Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller “Let’s see, I’ll wear the red checkered shirt, and my green pants, and my good tennis shoes. What T-shirt? Here’s the one from T & M Athletics. Last time I wore my Camp Courage T-shirt, but T & M should be just as good. Yeah, that’ll be O.K.” I stuffed my Homer Hanky in the right rear pocket. It was so fun going to those games in 1987. We went to one playoff game  and one series game. I still have the  beloved homer hanky.  As I dressed myself Saturday morning, my mind fell into a habit as old as mankind, or at least as long as mankind has played the game of baseball. Baseball is a game of habits, and of superstitions. Ever notice how Kirby Puckett crosses himself as he steps up to the plate each at bat? It’s a habit, and it helps him hit .330 and make those catches in center field. The way I dress to a Twins game helps too. I wore that red checkered shirt to the Twins first play-off victory this year. Those green pants, they helped D...

  David Heiller “I want Emlee.” My daughter, Malika, lay in the strange bed in the strange house of my sister, in the strange state of Texas. It was the first night of our vacation. “You want what?” I asked with a smile. “I want Emlee,” the two-year-old repeated. I walked out of the room, Emily’s room, where Malika had staked her claim for a week. Emily sat in the kitchen with the rest of the family. “Guess who Mollie wants to see?” I said, looking at my niece. Emily laughed and walked past me to her room—no, to their room. Malika and Emily Emily and Mollie took to each other right away on our vacation last week. The first night, after saying goodnight to “Emlee,” Malika woke up several times. Emily held her for a few minutes, and told her, “You know, if you want, you can just come over to my bed, you don’t have to cry.” Some 12-year-old girls would have called to their mother for help, or at least complained in the morning. Emily didn’t complain. “Oh, she ...

David Heiller It’s late on a Monday night. I should have written this hours ago. But I was too busy transplanting catnip and trumpet vines that my mother gave to me. I was going to write this column about Mom, what with Mother’s Day around the corner. I was going to find some poignant way to say how much she means to me. But I ended up planting three catnip plants and four trumpet vines instead. Mom would prefer it that way. Never put off tomorrow what you can do today, she says, and I do too. It’s one of my favorite sayings. We visited Mom last weekend. It rained most of the time, but that was fine. Rainy days in Brownsville are fine. You can sit and visit at the kitchen table, play the banjo or a game of Scrabble, maybe even watch the Twins play a game or national TV (they won!), and not feel too much guilt. It’s raining. At one point on Saturday, I told Mom I was going to take the plastic off the basement door. That was on my weekend job list, along with trimming the...

David Heiller Sometimes it’s nice to have a little good luck. I’m speaking about an incident last week with my car. The car, a 1996 Ford Taurus, is a pure beater. Two doors don’t work, and the dash board has more warning lights flashing than an F-15. It has plenty of little dents, and a few big ones. I’m almost embarrassed to drive it. But not quite. It still drives all right. The mileage is decent. And it’s paid for! The car has seen just under 263,000 miles of action, first in Pine County, now in hill country. Nothing major has ever gone wrong with it, which I find amazing. That’s a testament to how much better cars are made these days. The car almost suffered a fatal blow about six years ago, when I hit a deer with it head on. The impact broke the windshield, fractured the frame in front, and deployed the air bags. No one was hurt, except for the deer, but the repair estimate was $3,600. That was more than the car was worth, so the insurance company totaled the car, pa...

editor's note: This column is dated, at least the specifics are. The phenomena plays itself out over and over though, s eems we hear about it every week.  I thought it was worth sharing .  David Heiller I enjoyed reading a couple quotes from football players after the  Pittsburgh  Steelers beat the Indianapolis Colts on January 15. (2006) Colts kicker Mike Vanderiagt missed a field goal that would have tied the game with 21 seconds left. Vanderiagt commented, “I guess the Lord forgot about the football team.” Just before that,  Pittsburgh's  Jerome Bettis had fumbled the ball, almost costing his team the victory. His teammate Hines Wardsaid, “The Man above, He really looked down on Jerome and said, ‘I’m not going to let you end your career on a fumble like that’.” So I guess football players know what God is thinking. Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, does also. At a Martin Luther King Day speech in New Orleans on January 16, 20...