Lake X

From letter dated November 2, 1959

Carl Kiekhaefer, the owner of Kiekhaefer Mercury, was building a secret test base at a private lake (which he called Lake X) in the center of Florida. Bucher was in charge of construction. As time went on, new things were added to their plans so that the whole project took longer than originally planned. Each year Carl invites a couple hundred people to a press party to see his new line of engines. This year, he scheduled the party for mid-September at Lake X, so they had a deadline to meet.

When the children and I got back to Sarasota from our visit to my family in Michigan, Bucher and crew were working twelve to fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. Bucher was only able to steal an occasional moment off to be with us. So he moved the children and me to a nice motel in St. Cloud, not far from the base, for the rest of the summer. We had quite adequate accommodations, a lake for swimming, shuffleboard courts, other children for our two to play with.

We could spend as much time as we wanted out at Lake X, where the wife of the test manager made pleasant company for me and where her two children were companions for Alex and Carli. Bucher took Alex’s outboard engine to the lake and rigged him out with a small boat. Alex and friend Chuck had a marvelous time with the whole lake to play around in without another boat on it.

Even being close by, we didn’t see Bucher too much after the base restaurant opened because he had his midday dinner there. Many times he didn’t get home until after the children were in bed and he was gone before they were up in the morning. Still, we were more or less together and we did enjoy it.

I brought the children home for the beginning of school and Bucher was able to spend the Labor Day weekend with us before going back for the last whirlwind work on the base. We went up for the open house of the completed base, which Carl held on a Sunday after his press party. The place was already all fixed up for company, with all their boats rigged so that company personnel could take guest for rides around the lake.

They had a Tommy Bartlett ski show to entertain, so Carl decided he’d throw the place open to the townspeople of St. Cloud as a good public relations gesture. He had a wonderful turnout. I think that, after all the secrecy that had surrounded the construction, it was a splendid idea to show people just what it was and tell them briefly what he planned to do there. Of course, from then on the place has been kept locked and you practically need security clearance to get near it.

Carl bought land to build a plastics division up at St. Cloud and wanted Bucher to build it for him, but there was some delay in purchase of the site and then the steel strike caught them. Meanwhile, Bucher had a chance to get home and rest…which he needed badly. He was completely exhausted after almost nine months of “panic-project” work, with long hours and only rarely a few hours off on weekends.

The break gave Bucher a chance to see how his own business was doing and figure up what he is paying out in salesmen’s commissions while he works for Kiekhaefer. He has decided that he can now do almost as well working for himself so that he doesn’t need a salesman. His two best accounts are expanding production this year and he is getting some new ones, so he is pretty sure that British Honduras Industries, Ltd. is well out of the woods finally.

This is our worst time of the year; every year until now we have had to shut down completely for almost three months because boat builders slow their operations down to just minimum production until after the first of the year. However, this year our dead time was only about three weeks and now we’re rolling again at close to capacity production. Bucher plans to get one or two other lines that tie in with his boat parts and that he can work easily along with them and operate strictly as a manufacturer’s representative.

Epilogue: Bucher’s Work at Lake X

From letter written June 6, 1993

When Alex returned from his recent trip, he told me that he had brought a book, a biography titled Iron Fist—and he slowly spelled out the initials of the person: … E … C … Just before he got to K, I figured it out: Carl Kiekhaeffer. The name of the book could not be more appropriate.

Carl developed the Mercury outboard engine. He was a typical inventor, a whirlwind salesman, and a basic paranoid. Bucher worked for him off and on for years. I knew Carl and liked him. I never had sense enough to be afraid of him. He undercut himself with me when he more or less forced me to talk to his wife in Wisconsin from Sarasota one time and I realized it was purely to legitimize his presence. Both Bucher and I knew he was there with his private secretary / mistress Rose.

Bucher probably would have ended up a very rich man if he had stayed on with Carl. But he would have been a shell of a human being. Carl put Bucher in charge of building his top-secret testing ground at Lake X in mid-Florida. I resented the endless hours, so it was not a perfect time.

The day of the public opening, Carl blew up because there was no cleansing powder in his bathroom. My adored, exhausted Bucher started scurrying around to find some, and I decided this was no life for him. A close friend of ours, Kendall Price, happened to be visiting, and he was as appalled as I was. Between us, we made Bucher see what Life-With-Carl promised for him. He quit.

We went off to our own up-and-down life in Belize, as happy during bad times as during good ones. Bucher told me later that Carl would never forgive his quitting. I know now that it was true. I think Bucher was grateful (as am I) to have known so unusual a person, but he was relieved to be out from under Carl’s “iron fist.”