The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County: A Novel

3. Emily Higgins

10 Emily Higgins 3 Emily Higgins had presided over the Link Lake Historical Society, the oldest organization in the Village of Link Lake, for so many years that people couldn’t remember when she was first elected. Higgins was a short, thin, white-haired woman in her mid-eighties, with a voice that carried to the far corners of any room where she spoke, no matter how large the room. One thing people liked or disliked about Emily Higgins was that she was a supporter of local history and the preservation of Link Lake’s historic structures. She never wavered, no matter how much pressure she received from those who opposed her position and accused her of standing in the way of Link Lake’s economic progress. Emily Higgins knew what she believed, and she wasn’t at all shy about sharing those beliefs with others—especially when the discussion turned to local history. Most people in Link Lake remembered when Emily Higgins took on the then newly formed Link Lake Economic Development Council five years earlier. The council, with Marilyn Jones at the helm, had convinced the Big R fast food chain to open one of its restaurants in Link Lake. Prior to that time, the only eating establishments in the village were the Eat Well Café and the Link Lake Supper Club. A fast food restaurant seemed a good fit, especially since the village was trying to attract more summer visitors to the area. Both the Economic Development Council and the Big R siting representative had agreed that an excellent place for a Big R establishment would be the abandoned Chicago and Northwestern depot site. The trains had stopped running in the 1980s; the tracks had been torn up and a bike trail had been established—quite a popular one, too. The Big R people 11 Emily Higgins and the Economic Development Council both agreed that the old depot, badly in need of repair, should be torn down to make way for a new Big R restaurant. Of course, no one had bothered to let Emily Higgins and the Link Lake Historical Society know about what the Economic Development Council and Big R were cooking up, and Emily didn’t know a thing about it until an article appeared in the Ames County Argus announcing the potential arrival of Big R to Link Lake and the razing of the old depot. When she saw the article, Emily immediately called an emergency meeting of the historical society, and soon Marilyn Jones discovered that the Link Lake Historical Society was not near as irrelevant as she thought it was. At the Economic Development Council’s next meeting, which was supposed to be a celebration of the decision to bring a new business and new jobs to the community, everything hit the fan. The entire historical society membership, all forty of them, were in the audience, plus another twenty-five people who sometimes attended historical society meetings but never took the time or had the inclination to become members of the organization. Marilyn Jones and the mayor knew something was up when they saw all those “old-timers,” as Marilyn referred to them, in the audience at the community room at the Link Lake Library. She had no more than begun her opening remarks when Emily Higgins’s hand shot up. When Marilyn refused to recognize her, Emily asked in her loud voice, “Is this deal with Big R final?” “Miss Higgins, I believe you are out of order and that I have the floor,” Marilyn replied. “You may have the floor, Miss Jones, but as you know, I represent the Link Lake Historical Society and you haven’t once bothered to let our organization know about this proposal to bring a new restaurant to town and to locate it on the site of the old railroad depot, so my question deserves an honest answer.” “Well, Miss Higgins,” Marilyn Jones said, smiling. “I thought your group had better things to do than worry about a dilapidated railroad depot. We didn’t want to bother you with this rather minor undertaking.” 12 Emily Higgins “Not bother us? Not bother us?” Emily said with an even louder voice. “I understand the plans are to tear down the depot for this new fast food place.” “Well, yes that’s likely to happen. The Big R group prefers to put up new buildings...