ISOLATED ACREAGE DOESN'T GUARANTEE ANONYMITY

City slickers up to no good often fail to fool their country cousins,
particularly in areas where some locals at least truly relish portraying
themselves humorously as just simple, good ol' boys and girls.

Guilty of drastic underestimation, the big city folk often fail to grasp
the fact that seeming isolation is absolutely no guarantee of either
anonymity or non-detection.

Just ask Paul McCartney, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

However, to torture the title of a Beatles masterpiece penned by Paul,
Highway 22, heading north from Highway 1 to the hamlet of Cremona and just
beyond it, is a long and seldom winding road.

And residents, like real estate agent Randall Oberik, tend toward talk just
as straight as vast stretches of the tar and gravel that criss-cross the
God-given country they just love to call home.

"We're in redneck rancher country out here and when people see things
happening they don't like, they stand up and do something," says Oberik
with a laugh, hours after startling developments on a picture-postcard,
half-million dollar property he's trying to sell.

"It's a good thing that the RCMP were so quick to respond to this,
otherwise some people around here might have taken matters on themselves,"
he continues in a jocular vein.

"Out here, we tend to prefer dealing with cowboy hats to suits and ties.
There's a saying round here that east of Highway 22 is Alberta, west of it
is Deliverance."

If that's true, then events we're discussing happened, just, in Alberta.

On Wednesday, a massive RCMP swoop on the acreage 55 kilometres northwest
of Calgary uncovered five kilograms of deadly and highly addictive
methamphetamine at what is thought to be one of the first manufacturing
super labs of the drug ever uncovered in southern Alberta. Two men from
Calgary have also been arrested.

Police estimate that if the haul in a large shop building had ever hit
urban streets, it would have fetched around $800,000.

Many investigators dealing with the find had to wear protective suits and
breathing apparatus as protection against the toxic, stew-like chemical mix
used in the manufacturing process.

It was Cowboy Trail Realty's Oberik, alerted first by some inner instinct,
and then by training by the Alberta Real Estate Association, who first
twigged to the fact there was something amiss on the quarter-section for
which he is at least partially responsible until the land and the buildings
on it, including a 2,600-square-foot, executive-type home, sell.

"I live north of the property and was headed to work in Water Valley when I
just felt it was time to check things out. As I turned off the highway, a
little black Mazda-type truck pulled into the farm road in front of me.

"When they stopped in front of the shop, the door was halfway up and one of
the two guys went scurrying inside. . . . I did the friendly, 'Hi, how's it
goin' ?' thing . . .

"Kids around here do have piercings, but I'm thinking it's strange to see
guys in their late 20s and early 30s with face rings."

The two men, he finds out later, have rented only the shop -- not the house
or other buildings -- from someone who has made an offer on the property
and is currently leasing it from the owner.

"I peeped in and saw they had covered in the mezzanine and had a huge
industrial-type fan going. That's the type of thing the real estate
association runs courses on. . . . I said, 'See ya later, guys,' and drove
away thinking 'marijuana grow op.' "

Police descended.

Irene Schultz, 76, lives on a two-quarter section due south of the targeted
property -- land she used to own.

"It's a funny thing," she says. "I was at a birthday party yesterday down
in town and the subject of marijuana grow ops came up -- there have been a
few. I remember saying for some reason, 'It can happen anywhere, you just
never know where.' I drove into the lane later and there were trucks and
police cruisers all over the place. I just knew something had been going on
there. I just knew."

Now Schultz hopes the burning sinus problems she suddenly began suffering a
few weeks ago will now disappear. "It's strange," she says. "But since the
police closed this thing down, I got my first uninterrupted night's sleep
in all that time even though I was shaken up by what had happened."

Personally, it's hard, even after all these years, to drive up to a remote
rural property involved in a drug bust without a chuckle.

In 1973, it was a long and on that occasion winding road that led us to
High Park Farm on the coastal moors above the Scottish town of Campbeltown
on a peninsula called the Mull of Kintyre.

McCartney owned the farm and wrote at least two pop classics there: Mull of
Kintyre and The Long and Winding Road.

He was also found guilty of growing cannabis in the farm's greenhouse -- he
claimed at a fun trial covered by yours truly that he was just looking
after the mysterious plants for locals, one of whom had fingered him -- and
was fined 100 pounds, maybe $250 or so in those days.

It is highly unlikely that convictions in the Cremona case will be dealt
with as lightly.