Her plan was to present the petition at the next public county meeting, complete with PowerPoint slides that would make a corporate consultant weep with pride. She had already booked a caterer for the post-meeting celebration and invited the local newspaper to document her enforcement success story.
While Margaret planned her victory parade, I took a three-day trip to the state capital archives. The building reeked of history and bureaucracy, dust, old paper, and the crushed dreams of a thousand researchers.
I spent those days digging through Thompson Mining Company records from 1943 to 1962, learning more about my grandfather's business dealings than family reunions had ever revealed.
Here is what I discovered. Thompson Mining had not just leased mineral rights. The company had purchased all mineral and water rights to Pine Ridge Lake for copper exploration.
The copper turned out to be worthless, but those legal rights were never rescinded when the company folded. Mineral rights and surface rights can be owned separately, which is why property near water or former industrial sites can carry rights that are invisible from the surface.
The paper trail was clearer than spring water. Thompson Mining transferred the rights to a consolidated holding company in 1965. When that company dissolved in 1978, its assets transferred to individual partners.
One of those partners was Theodore "Bud" Blackstone Sr., my grandfather. The rights later passed through my family and ultimately to me when I inherited the property in 1999.
But here was the kicker that made my coffee taste like victory. Those rights included lake-bottom ownership, not just mineral extraction.
Every square foot of lakebed, from shore to shore, legally belonged to me.
Back home, Margaret was sabotaging everything with the desperation of a sinking ship captain. She reported my boat as an abandoned vessel to state environmental agencies and filed complaints claiming I was running commercial operations without permits.
Apparently, one guy with a fishing rod qualified as commercial fishing in Margaret's alternate universe where logic went to die.
She spread rumors about property-tax delinquency, which was hilarious since I had been current for 23 years. The woman went full scorched earth, approaching my part-time employer to suggest I was unreliable and involved in neighborhood disputes.
My boss knew me well enough to laugh off her complaints, but the audacity was breathtaking.
Meanwhile, Betty Kowalski was doing detective work that would shame professional investigators. She discovered Margaret's HOA had never filed proper incorporation papers with the state.
It existed only as an informal neighborhood group with about as much legal authority as a quilting circle.
"Theo," Betty said over morning coffee, steam rising from our mugs while the smell of bacon drifted from her kitchen, "that woman's been running a con game since day one."
Dale Pemberton visited me personally, looking more uncomfortable than a vegetarian at a barbecue contest. He suggested a compromise solution, reduced HOA fees in exchange for a limited fishing schedule.
I politely declined without revealing my research findings. Dale left frustrated, warning that Margaret would not back down easily.
If only he knew how spectacularly right he was.
Margaret hired a private investigator to excavate my background, desperately hunting for criminal history, tax liens, anything to discredit me. The investigator found nothing and reported my financial situation as modest but stable, probably not the smoking gun Margaret was paying for.