Maple Grove Gazette - September 26, 2026
Maple Grove's Only Newspaper of Record—Vol. 1 No. 24—Edited by Mr. Ellison, Town Archivist & Historian
FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK
The rain stopped on Sunday. By Tuesday morning there was steam emanating from the just-parked cars along Main, and the town has spent the rest of the week telling itself that the cold is unseasonable. This editor has consulted the archive on that point and will report his findings in the proper section. For now he notes only that the days are bright, the nights are in the high forties, and every household in the village chose the same four days to seal the deck, cut back the borders, and haul the summer's inflatable toys into the garage, where they will stay until somebody needs the car.
Harvest has begun in earnest. The equipment goes out in the dark and comes back in the dark, and anyone driving County Road at half past five in the morning will meet a set of headlights higher and wider than a car's, moving at a speed that suits it and nobody else. Charlene told the ladies' church group on Sunday, without being asked, that she had put up fifty quarts of tomatoes in a single day. Fifty quarts is a good day's work for four women. This editor has no evidence that she had help. He has several reasons to suspect it. Chief among them: the garden from which the tomatoes were supposedly harvested was not large enough to produce ten quarts, let alone fifty.
Up at the college it is Homecoming Week, and that requires some history. A few years ago, pledges of several fraternities were found to have removed a number of objects from around the village during their initiation. The objects came back. So did the pledges, to perform community service in the same village. The college has since made its position unmistakable: no hazing, and no taking anything that belongs to anybody. The fraternities have complied in full. They have found that a young man who is forbidden to take anything can still take off most of his clothes, paint himself in the college colors, and run across the quad at dusk. This is happening on college property, outside village limits, and Chief Carter wanted it recorded that he is grateful for both facts.
The trouble is that it was seen, and that a number of the young men who saw it were in high school.
The Maple Grove High boys thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard of, and decided the high school deserved its own. At halftime of last Friday's home game, with the band in formation on the fifty, eight of them came out from behind the concession stand in their underwear and the school colors, each with one large painted letter across his chest, and ran the length of the track in front of the home bleachers. They had meant to spell BULLDOGS. The young man ‘wearing’ the S reconsidered at the last moment and stayed in the car. The bleachers read BULLDOG, which this editor must concede is accurate, since the school has exactly one. It was forty-nine degrees.
It should be said that the Bulldogs are a very good football team. They win their conference most years, and most years they are still playing when the state finals come around. The home bleachers on a Friday night are full of grandparents, and the grandparents did not come to see this. The boys regarded it as the finest thing they had ever done. Their parents took a different view.
This newspaper went to press last week without the item, as a courtesy to families who were still speaking to one another. They are now speaking to one another, and they have a great deal to say. The boys received in-school suspension from the high school. At home they received considerably worse, the details of which are private and have been described to this editor at length by nearly everyone. Then the parents did something this editor has not seen before. As a group, they went to Chief Carter and asked him to assign community service, to be served in the village, in daylight, where people could watch. The Chief said it was the first time in his career that parents had come to him to ask for a harsher sentence. He then said it was the second time this fall, and that he would prefer not to go into the first.
One of the eight was Caleb, the younger son of Wendell Fitch's daughter Mary. Readers may remember Mary's boys from the Fitch reunion in July and a pan of brownies this newspaper declined to describe then and declines to describe now. Mary has not been seen in the village since Friday night. Her groceries are being bought by her father. Every afternoon this week Wendell has walked the full length of every aisle at the market, pushing a cart at the pace of a man who would like it known that the Fitches are still here and have nothing to discuss. He has greeted everyone by name. Nobody has raised the subject with him. This editor thinks that is the correct decision and does not intend to test it.
📜 POLICE BLOTTER
MAPLE GROVE POLICE DEPARTMENT—INCIDENT REPORT
Reporting Officer: Officer Wilson Week of: September 19-25
Maple Grove High School Athletic Field—Disturbance at a Public Event. Reported by Officer Wilson. At approximately 8:10 p.m. Friday, during halftime of the home game, seven juvenile males entered the track from behind the concession stand in a state of partial dress and school-color paint, ran the length of the home bleachers, and left by the same route. Officer Wilson, who was working the game, located seven of the juveniles in the parking lot and the eighth in a vehicle, fully dressed, stating that he had "been against it from the start." Officer Markle, who was also working the game, recused himself on the grounds that one of the juveniles is his cousin, and spent the rest of the half at the concession stand. All eight were released to their parents, who were in the stands and who had, in several cases, already started toward the parking lot. Final Disposition: Referred to the school. Community service assigned at parental request.
County Road, East of the McGregor Farm—Suspicious Lights. Reported by Officer Markle. A motorist reported a large vehicle with multiple bright lights moving slowly on County Road at 5:40 a.m. Tuesday, "too wide to be a truck and too slow to be anything." Officer Markle responded and identified it as a combine. The motorist, reached by telephone, said she had lived in the township four months. Final Disposition: Harvest.
📋 COMMUNITY NOTICES
Harvest Equipment on the Roads—before dawn and after dark, through October. Motorists are reminded that the headlights coming toward them on County Road may belong to something wider than they are. Slow down, keep right, and let the operator wave you around when it is safe. Chief Carter asks this editor to add that a motorist who will not pass also blocks everyone behind him, and that the Chief has been that man and does not recommend it.
Community Service Crew—Saturdays, 8:00 a.m., Main Street. Eight young men will spend the next several Saturdays sweeping the curbs, gathering trash, and clearing storm grates along Main, under the supervision of Officer Sanchez. Officer Sanchez finished supervising this editor's great-nephews on the 19th. He was reassigned on the 21st. Residents may observe. Chief Carter asks that they not take photographs, on the grounds that the parents have already taken plenty.
Homecoming at the College—Saturday, on campus. The college's Homecoming parade and game take place on campus off the state road, not in the village. Residents headed out that way are asked to allow extra time at the entrance. The village has no role in the event and has been told so.
Fall Farmers Market—Saturdays through October, 9:00 a.m. to noon, the square. Apples, squash, the last of the tomatoes, and one grower's pumpkin, which is still being discussed only in the future tense. The weigh-in remains scheduled for October. Canning jars are reported to be in short supply township-wide, and this editor is told nobody wishes to name the cause.
School Photographs—Retakes Wednesday, October 7. Envelopes are due back at the office before the retake date, not on it.
🏛️ HISTORICAL NOTE
The town has called this week's weather unseasonable. This editor went to the bound volumes to see how unseasonable.
This newspaper has printed a weather item every week since 1911. In those volumes, the first cold week of autumn falls in the second half of September a little more than nine years in ten. In ninety-four of those years, the Gazette described it as unseasonable. The first was in 1913. The most recent, before this week, was last year. In 1947 the paper called a cold week in the third week of September "entirely unseasonable." The following September, in the same week, it called the weather "unseasonable again."
Weather that has arrived in the same week for a hundred and fifteen years is, by every definition this editor can find, the season. He does not expect this to change anyone's mind. His purpose is to note that the town has been surprised by the same chilly nights ninety-four times, each time in writing, and each time with the same conviction. Whatever else the record shows, it shows a town that has never once taken September for granted. This editor offers the figures and nothing further.
🔍 Fellow Sleuths Worth Following
No new Fellow Sleuths this week. If you haven’t already read any of the books I’ve featured from L.B. Dayton and Bessie Barr, they are worth checking out. I’ve met both authors and not only are they great writers, but they are also wonderful humans.
FREE READS—SEPTEMBER TITLES
This is the last weekend for September's free shelf. After that it's October, which means the good blankets and the longer books.
Browse September’s Free Books →
🍽️ THE MAIN COURSE
Every fall the college kids come back and something in Maple Grove goes missing. Or everybody in town is sure it did.
That's where Scones, Secrets & Sabotage starts. The festival is coming, things are disappearing all over town, and the fraternity pledges are running a scavenger hunt that makes them the obvious suspects. Maple Grove would love for it to be the pledges. It's tidy. It's college boys. Everyone already knows how that story ends.
Jenna isn't so sure. Because while the whole town is counting missing things, somebody is using the confusion to do something much worse, and they're counting on nobody looking past the kids with the scavenger list.
It's Book 1. It's where Jenna, Lisa, and Mildred first get into trouble together, and where Joe first starts to regret knowing them.
Book 1, Scones, Secrets & Sabotage, is free →
✍️ Behind the Scenes
The rain finally quit, and this week I found out that a dry, sunny, fifty-five-degree afternoon is the most dangerous kind of weather there is. You look outside and think, I could get a few things done.
I sealed the deck. I cut back the borders. I packed the summer toys into the garage, and yes, something inflatable fought back. By Wednesday I had accomplished more than I have since June and I could not lift a coffee cup above shoulder height.
I regret nothing. The deck looks wonderful. I'll be admiring it from inside.
See you next Saturday, fellow sleuths—same town, new trouble.
— Willow 🌿
Meet Willow
Author, School Board member, and gluten-free baker. I write the Jenna McGregor mysteries from my home in Michigan, fueled by coffee and Peloton PRs.
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