Christmas programs and skating rinks ~ December 22, 1994

David Heiller

Dear Grandma:

Yup, it’s Christmas again. The program at church went well. Some boys in the back row were giggling before the first song, and nudging each other in the ribs. I couldn’t figure out why until they sang the first verse to “Good Christian Friends Rejoice.”

When they came to the line, “Ox and ass before him bow,” they had a big laugh, almost like they were relieved to finally say the 'A word'.

I smiled too. My Sunday School teacher told us not to covet our neighbor’s property or wife or ass. That would get us giggling. Some things never change.

Malika played “Good King Wenceslas” on the piano, and it sounded good. I’ll admit that beautiful music is in the ear of the beholder.

It was fun to hear all the kids play their trumpets and flutes and trombones and clarinets. It takes skill for a kid to play “Away in the Manger,” and know they’re going to hit a sour note, and then HIT the sour note, and smile with the congregation, and keep on playing.

The spirit of Christmas always hits me at Sunday School programs. You can forget about the stress that goes with the holidays for a little while, and watch little kids sing their lungs out on “Silent Night.”

You can smile as Joseph wheels his squeaky donkey down the aisle, and admire the angels with their glittery wings, and remember when you were a shepherd and got to carry a stick like that, with a top that bends over like a big candy cane.

Some friends, Dave and Sue, invited our family to their house after the program, and the Christmas spirit followed us there.

Dave has made a skating rink, and it is close to divine. There’s a little island in the middle, and some rough ice to keep you from going too fast. Mostly it’s smooth as glass.

There’s nothing in the Bible about skating under a bright moon with friends and family, but there should be, along with a bonfire, and a game of Pump Pump Pull-Away, and circling the night with the woman you love.

How many times did we skate as kids on the harbor, on Schnick’s Lake? The best times were at night. Someone would make a fire, maybe bring some hot dogs. Some high schoolers would be holding hands, and we’d make fun of them, until we were old enough to do the same.

Sometimes there would be big cracks in the ice. You had to watch out for them. Danny hit one once and went flying so hard and fast that he chipped his front tooth off. It hurt so bad he cried, one of the few times I ever saw that.

 Cindy and I had quarreled going to our friends’ house last Sunday. We were both stubbornly mad at each other. But we put on our skates and circled the rink hand in hand, and our argument soon disappeared into the winter night. Skating rinks can do that. They can patch up arguments, bring friends and lovers together.

We skated and skated last Sunday. After about an hour, Sue said she could do this all night. I think she was right.

Then we went inside and ate chili and bars and toasted the season with a dose of friendship.

Christmas is a time to count our blessings. Vague terms like friendship and family and love come into focus at Christmas programs and skating rinks.

Things you taught me, Grandma. I thank you for that, and I miss you too.

Love, David

Christmas brings out our best ~ December 19, 1991

David Heiller

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1991: Ralph Wahlquist of Askov came into the office last week to pick up a package of items which Lillian Monson had left. Ralph was going to take them to residents at Moose Lake Regional Treatment Center.

Ralph and Clara Wahlquist

On top of the box was a bag with some fresh fruit in it. “She gave me that to give to Clara,” Ralph said, referring to his wife, who is a resident at Mercy Health Care Center.

Mrs. Monson, who lives down Markville way, is the coordinator for a Christmas gift drive for treatment center residents. It’s quite a task, I imagine, but she does it without complaint. She also takes the time to think about people like Clara Wahlquist, about how she might appreciate a fresh banana or apple.

Christmas brings out good deeds in us.

At Willow River Elementary, teachers came up with a new idea in place of the traditional gift exchange. This year, students are bringing in non-perishable food items, which will be donated to food shelves to help families who need them. That’s a pretty good idea, a pretty good deed.

Take the WINDOW program in Sandstone. WINDOW stands for Women In Need, Depending on Other Women. The group works with abused women and children, and the prevention of abuse. Unfortunately, they are pretty busy. I wish they weren’t.

But when WINDOW director Karen Everett heard that the Toys for Tots program in Pine County needed a coordinator, she volunteered her group. It’s extra work, she admits, but the joy of seeing needy families receive toys that they otherwise couldn’t get, the extra work is worth it.

Maybe I just notice them more now, but it seems Christmas brings out good deeds in us.

Lynn, pictured with her husband Bruce,
was the bearer of a big kindness
 in a busy, busy season!

It happened at work this week, too. I went into the darkroom Monday morning, and there was a red ribbon tied to the faucet of the sink which I could actually recognize as a sink, and not a crusted, rusted, chemical coated monstrosity that once was a sink, three years ago or so, the last time it was cleaned.

Now the sink and faucet gleamed as white and shiny as new. Lynn Storrar, our typesetter office worker, had cleaned it. It was her good deed.

This phenomenon applies to kids too. When the Faith Lutheran Sunday School needed a Joseph for their pageant this coming Sunday, my son Noah, age eight, volunteered. Noah is not real out-going. He prides himself on being a bit shy. But he raised his hand this morning, and Mary Cronin quickly accepted.

Then his sister, Malika, age six, volunteered to be Mary. That’s when Noah started having second thoughts. By the time he got home, tears were flowing. At first he blamed Mollie, said he couldn’t be Joseph if his sister was Mary. But that didn’t wash for long. He was just plain mad at himself. He couldn’t figure out what had happened, but I know, because it happened to me at his age, and probably to you too: Christmas brings out good deeds in us. Foolish sometimes, but good just the same.

Christmas bring early morning cookie kindnesses,
 which for David was truly appreciative.

THERE ARE OTHER signs around our house, signs of Christmas thoughtfulness. Hundreds of cookies coming from the oven. Songs sung several times a day.

Another sign: things are getting fixed. That three-way switch in the porch that hasn’t worked in two years, I replaced this morning. Now it works half the time, which is 50 percent better than before. That light over the kitchen sink, the one only I could turn on or off by standing on my tiptoes and screwing in or unscrewing the bulb, I’ve replaced with a new fixture that works all the time, so far.

That rickety dining room chair that was unsafe to sit on, I glued and screwed tight, so that you can sit on it if you are careful. Al Jensen sat on it the other night, and it started shaking with excitement, as if it knew the weight of a true handyman when it felt one. Al didn’t sit in it for long, fearing for his safety. Next Christmas he’ll probably bring along his glue bottle and a couple clamps and do a good deed for us.

On and on the list could go, some trivial and some life-touching, at your home and mine, in the homes of the Lillian Monsons, in places like WINDOW, around the county, state and nation. Christmas brings out good deeds in us.

Merry Christmas to you all, and may all our good deeds continue for the next 12 months too.

A sonnet for the fiddler, December 12, 2002

by David Heiller

I pulled the car off the highway and into the familiar driveway. I grabbed my violin case and headed up the driveway that led into the valley. We call it Heiller Valley in our house, because it was in the Heiller family for many years until my grandma sold it to the State of Minnesota in about 1970.

I felt a little strange, carrying my fiddle. The last time a fiddle had been transported into that valley was probably before I was born. My grandpa had played one, and he died in 1953.

I was more accustomed to carrying a .22 rifle up the familiar path. The 500-acres of land was full of squirrels. It’s a paradise for them, with all those hickory, walnut and oak trees. I spent many fall days hunting there.

But the fiddle it was. I had been reading a book by Bobbie Ann Mason called Clear Springs. It’s a fantastic book, a memoir about her childhood in western Kentucky, and how she was affected when she moved away.

David and his fiddle.

There was a parallel to her childhood home and this valley for me. My dad and his siblings grew up here. I’ve always drawn a strength from walking there. I don’t know if it’s just in my head, or there is something more that the logical mind can^’t explain. That’s why I was carrying the fiddle. Sometimes music can open my mind. Was I trying to call in the spirits? I don’t know. But I do know that there are some spots where music flows out of me. A comfort zone. Maybe that’s what I was looking for.

The walk to the house was so pleasant. A ton of memories came back. That hill where the men lit a stick of dynamite one Fourth of July. The meadow where a cow died and bloated up like a balloon. That huge oak tree with a limb that sticks straight out like giant^’s bicep. How many picnics did we have there?

I found the old home site. Now there was just a slight depression in the ground. It’s amazing how Mother Nature can reclaim a farm. In the gully was half of a wringer washing machine and a skinny tire from an old car.

I leaned against a tree and played a few tunes, and none too well. Maybe the temperature wasn’t warm enough. Blame it on the weather! Anyway, my fingers rebelled.

I packed up the fiddle and started walking the half mile back to the road. I took a detour through the old barn. All that was left was the concrete foundation. I could see where the stanchions had been. I remembered how my uncle Donny had filled the loft with hay every summer. I had helped on more than a few occasions. What a job. Now it was all gone.

A deer took off from a gully ahead of me. It bounded up the hill, a big one, although I couldn’t see if it was a buck or a doe.

I got to a huge walnut tree, another landmark from my youth, and sat down. I looked down the driveway in both directions to see if anyone was coming. Yes, I felt a little self-conscious. But I had the valley to myself on that Friday morning, and it didn’t take long for me to relax and just sit there with a dumb grin. Somehow I knew my old relatives would not mind me sitting there and scratching out a tune. Grandpa had played Peek-A-Boo Waltz to the point of distraction for his kids, so I’ve been told. He would have understood. He probably would have sat down and listened. Dad too.

So I played that waltz, and a few others. The music never did flow from me. It usually goes that way; when you try too hard to summon something, it stays just out of reach.

But it didn’t matter. I still had that extra spring in my step when I left the Heiller Valley, a feeling that I knew myself just a little better than I did before. That always happens.

I told Mom what I had done when I got home. I wasn’t sure how she would react to a 49-year-old son of hers playing his fiddle in the woods, at the end of November no less. But I could see that it had hit a chord with her too.

A few days later I got this poem from her. It sums up the day better than I can. Thanks, Mom!

David playing on the deck, overlooking Heiller Valley

A Sonnet for the Fiddler

by Fern Heiller

There is a place from boyhood that he always will remember,

And so he went walking there on a morning in November.

He walked the rutted valley road into the old home place;

He didn’t have his hunting gun but took his fiddle case.

He paused to sit awhile beneath the ancient walnut tree,

And drew his bow across the strings to play a melody.

A little further down the trail, there would have been the gate,

But that was gone, like house and barn, for he was much too late.

His grandpa used to walk this ground, when times were good or bad,

And his father, too, and he himself, when he was just a lad.

His grandpa played a fiddle, too, and he hoped to hear

An echo of a waltz or polka coming to his ear.

But the only music that he heard was wind in grass and leaves.

The voices of the past were gone—time is the best of thieves.

But he took his fiddle and the bow and played a tune or two,

For Grandpa and for Grandma and the dad he never knew.

Oh, for the birds and bird feeders ~ November 23, 2000

David Heiller

Dutch Jones is ready for the birds. You may have read in her column last week, and I quote:

“Jerry took his big van and we went and got sunflower seeds for the birds. Have three big sacks and 50 pounds of cracked corn and thistle seed. Should last a couple months. I have yellow grosbeaks now and oh, I do like the chickadees. They are so fun to watch. Got the heater going in the water dish for them. It keeps the water from freezing. Old Pete was at the tallow today. Pete is my woodpecker.”

Noah with a chickadee perched on his hand.

Maybe Burlington Northern could build a spur line to her house east of Bruno, so they could deliver bird feed by the car load.

Oh for birds!

I have to tip my hat to Dutch and the many people like her.

I’ve known many people that have fed birds loyally. One of my favorites was my Grandma Schnick, who liked to set out things like orange rinds stuffed with tallow. She would read these bird food recipes in magazines like McCall’s and Better Homes and Gardens. They almost looked good enough for people to eat. I was a bit jealous of the birds, and the birds devoured her concoctions. Grandma is now making sure the angels get enough feed in Heaven, although they might not be as fond of her suet balls as the woodpeckers in Brownsville.

Another favorite bird feeder person is my mother, who draws in scores of birds with black sunflower seeds and cracked corn. She is rewarded with many beautiful birds, the king of which is the cardinal.

When I was a kid, bird feeding didn’t hold a lot of attraction for me, although I did like looking at the cardinals. Even the most hard-hearted codgers in town had to stop for a second to admire the beauty of a cardinal at the bird feeder. They are royalty.

I remember a brief period when I tried to shoot birds at the feeder. I would stalk them from behind the corner of the house. My BB gun wasn’t very accurate. It wasn’t a Daisy, so the birds didn’t have much to worry about.

Grandma Schnick didn’t have a problem with this, as long as I shot at sparrows, starlings, grackles, or blue jays. (Grandma was a bit of a racist when it came to birds.) But my sister, Mary Ellen, heard about this, and caught me in the act one day. She put an end to my feeder hunting with a few threats and a lecture on civil rights. Whatever she said reinforced a nagging feeling of guilt that was already in the back of my mind. It just wasn’t fair play to lure a bird to its death. I never did kill one.

In the summer, it's the  hummingbirds
that got our attention.

I’m not the only one to take a firearm to critters at a feeder. Dutch was telling me on Monday that she’s been trying to shoot a pesky red squirrel that chases away all the birds at her feeder. Dutch would also love to blast the crow that confuse her heated bird bath with a biffy. She can’t seem to hit her mark, but she keeps trying, and we are lucky to get to read about it. Watch out Dutch, you may be getting a visit from my sister, Mary Ellen.

Cindy and I like to feed birds. It’s a fun hobby. We try to keep it up all year, but it seems like we let it go for the summer. But now that we have snow—and it looks like the snow will stay—the feeders and suet containers are full again.

Is there anything prettier than a snowy day with birds at the feeder? It’s such a treat to watch them, to see all their shapes and sizes and colors and personalities. It’s like a soap opera. It seems like that’s been missing for the past couple years. We haven’t had enough snow. (Some people might cringe when they read that.) This year is shaping up to be a normal one. I heard on the radio last week that we have already had more snow this year than all of last November and December combined.

So let it snow. Let the birds flock in. And let Dutch Jones and all the glorious little old ladies of the world keep the feeders full. Amen!

That Christmas feeling ~ December 6, 1990

David Heiller

Christmas is a season, all right, and it’s here now. It wasn’t here last week, but it’s here now. Don’t ask me to define the difference that a few days can make. Maybe flipping the calendar over to “December” made the difference. It shouldn’t, but on Saturday, December 1, I felt THAT FEELING for the first time in 11 months, the feeling that the Christmas season had arrived.

It comes with a certain slant to the daylight, the soft light of short days with the sun hanging low in the south, and six inches of fresh snow underfoot.

Malika, Noah, Joey and
Queen Ida Christmas tree hunting.

It’s a light that’s great for walks down back roads with a seven-year-old boy who has deer-antler fever and thinks maybe we’ll find a set that some hunter forgot. It’s a great excuse for a hike, and we do find a lot of deer tracks in the snow. We find a glassy patch of ice in the culvert and watch bugs crawling through the water just a few inches from our noses. We spot a bald eagle flying south, its white head and tail feathers lit up by the setting sun that has left us in shadow. We spot the full moon already hang­ing in the eastern sky, ready to shine so bright you can read a book outside.

But alas, we find no antlers. The closest we get is a ragged deer pelt which the dogs have dragged home from the neighbor’s. Noah decides he wants to bring it to his first grade Show And Tell, but I say no, so we compromise with a little piece that he puts in a plastic bag.

We also get that Christmas feeling when we cut our Christmas tree. We usually get one from the land south of the house. But this year we drove to a friend’s, Deane Hillbrand, who had a patch of white spruce he wanted to thin.

We walked carefully through the grove for 10 minutes, rejecting this one as too flat and that one as too scrawny. Actually they all looked awful pretty with snow on their branches in the bright afternoon sun.

Then Cindy and Deane started to ooh and ahh at the same time. They’d found a beautiful 12-footer, nice shape, no bare spots or holes. Deane and I cut it down with my cross-cut saw that is used only once a year, for this purpose.

Noah entertains little Grace
under the Christmas tree.

Then we filled our cups with marshmallows and hot chocolate from a Thermos and toasted the new tree. We drank to the tree, to Christmas, and to our friend Deane, whom we thanked heartily. Dean said he was only too glad that we could use a tree that was doomed to be thinned out. That’s the kind of guy he is.

Now the tree is up in our living room, its light sparkling in the eyes of our children, who helped decorate it Sunday night and Monday morning and Monday night. Kids like to stretch these good times out.

Noah even asked as we climbed upstairs to bed, “Can we take the decorations down tomorrow?”

I asked why. “So we can put them up again, because it was so fun,” he said with a silly grin.

Our Christmas trees always put new meaning to the words, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” You wouldn’t play 20 bucks for our tree. But we wouldn’t trade it for five times that, because you’d have to trade the hot chocolate and sunny afternoons and friends like Deane, and they are priceless, just like Christmas.

Now if we could only find a set of deer antlers for Noah. Maybe Rudolph will bring some.

Getting to know the woods ~ December 17, 2003

David Heiller

The two dogs and I headed into the woods on Sunday afternoon. It was something I had wanted to do for several weeks, but work had kept it on the back burner.

There’s something very inviting about woods this time of year. The ground is hard, so there’s no mud. There’s a little snow for contrast, but not too much to make walking difficult, and you can see everything.

The view from our deck as well as all of the east facing windows. The river is down there, but also our woods, and what we refer to as Heiller Valley.

It is now owned by the State of Minnesota.

Our woods are even more of a magnet to me because I really don’t know them yet. I’ve walked over the hills a time or two, but it takes a while to get to know a piece of land, years really.

I scurried down the hill, eased over a barbed wire fence, and entered the woodlot. My new Allis Chalmers WD tractor was in the back of my mind. “Could it handle this trail without tipping,” I asked myself as I walked along.

“Νο, not here,” I said with a grimace at a few steep spots.

“Here it will be fine,” I said at an equal number of places. Cindy calls my tractor a widow maker. I hope she’s wrong—and so does she!

I skirted three hills, sizing up the trees that were standing, and looking at the debris from the logging that had taken place a few years earlier. We have hundreds of cords of oak and hickory firewood ready to be sawed up and hauled to the house. Making firewood is never an easy job, and this project will be even harder because of the steep terrain where much of it lies. That’s why I was visualizing the tractor in the woods.

It was a sober walk in some ways, seeing all the tree tops lying on the ground. I kept wishing I had seen these woods before the chainsaws came. I noticed a new gully that had opened up in the midst of the logging, with fresh brown dirt ready to be washed into the valley with the spring run-off. Would the trees have held that in check?

But I’ve seen enough woods to know that they recover in time. The trees still standing will far outlast me. That’s the big picture. The ones that got cut will go to good homes, like the one we are building.

I reached the edge of our 20 acres of woods, and crossed onto some land owned by Duane Thomford. He has a cabin overlooking the broad Heiller Valley. That’s what I call it, because it’s where my grandparents and then their son Donny lived and farmed for about 40 years. It’s state land now.

Duane had told me to take a walk out there, that it was a good view. I realized on Sunday that Duane is a master of understatement. The sight from that cabin was as close to an Ansel Adams view as I’ve seen in Minnesota. The huge valley is flanked by hill after hill, then it opens up like a huge smile to the Mississippi River.

I peered down into the bottom of the valley and saw the familiar fields where Donny had planted corn and alfalfa. I traced the route that he would go, first on the north side of the ravine, then down into the gulch and up to the south side , then a bit west, and then up the steep hill to his field on the ridge.

Talk about tipping tractors—Dοnny would make that run up the ridge with a hayrack behind!

I’ll always remember a joke he pulled on me on that trail. Before he would descend with a full load of hay bales, he would take iron wedges and put them in front of the wagon wheels. Only then would he slowly creep down. The wedges kept the wheels locked in place. His helpers, like me, sat on top of the hay bales, oblivious to any danger.

One time after a swaying descent, when we got to the flat land in the valley, Dοnny backed off the wedges and called me over. “Feel how smooth that is,” he said, running his hand over the shiny wedge.

I ran my fingers over it and yelped. That metal was hot enough to fry a grilled cheese sandwich. Donny was always a famous trickster, and he had fooled me again. I had to laugh in spite of the pain. And the burns healed just fine after a couple years.

Just kidding Donny.

The Heiller Valley beckoned to me again on Sunday, just like it did those 40 years ago. But the light was fading, so I turned around and went home through the top of the woods and I found what I was looking for.

No, not the spring that Duane said is on the property. He’ll have to show me that himself, unless he’s pulling an Uncle Donny.

The spot I found was a big tree that had not met the loggers standards for cord wood, for some blessed reason. It was standing on a ledge with smooth ground all around, and a four-foot high crop of limestone at its edge.

Oh boy, I could see myself with a book or a banjo at that spot, leaning against the tree on a fine spring day.

Yes, I’ll get to know our property better. I can’t wait for the next 30 years to transpire.

Feeling a little looney ~ November 16, 2005

David Heiller

Several years ago I heard a strange thing while on a canoe trip.

Three buddies and I were camped on an island on Lake Insula in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It was mid-May, a beautiful, cool evening, with a full moon on its way. Loons were calling around the lake. That’s a pretty hard sound to beat, especially in a remote spot like we were on.

Malika's loon and baby.

Then I heard a loon in front of our campsite calling like I have never heard before or since. The loon had a hoarse voice. It tried and tried to make its majestic presence known. Maybe it was a call marking its territory or a call for a mate. I’m not sure. Loons have several very fascinating calls. But that loon couldn’t do it. Its call came out thin and raspy. You could tell it was straining with all it had, but it ended up sounding weak and weary.

The oddest part was that the other loons seemed to rise up and call even louder. I know it was my human imagination, but they seemed to be laughing at their weak-voiced competitor. They drowned him out, and he eventually gave up trying. It was all kind of funny, yet sad too.

Without a strong voice, that loon had to be at a disadvantage. I wonder what became of it.

I felt like that loon last week. It started about Monday, when my voice started cracking. I knew I wasn’t going through puberty again (thank goodness). “Cold coming on,” I thought.

On Tuesday, I took half a day off from more cold-like symptoms, stuffy head, ringing in my ears. By Wednesday, when I spoke, I felt like I was in an echo chamber.

Healthy and happy David.

By Thursday, it was hard to talk. My throat hurt. I went to a roundtable discussion in Coon Rapids with some fellow newspaper editors. I tried to make some comments, but my throat was plugged up. My voice came out thin, and died about three feet in front of me. It didn’t even seem like my voice. That made me think too much about what I was saying. My words weren’t spontaneous at all. I was one step behind everyone, one step more than usual at least.

That persisted at home too, and went further. I didn’t want to talk, not about what happened at work, what I saw, what I read. It hurt to talk, so things went unsaid. I wasn’t me.

More of the same on Friday. Big football game, incredible ending, going to the Metrodome, all I could muster was a raspy, “Wow.”

I didn’t sleep at all Friday night. I croaked like a chain-smoking whiskey tenor. Cindy insisted that I go in for a strep throat test on Saturday. I argued that of course. Every guy has to argue a trip to the doctor. A doctor? No way! I’ll ride it out just like my great grandpa Cro Magnon used to do. The one that lived to age 43.

Cindy got out a medical book. “Call your nurse information service or doctor if you’ve tried self-care but your symptoms haven't improved after 48 hours.” she read. It only took about two more hours of me thinking about that to see that Cindy was right. Saturday morning I had the positive strep test results in hand and a shot of penicillin in my behind.

Then things got better, as they usually do. My smoldering throat quit burning. The echo chamber went away. My voice slowly came back to normal. I picked up the fiddle, did chores, told my wife about that interesting banjo article I had read recently. Everything seemed more fresh, more interesting. I felt thankful about nothing in particular and about everything in general.

Getting sick can be a good thing in a perverse kind of way, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that my brief sickness hardly registers as serious. But it made me appreciate good health, and the simple desire and ability to speak. Like that loon.