Margaret's confidence hit dangerous levels after successfully intimidating Frank Martinez away from his walking path. She scheduled what she called enforcement action with the sheriff's department for my continued trespassing, complete with official paperwork and a timeline for my arrest.
The woman had created an actual fine schedule. $50 per day for unauthorized lake access, payable to the Pine Ridge Lake HOA, which had about as much legal authority as my tackle box.
She installed security cameras pointing at fishing spots, their mechanical whirring tracking movement like robotic vultures circling carrion.
The cameras were expensive, the kind banks use to catch actual criminals, not retirees trying to catch breakfast.
The red recording lights blinked like angry eyes watching every cast of my line.
Margaret's real master stroke was organizing a concerned citizens petition to county commissioners. She gathered 47 signatures, mostly from her church group and country club friends who'd never seen Pine Ridge Lake except in her carefully curated Facebook posts about unregulated recreational threats.
Her plan, present the petition at the next public county meeting complete with PowerPoint slides that would make a corporate consultant weep with pride.
She'd 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 state capital archives. The building reeks 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 ever revealed.
Here's what I discovered. Thompson Mining didn't just lease mineral rights, they purchased all mineral and water rights to Pine Ridge Lake for copper exploration.
The copper turned out worthless, but those legal rights never rescinded when the company folded. Mineral rights and surface rights can be owned separately.
Always check both when buying property near water or former industrial sites because you might own way more than you think.
The paper trail was clearer than spring water. Thompson Mining sold rights to a Consolidated Holding Company in 1965.
When that company dissolved in 1978, assets transferred to individual partners. One partner, Theodore Bud Blackstone Sr., my grandfather, rights passed to my father in 1982, then to me in 1999.
But here's 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.
She 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 goes to die.