MISQUAH — Somebody — and at this point four people have claimed it, which is how these things go — put a coffee can on the end of the bar at Mud Lake Brewing Co. on Saturday afternoon with LIGHT TOWER written on masking tape around it. By the time the Holts closed out at eleven, the can had been emptied into the register twice for safekeeping, and the total, counted Sunday morning by Annika Holt and Manager Randy Dolen at the same table, came to $1,142.

The Legion has been trying to fix its third light tower since it went dark in 2023. The estimate has been $7,400 for two summers, and the fund, kept in an envelope in a drawer at the Legion hall, has moved by raffle and meat draw and the occasional memorial in increments that Dolen has described in this newspaper as “honest and slow.” Saturday moved it further than the last two summers together.

Added to that is the standing pledge on Year Fourteen Stout — a dollar a pint to the First Lutheran basement roof fund — which, the Holts note, is a different fund entirely, and which prompted an immediate and entirely predictable inquiry from the Lakeside pavilion committee and a second from the rec warming house, both of whose roof funds are also in year fourteen. Jonas Holt, asked whether he intended to name a beer for each of the three roof funds, said that he had four taps and three roofs and could “see where this goes.”

Dolen, for his part, declined to project when the tower might be lit. “We’ve got two-thirds of a summer’s worth of money in one afternoon and I’m not going to jinx it by doing arithmetic in the newspaper,” he said, in what Sonny notes is the second time this month a Legion man has refused to do arithmetic in print and the first time it was the manager. The can is back on the bar. The Holts say it stays.

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