A family near Waseca wants – get this! – to use its own land the way it wants to, legally, to make some money and have some fun!

 How un-Minnesotan of them!

Tony Borglum has a thing for tanks. So much so that last fall, after he and his father traveled to England to buy one, they bought four more with the idea of opening a tank-riding business and obstacle course in their back yard.

“We were there a day and a half, and I got to thinking: ‘There’s nothing like this in the U.S.,’ ” said Borglum, 20, talking about the obstacle course in England where he bought the tanks and an armored personnel carrier. “I said, ‘I think people would be interested. So let’s bring some back and see what happens.’ ”

What happened has turned Waseca County into a battleground, pitting the Borglums and their plan against dozens of residents who are less than thrilled by the idea of seeing and hearing tanks and an armored personnel carrier rumbling across the land.

The great Minnesota plague – dozens of neighbors, terrified over…

…well, febrile emotions and untrammelled myths, really:

“There’s a lot of emotion in guns and tanks,” said Charlie Mathern, a hardware store owner and a member of the Planning Commission. “And it brings out a lot of fear in everybody.”

And like much fear – especially when it comes to guns – it’s wrong:

Safety is among the foremost concerns of critics, some of whom say they fear damage from stray bullets from the outdoor ranges.

Oh, for the love of…

…can anyone find any actual records of serious damage ever being done nearby outdoor ranges?

Still others are concerned about noise, vibration and pollution from the tanks, most of which were built in the 1950s and 1960s and used by the British government.

“Who is going to monitor all this?” asked Sue Stangler, who lives about a half-mile west of the proposed course.

Vickie Hill, who lives down the highway from the Borglums, worries that tank and gun noise could spook her horses.

“It just scares me to death,” Hill said. “We don’t know if we even dare pasture them if this gets approved.”

I can’t say which’d be worse; the occasional tank and gun noises, or the fumes and flies from all of Vickie Hill’s horses’ droppings.

“I guess you can say it’s controversial, but we don’t think it is,” Marie Borglum said. “We just wanted to have some fun.”

Others, however, don’t see the fun. “I don’t have anything against guns or tanks or anything like that,” Stinehart said. “I just don’t want it in my back yard.”

Or, as Stangler put it: “They’re good people. It’s just a bad idea.”

Mark my words; if this gets approved, I will be there.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 4:38 am and is filed under Culture War, Geekery, Great Plains and Midwest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.