Well, howdy there, folks. It’s your old pal Glenn Blamstead here, mustache twitching like a divining rod over a dry well, ready to spin another yarn from the frost-kissed fringes of Minnesota’s backwoods. If you’ve been keeping tabs on my escapades—those glorious trainwrecks of wit and wisdom—you know I ain’t one to shy away from a good groaner. Last time we jawed, I was knee-deep in a pie-eating fiasco at the Mora Muskrat Festival, where assertiveness training met a face full of rhubarb and came out looking like a defeated walleye. But today? Oh, today we’re fencing in some fresh folly. You see, I’ve got this beef with picketing. Not the sign-waving, chant-shouting kind—though Lord knows I’ve dodged my share of those at county fairs—but the wooden slat variety that folks slap up to keep the neighbor’s goats from turning your lawn into a salad bar. I’m dead set against ’em, see. Problem is, I don’t rightly know how to show it without looking like the village idiot hammering in the very posts I’m protesting. Gather ’round the campfire of calamity, dear readers, ’cause this tale’s got more twists than a bobcat in a burlap sack.
The Fence That Started It All
It all kicked off on a crisp October morn in Ogilvie, that speck-on-the-map burg just a stone’s throw west of Mora—close enough to smell the lumber mills but far enough to pretend you’re in a different time zone. I’d moseyed over there for what the locals call the “Ogilvie Fence-Off,” a half-baked shindig where grown men in flannel argue over picket styles like they’re debating the fate of the republic. Me? I was there under duress, roped in by my cousin Earl, who fancies himself a fence whisperer. “Glenn,” he says, jabbing a callused finger at my chest, “you build pole barns for a living. Fences are just barns without roofs. C’mon, show these rubes how it’s done.”
Now, don’t get me wrong—pole barns are my bread and butter, those sturdy sentinels of steel and wood that stand tall against Minnesota’s mean winters like a bad attitude at a potluck. But fences? They’re the flaky in-laws of the construction world: pretty from afar, but up close, they’re all splinters and spite. Earl had me demonstrating a “hybrid picket-post” setup, which sounded fancy until you realized it was just telephone poles lashed together with baling wire and prayers. The crowd—a motley crew of farmers in seed caps and one lady with a chicken on her shoulder—gathered ’round as I hefted the first slat. “Folks,” I boomed, channeling my inner auctioneer, “this here’s the future of boundary-keeping. No more sagging lines or critter incursions. It’s picketing with pride!”
Mrs. Hargrove’s Quiet Revolt
That’s when the mustache betrayed me. It always does when I’m fibbing. A gust off the Snake River whipped through, and wouldn’t you know it, the slat I was nailing popped free like a champagne cork at a teetotaler’s wake. It sailed straight into old Mrs. Hargrove’s prize pumpkin, turning it into a vegetal piñata. Orange guts everywhere. The crowd gasped, then chuckled, and I? I stood there, hammer mid-swing, feeling like the architect of Armageddon. Earl slapped my back hard enough to jar my fillings. “Smooth, Glenn. Real smooth. Now you’ve gone and fenced yourself in with the town crank.”
Mrs. Hargrove, bless her, didn’t yell. She just fixed me with eyes like chipped flint and muttered, “Young man, if that’s your idea of progress, I’ll stick to my gooseberry bushes.” Turns out, she was leading a quiet revolt against the whole Fence-Off notion. See, Ogilvie’s got this ordinance from back in the ’70s—some holdover from when hippies thought barbed wire was fascist—that mandates picket fences for all new builds. But Hargrove and her posse? They reckon it’s a racket cooked up by the lumber yard to line pockets thicker than my winter coat. “We’re picketing the pickets!” she declared, and just like that, I was drafted into the fray. Me, the guy who’d just demolished her produce with a wayward board.
Protests and Pumpkin Pies
By noon, the Fence-Off had morphed into a full-blown kerfuffle. Signs sprouted like mushrooms after a rain: “Pickets Out—Privacy In!” and “Fences Make Bad Neighbors!” Hargrove’s crew—mostly retirees with time on their hands and grudges in their hearts—marched in a lopsided circle outside the community hall, chanting with the enthusiasm of cats at a bath. I, fool that I am, got stuck holding the banner: a bedsheet spray-painted with “Down with the Slats!” in what looked suspiciously like kids’ finger paint. Earl, that traitor, had vanished to “fetch reinforcements,” which I later learned meant nursing a beer at the VFW.
Standing there, wind whipping the sheet into my face like a ghost auditioning for a horror flick, I couldn’t help but ponder the irony. Here I was, Glenn Blamstead, pole barn patriarch of the north woods, protesting the very things that keep my livelihood humming. Not that I’d ever push a sales pitch—Lord, no. Pole barns ain’t for hawking like cheap bait at a bait shop. They’re for folks who need shelter from the storm, a place to park the tractor or hide from the in-laws. But fences? They’re the dividers, the “keep out” signs in splinter form. And me, against ’em? It hit me like a frostbitten toe: I’d spent half my life building barriers, subtle as they were, between the wild and the tame. My barns stood as quiet fortresses, sure, but what if the real protest was in tearing down the walls we didn’t even know we had?
Mister Mustache, Why You Against Fences?
Hargrove sidled up, her chicken now perched on the banner pole like a feathered foreman. “You know, Glenn,” she said, voice gravelly as a gravel pit, “your kind—builders—they’re the unsung poets of partition. But poetry don’t mean you gotta rhyme every line.” I nodded, mustache drooping like wet walrus hide. She’d pegged me. All those years slinging posts into Minnesota clay, I’d been picketing in my own way: marking territories, saying “this far and no further” to the encroaching woods or the wandering moose. But Ogilvie? This felt different. Personal. Like the town’s soul was getting fenced in by bylaws older than my grandpappy’s grudges.
The march picked up steam when the high school marching band—trumpets optional—joined in, their off-key rendition of “Yankee Doodle” twisted into “Picket Doodle Dandy.” Kids on bikes circled us, yelling encouragements like “Boo the boards!” I laughed despite myself, handing out pumpkin pie slices from Hargrove’s emergency stash (salvaged, ironically, from non-smashed gourds). One tyke, gap-toothed and grinning, tugged my pant leg. “Mister Mustache, why you against fences? Don’t they keep the wolves away?” I knelt, pie in hand, and whispered, “Son, the real wolves ain’t furry. They’re the ones that tell you what you can’t do. Now eat up—this here’s wolf repellent.”
Slats, Signs, and Sudden Solidarity
As the afternoon wore on, the protest drew unexpected allies. First came the hippies—or what passes for ’em in Kanabec County: a van full of tie-dye enthusiasts from Hinckley, peddling “free-range fencing” workshops. They arrived in a cloud of patchouli and patch cords, unfurling a banner that read “Slats Schmatz—Go Lattice!” Hargrove eyed them like a hawk spotting field mice, but I? I was smitten. One gal, Willow or Sage or some herb name, handed me a tambourine. “Brother Glenn,” she cooed, “vibrate with the vibration of unfettered fields!” Before I knew it, I was jingling along to their drum circle, my protests reduced to rhythmic grunts. Earl reappeared then, eyebrows arched higher than a barn roof. “Glenn, you look like a bobcat in a blender. What’s next, interpretive dance for drainage ditches?”
But the real kicker? The lumber yard owner, Big Al Svenson, lumbered in with a flatbed stacked high with rejected pickets—warped, wormy, the dregs of the slat world. “If you’re gonna picket,” he bellowed, “do it with my leftovers! Free of charge!” The crowd whooped, and suddenly we were a picket-piling party, stacking the rejects into a bonfire-ready pyre. Not to burn, mind—no, that’d be wasteful—but to build.
You’re a Natural Rabble-Rouser, Blamstead
Willow and her crew sketched plans on napkins: living fences of willow branches, thorny hedges from wild roses, even a “moose maze” of stacked stones. Me, I chimed in with pole barn wisdom, suggesting anchor posts for stability without the stabby bits. “Think of it as a barn on its side,” I quipped, “but lazier. No roof, no rules.”
Hargrove pulled me aside amid the chaos, her chicken pecking at a stray slat. “You’re a natural rabble-rouser, Blamstead. Ever think of running for council?” I snorted, nearly inhaling my mustache. “Me? In politics? I’d sooner wrestle a woodchuck in a windstorm.” But truth be told, it stirred something. All those years fiddling with foundations in Mora and Isle, I’d fixed folks’ roofs but ignored the rifts—the neighbor spats over boundary lines, the “my side/your side” squabbles that turned good fences into grudges. Here in Ogilvie, we were showing it: against picketing, but building bridges instead. Literal ones, even—Sage proposed a footbridge over the irrigation ditch, “to connect, not contain.”
The Bonfire Betrayal and Breakfast Epiphanies
Dusk fell like a heavy quilt, and with it came the bonfire. Not of the pickets—we voted that down, Hargrove’s veto swingin’ like a sledgehammer—but of marshmallows and tall tales. The pile of rejects served as benches, splintery but spirited. Earl manned the grill, flipping walleye fillets with the precision of a man who’d lost a bet. I settled in, tambourine traded for a stick and a story, regaling the circle with my pie-eating debacle from Mora. “Folks,” I said, voice gravelly over the crackle, “assertiveness is like a good post hole: dig too deep, and you’re stuck. Too shallow, and the whole thing topples.”
Laughter rippled, warm as the fire. Willow leaned in, eyes twinkling like fireflies on a bender. “But what if the hole’s just right? What then, Fence-Foe Glenn?” I paused, poking the embers. What then, indeed.
Smoke and Sage Smudge
By midnight, the crowd had thinned to die-hards: me, Hargrove, the hippies, and a stray dog who’d adopted the chicken as kin. We hashed out a petition—not to ban fences outright, that’d be foolhardy as farming sand—but to amend the ordinance. Allow alternatives: hedges, ha-has (those sneaky ditch walls), even pole-inspired dividers that let the wind whisper through without a whisper of war.
Come dawn, I woke under a wool blanket that smelled of smoke and sage smudge, head throbbing like a poorly set concrete footer. Earl was already packing the truck, grumbling about “hippie cooties.” But as we rumbled back toward Mora, past fields stitched with old fences like faded tattoos, I felt a shift. Lighter, somehow. Like I’d hammered out a kink in my own soul. Back home, I fired up the coffee pot—strong as regret—and sketched a few ideas: not for sales, never that, but for sharing. A “no-picket pavilion” maybe, a pole barn pavilion open on all sides, where neighbors could jaw without walls. Or a community fence in Isle, woven from willows and stories, strong but see-through.
Showing It, Slat by Slat
Weeks later, Ogilvie’s petition passed—narrow as a fence rail, but pass it did. Hargrove sent a postcard: a chicken sketched in crayon, captioned “Thanks for the strut.” I pinned it above my workbench, next to the walleye-slapping oath from my boyhood scribbles. Life rolled on: barns to raise in McGrath, a muskrat trap mishap in Wahkon that left me smelling like low tide for a fortnight. But the picket protest lingered, a quiet revolution in my funny bone.
You see, being against something ain’t just waving signs—it’s showing up, slats in hand, and saying, “Let’s build different.” Not higher walls, but wider gates. Not pickets of pine, but pickets of possibility. And if my mustache twitches at the thought? Well, that’s just the north wind reminding me: in Minnesota, even protests come with a punchline. So here’s to the fences we fight—and the friends we find on the other side. Until next time, keep your posts plumb and your puns plumper. This is Glenn Blamstead, signing off from the land of lakes and lively laments.
