David
Heiller
Cindy
called the morning of my fortieth birthday from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Her
dad had died the night before, which drew her away physically but not in
spirit.
Listen
to the radio, she told me. I turned it on just in
time to hear the Minnesota Public Radio announcers play a song in my honor: “Laughing
River,” by Greg Brown.
It was a pleasant coincidence, because a friend had come
over the night before to wish me happy birthday, and he had told me about this
very song, how much he liked it, how it fit the milestone of getting old. Then
the radio played it just for me. It was a good sign for Friday the Thirteenth.
(below is a good link to the song)
(below is a good link to the song)
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| Collin "playing" David's accordion. |
Then my kids gave me presents, including a button accordion from Cindy. I had eyed that accordion at a Minneapolis music store for 2½ years. Cindy told the store owner how much I wanted it. The guy remembered me fondling it in his store, so he sent it postage-paid. I wished Cindy could have given it to me herself.
On my way to work, I stopped at T&M Athletics. Tom
Brabec wished he had a beer on hand to pour over my head. That’s an ancient
Bohemian ritual for celebrating fortieth birthdays in Willow River.
Tom and 1,800 other Askov American subscribers had seen
the full page ad that someone had put in the paper in my “honor.” Like we used
to say at Camp Courage: With friends like
that, who needs enemas?
Just
kidding, Cindy.
At work I was greeted by Lynn Storrar, our right hand
woman, who was dressed in black and wearing a home-made button that said, Woe is me, my boss is four-tee! She gave
me a card that said: “I don’t find it necessary to make jokes about your age…
Just thinking about it makes me laugh!!!”
Then I ran into a human buzz saw named Arla Budd. Arla
lives for people who turn 40. First she planted signs up and down the street in
front of the building.
 |
| David with Malika, shortly after the big birthday. |
One set said:
The editor who
writes here-in
Has just today grown
old.
It’s not just that
his hair is thin;
His tales have all
been told.
Dave is 40.
The back
side read:
In younger years as newsmen go
Dave was a proper snoop.
Reporters that have grown too old
No longer get their scoop…
He’s 40.
Arla must think I use Burma Shave.
On my desk was a card that she had made. The cover
measured two feet by three feet, and featured an original sketch of a person in
an outhouse. The person, who has my legs, is reading a book called “50 Yards to
the Outhouse,” by Will David Makit.
That was my gift from Arla. She knows how much I like outhouse literature. The
card included an original poem which is reprinted below (without permission).
There once was an old man named David.
Outhouses peculiar he favored.
About them he wrote
With many a quote
Until his gentile readers quavered.
Wife Cindy (their last name was Heiller)
Was sweet, and he sought not to rile ‘er.
He bought a new pot
A hot pot he got
He sought with this pot to beguile ‘er.
This new pot was
surely spinorty,
But David was just
turning forty.
The old ways die
hard
The pot in the yard
Was Dave’s kind of old pot-a-porty.
The story crept back
in the paper
About just one more
outhouse caper.
Reader’s wrath David
braved
Outhouse mem’ries he
saved
Before they all went
up in
vapor.
So this “old
man” is 40 years old. But old is a relative term. Now that I’m 40, it doesn’t
seem so bad.
Now 50,
that’s getting up there. Just ask Arla.
Editors always get the last word.
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