Harry Masterfield added. “The sensor was never good; God knows why it hadn’t gone off before. And the sector box was wired up wrong.”

“There’s only one good thing about it I can see, Frank,” Ellsberg stated.

“What’s that?” Matson asked.

“We got a shipment of Thai hot peppers in Friday for the chili contest. The flood gave me an excuse to shit can ’em.”

“You’re right,” the banker agreed. “That is good news. Have you seen a lawyer yet?”

“Yeah, you betcha,” Ellsberg replied. “I am going to have some young buck’s ass over that. Insurance will cover it, and with that store, I’ve got to have good insurance.”

“You haven’t exactly had a lot of luck with that place,” Matson commented. “The tornado a few years ago, and those fires, and now this.”

“The fires were before I took it over,” Ellsberg said, “but that place is a jinx. I think I’m going to get the hell out of the damn grocery business, as soon as I can think of something else to do. Life’s too short to work that many hours and get bitched at that much, anyway.”

Matson remembered his conversation with his father Friday evening. “You get things back under control,” he told Ellsberg, “Then drop over and see me sometime. I’ve got an idea I want to kick around with you.”

“What we talked about last week?” Ellsberg asked, seeming interested.

“Sorta,” Frank replied, not wanting to let the cat out of the bag around the breakfast table.

“I’ll make time,” the grocer said, then asked, “So how did your weekend go?”

“Better than yours, I think,” Matson replied. “Played a little golf, had a little better luck than I usually have.”

Next to Ellsberg, Gil Evachevski covered his smile with his coffee cup, but didn’t say anything. Even though he hadn’t seen Frank over the weekend, he was as sure as he could be that Frank was bursting to tell the story of his hole in one Friday night, but he didn’t dare for fear his mother would find out that he’d been out at the West Turtle Lake Club. Gil was also dead sure that the story was bound to get out sometime, but he didn’t want to be the one to put Frank on the spot. With Donna Clark for a mother, he had it tough enough as it was.

Fortunately, Harold Hekkinan changed the subject before Gil could break out laughing. “Your oldest kid’s about ready to go out for football, isn’t he, Gil?”

“Yeah,” Gil replied, glad of the diversion, for Frank’s sake. “He’ll be on the seventh grade team this year. He’s fast, got good hands. He’s not going to be as big as his daddy, I think, but he’s going to be faster.”

“I’ll be waiting for him, in two or three years,” the football coach said. “They play the game quicker today than they did in our day. They’d never have made you a back today. They’d have you right down there in the pit.”

“God, seventh grade football,” Bud said, relieved to think of something besides the mess at the store. “Doesn’t that take you back? God, I remember the first touchdown I ever made in a real game, back when we blanked Albany River, back in 1952, I guess. Remember that, Frank?”

“I’ll never forget it,” Frank said. “Best day I ever had in school sports. It was like the third game that we played, but it was the first one my dad ever came to. I remember he brought Carrie with him, and the two of them sat up in the stands cheering, and I was so happy I wanted to make him proud of me. He never missed a game after that, and I always wanted to make him proud of me.”

“Gil, you were in the army then,” Hekkinan said, “but Frank here used to have an arm on him you wouldn’t believe.”

“Yeah,” Bud added. “That touchdown, Frank flipped a lateral clear across the field and back about ten yards to me. I don’t think there was anybody from Albany River within thirty yards of me. I could have walked across the goal line.”

“It’s strange how we remember things like that,” Hekkinan said. “Seventh grade game, more than twenty years ago now. ’Course, I remember it because it was the first touchdown I ever got in a real game, too.”

“If you guys were so good, then what happened when you got to high school?”

“We were pretty damn good when we were in high school,” Masterfield said. “I was a senior, I think, when these guys were sophomores. We only got beaten once, and the Zebras stole it from us.”

“We only lost five games in the three years that Bud and Frank and I were on varsity,” Hekkinan told Gil. “Not quite as good as you guys were, but pretty damn good. I wouldn’t mind having the kind of talent we had then on the team this year, although we ought to do pretty good.”

“What do you hear about the Szczerowski kid?” Masterfield asked. “He gonna be able to throw the long ball?”

“Ain’t his arm that’s the problem,” Hekkinan said. “It’s his head. He’s so pussywhipped he don’t know whether to shit or go blind. If he don’t get it screwed on, I got Mike Johansen’s youngest kid on the JV team I’ll bring up. Kid’s not real fast, but he can throw the ball. He’ll be OK when he gets some seasoning and maybe a little more size, but I’d just as soon he played JVs this year.”

“Mike wasn’t real fast,” Gil replied, “but, God, he could throw that ball.”

“Like I said,” the coach responded, “they play the game a lot quicker today.”

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, August 13, 1975

(Advertisement)

WHITE ELEPHANT FLOOD SALE

Our loss is your gain!
We’ve got several thousand cans
that lost their labels in our
fire sprinkler accident Saturday.
What’s in them?
Your guess is as good as ours!
Find out for a nickel a can,
while they last.

SPEARFISH LAKE SUPER MARKET
1128 West Main St., Spearfish Lake
“Your Friendly Store”

Garth Matson’s hunch about his eldest daughter’s marriage turned out to be right on the mark; in fact, the marriage lasted all of eleven days before Barbara caught her husband in bed with another man. The marriage was annulled without too much difficulty, and she went back to school as if nothing had happened.

But something had happened, something irreversible in her life. Although she didn’t get married again until she was out of college, she didn’t have much luck with married life, and just perhaps her poor taste in men had something to do with it.

The breakdown of Barbara’s marriage did not break down Garth’s decision of that fall day. Though it was repeatedly necessary for him to slap Donna down on occasion over the following years, he always did it from a defensive viewpoint, with a reluctance to do more than necessary; never again did he try to hurt Donna for the pure joy of watching her squirm.

In fact, the feud did die down to a simmer over the next couple of years, since Garth was not holding up his part of it, and some things began to sort themselves out. The two ladies who had been unceremoniously booted from the Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club got together with a few other women who had squared off with Donna over the years, and together they started the North Spearfish Lake Woman’s Club, and for many years, the two clubs tried to outdo each other in good works without having anything to do with the other.

Donna, of course, continued her policy of trying to savage her ex-husband at every opportunity, but over the years, the opportunities only came rarely.

But they did come once in a while, such as in 1954, when the new local sheriff was trying to make a name for himself, and urged on by the Methodist minister (and Donna) he made a raid on the West Turtle Lake Club.

In those days, the legality of the avocations of the members of the West Turtle Lake Club had not yet been thoroughly settled, but since the land was privately owned and out of public view, there was some question about how illegal it was, too. The Colonel for several years had had a quiet agreement about the club with the former sheriff, Matti Hekkinan, but the new sheriff was neither very bright, nor very understanding. The Colonel and Helga had realized that there was a possibility of such trouble, and had prepared a legal battle plan to defend their activities.

What actually happened turned out to be even better in the long run than Matson had anticipated.

Things began when the Methodist minister, also none too bright about the lay of the landscape around Spearfish Lake, made the mistake of boasting to his church board that the sheriff was planning a raid on the West Turtle Lake Club. One of the church board members was Heikki Toivo.

Toivo, already on the Amboy Township board, knew that the next step would be raiding saunas, and while, as a Methodist, he wasn’t sure how he stood on the West Turtle Lake Club, he was also a good Finn who didn’t want his Saturday night sweat with his family interrupted by armed deputies.

The raid came at two o’clock on a Saturday afternoon in July. Three patrol cars drove out to the club, and the sheriff used bolt cutters to cut the chain that held the gates closed; then, the three drove up the long driveway to a point in sight of the clubhouse, where they came to a second chained gate.

Again, the sheriff hopped out of the car with the bolt cutters in hand, to be met by three men, none of whom he recognized, and all of them wearing suits and ties. “What are you doing?” one of them, an elderly, distinguished-looking gentleman, asked.

“Gonna settle this once and for all,” the sheriff said.

“Can we see your warrant?” one of the suited men said.

“Warrant? Don’t need no warrant.”

“Yes, you do,” the man said. “That’s a piece of paper signed by a judge that gives you the right to come onto private property.”

“I said I don’t need no warrant,” the sheriff insisted.

“‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.’ that’s tie fourth amendment to the Constitution, young man.”

“Just who the hell do you think you are?” the sheriff said, reaching for his nightstick. “Get outta my way.”

“I am, young man, Justice James J. O’Connell of the State Supreme Court, and if you cannot produce a warrant in about five seconds, you are going to be in a world of shit.”

The raid was a failure. Not merely a plain failure but a total, abysmal one. Not only did the sheriff fail to find anything illegal happening at the club, or even any naked people, he failed to produce a warrant; he had, in fact, overlooked getting one when dazzled with the possibility of a spectacular bust.

Lacking a warrant was sheer stupidity on his part, but even if he’d had one, he would have found no naked people. The Colonel believed in “defense in depth.” It was the first (and only) time that there was a “Clothing Required” day at the club. Besides, the special policy for the day was as much to spare the sensibilities of the judge, who was no nudist but was doing a favor for an old family friend, as well as for the two Camden attorneys he had brought with him.

The sheriff tried to cover it up, but the Colonel had decided that the time had come to end any possibility of further harassment from that sector, and the failure to produce a warrant was the perfect weapon, especially when the entire incident at the second gate (built the day before) was recorded on sound movie film from a hidden camera. That made the sheriff, not the club, the issue, although the message was the same.

When the county board of commissioners failed to agree to provide the legal fees for his defense, knowing that the Colonel was willing to hire as many lawyers as needed, the sheriff was presented with two alternatives: leave town or go to jail himself. He chose the prudent course, turned in his resignation, left town, and was never heard from again.

A rather sharp young veteran of “D” Battery was named to fill out his term, over other, more experienced lawmen, and, with a well-funded campaign, landed the job that he was to hold until his retirement, many years later. After that episode, no one ever tried again to persuade a judge or a lawman that a raid on the West Turtle Lake Club would be a good idea.

It took some time to settle accounts with some of the more hard-headed of the Methodist church, but when the dust finally settled, all but the most recalcitrant had finally gotten the message: Live and let live, unless you want more trouble than you make.

Spearfish Lake Record-Herald, April 17, 1955

SHERIFF RESIGNS POST

Sheriff Anthony Herman turned in his resignation to the Spearfish Lake County Board of Commissioners Tuesday evening.

Sheriff Herman had been embroiled in charges stemming from an allegedly illegal police raid on a private club last summer. “Under the circumstances, I do not feel that I can continue to serve the citizens of the county in an adequate manner,” he said.

Herman did not announce his plans.

Board member Howard Meyers said of the affair, “This has been an unfortunate incident and I hope we do not have to go through something like it again.”

The board named deputy Pat Berlin to fill the sheriff’s post until a special election can be held.

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