A little terror from a big brother ~ October 26, 1988

David Heiller

When was the last time you heard a scary story?

How about the latest presidential poll? (Just kidding, George.)

This newspaper recently ran a contest, soliciting scary stories from readers. We’ve got some good ones, and have printed several of the best on page seven in this edition. I hope you enjoy them.

The Heiller boys, before they started 
telling little brother, David, horror stories

I may be mistaken, but the best horror stories come from the minds of kids. As a member of the generation that grew up before axe-murder movies, I confess: I haven’t seen Friday the Thirteeth Part One yet, let alone Part Seven. And this Freddie guy doesn’t scare me—when I see those stainless steel finger nails, I think what a great job he could do working up our garden next spring. Wouldn’t even have to borrow a tiller. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy would be too tired for people after he finished cutting up the four-and-a-half cords of wood I bought from my neighbor last Saturday.

Yet 20 years ago, Lon Chaney would scare me for days if I sat up to watch him turn into a werewolf on Saturday night. Maybe it was staying up late that one night a week that did it. Maybe it was Earl Hinton. Maybe it was my brothers, who threatened to switch beds after I fell asleep and put me into Danny’s bed, the single bed—alone!—instead of the double bed where I slept with Glenn. (Glenn was nine years older than me, and always made me sleep next to the wall, but I didn’t mind after watching Lon Chaney turn into a werewolf.)

Back then, everybody knew a scary story or two. We took turns telling them at night at the school grounds. I think those stories had today’s butcher movies beat hands down. Danny had one of the best—or worst. I’ll share it here, with a warning—it came from the mind of a 12-year-old boy in 1962. Faint of heart and lovers of cats, stop reading now.

The story featured Danny (of course), and an old man, maybe Freddie’s grandfather. “This guy had only one good arm,” Danny would tell in an eager voice beneath the yellow streetlight at the school grounds. “The other he had lost in an accident. But for his other arm, the one that was missing, he bought a sickle attachment.”

“Where’d he get it, at the hardware store?” some older kid would crack. Danny ignored that, boring in on the younger kids with his quick eyes.

“And he didn’t use it to weed around the garden. He lived in this deserted house in the woods. One night a group of us got lost in the woods, and we came onto this house, see. A single kerosene lantern was all that shined through the windows.

“We crept up to a window, and slowly raised up to peek over the sill and into the room. Then we heard this noise—putt-ssss, putt-ssss, putt-ssss. Danny had this noise mastered from countless tellings, the sound of liquid dripping onto a hot surface. “Putt-ssss, putt-ssss.”

“It was dark in the room, so we leaned closer against the window. We could see something dripping onto the glass of the lantern. It was dripping from the ceiling above the room. Putt-ssss, putt-ssss.

“We didn’t know what to do, so I thought, “Well, I’m going to see what’s upstairs.” So I climbed in through the window, and there was a stairway in the corner, a steep stairway that went almost straight up. I could see a dim light there. So up I went, trying not to make a sound. I got_, to the top, and looked over.

“There, in a corner above the lantern we had seen downstairs, a man sat with his back to me. There was a gunny sack next to the man, and I could hear a strange noise. It was hard to figure at first, but then I recognized it, the sound of cats meowing all together, kind of crying and howling and moaning. Then this guy reached into the bag, and he pulled out a cat with his left hand, and he raised his right hand into the air, but he didn’t have a hand there at all. He had a sickle. And swoosh, that sickle sliced the air, and chopped that cat’s head off, and he raised it to his lips, and drank the blood, and tossed it in the corner. He was sitting in a pool of blood, so much that it was dripping through the floor, onto the lantern below, putt-ssss, putt-ssss.”

By this time, I couldn’t breath. Danny would manage a grin, a sneer that Lon Chaney would have envied. “Then I moved my foot, and the stairs creaked. That old man turned around and spotted me. He raised his right arm in the air, and jumped to his feet, blood dripping from the sickle. I couldn’t move. He charged, and then I turned and ran, we all ran, and we didn’t stop running, we ran for hours it seemed, always looking back, and seeing something behind us, we didn’t know what. We finally made it back to town, and we never saw that house or that old man again.”

About that time, someone would give a whoop. We would all jump and laugh. Mom would call from down the street. The story would be over, that night’s version anyway, forgotten but certain to be told again, passed down with the same chilling effect, until I had heard it enough times to scare the younger kids too.

I don’t think I’d ever repeat that story again today though. Certainly not in a weekly newspaper. Too tame. Better stick to Friday the Thirteenth and Halloween.

If roads could talk ~ October 29, 2003

David Heiller

It’s funny how a road can hold so many memories A road is, after all, just a road: But people do have their favorites, and that applies to roads as well as grandkids.

A good walk down the road.

The road to Freeburg—State Highway 249—from Highway 26 is one of those. Cindy and I used to pipe-dream about buying the farm from Florence Sheriff back when we were first married, We still say, “There’s our house,” when we go by.

Going past the Freeburg church is special too, and better yet, stopping to say hello to all those relatives that. I never knew. I wish they could talk back,.

I like to look down the road and across Crooked Creek to where Grandma Heiller was born.

And of course Little Miami stands like a pot of gold at the end of a gravel rainbow. How many fine meals have we had there with Mom and Grandma and all the brothers and sisters and cousins and nephews and nieces?

County Road 3 holds many good memories for me too.

I traveled it to high school for five years, and before that to sporting events and concerts to watch my siblings.

Now, after a 30 year hiatus, I’m taking it to work every day:

I doubt that I’ll ever get tired of how beautiful the drive is. Those big farms with their Harvestore silos and contoured fields of alfalfa and corn. That interesting round barn.

You can see the lights of the football field from about five miles away. Seeing those lights when I was a kid going to watch my brother Glenn play was really exciting. Caledonia seemed like New York City to me.

The road used to have several sharp curves that could make the hair stand up on your neck if you took them too fast. They are gone now, thanks to some fantastic improvements. It’s not as exciting to drive, but I’m not complaining.

Rural roads hold lots of possibilities...
even some early spring kite-flying.

The best part of the road is when you are driving to Brownsville and come to the top of the hill. You look down that huge river valley and you swear you can see to Maryland. I never get tired of that sight, no matter what season.

One of my first memories on the road happened in about 1960. We were going to a school concert at the Caledonia Auditorium. My sister Sharon was driving the 1954 blue Chevrolet, and she hit a fox halfway up the hill. We all got out of the car and examined the beautiful animal, which was dead. Glenn, ever the frugal big brother, threw it in the trunk because he knew he could get a bounty for it. We proceeded on, with Glenn behind the wheel, and Sharon a quivering 17-year-old mess in the back seat.

And all those bus rides with good old Dale Besse behind the wheel. He would take us home after sports practices too. Sometimes he would stop and let Bill Quillen off above his house, and Bill would happily get out—he was always happy—and hike down the hill through the dark woods to his Cork Hollow Road. I admired Bill’s courage then, and later, when he went off to Vietnam.

If roads could talk, County Road 3 would have some fine tales, as would the road to Freeburg. I bet your favorite road does too.

Another outhouse musing ~ November 19, 1992

David Heiller

I’ve been sitting on an outhouse column, so to speak, for several months. That’s because I had seen a want ad in a local paper back then that read: FOR SALE: Outhouse. $150.00.

I figured that anyone who is selling his out house must have a story to tell the Askov American.

First some background: We have an outhouse at our place. I guess it’s MY outhouse, since I’m the only one who uses it. Cindy hasn’t used it much since last summer, when a garter snake dropped on her.

A David-style panorama of our homestead in
Sturgeon Lake. (Complete with tape to hold it together) The outhouse is the little white building to the right.
We used it exclusively for ten years.
At the time of this column, it was David's domain.
 Eventually, even he stopped using it when it was cold.

Occasionally Mollie will hitch a ride on my back and join me there. It’s a two-holer. But she does this less out of physical need than curiosity, or if she has something urgent that she needs to talk about. Things like how her best friend doesn’t like her anymore, or whether she can watch TGIF on Friday.

Mostly the outhouse is my domain, and the truth is I like it that way. A man needs a place to call his own, even if it is a lowly outhouse. Cindy used to want me to paint the inside a pretty color, something other than its drab green. I refused. Paint it one day, the next she’d have lace curtains in it. So she gave up on it and moved into the house.

Will Rogers once said that he never met an outhouse he didn’t like. I agree with him. I like my outhouse. The roof leaks, it needs painting, and it’s leaning a bit, but that just adds character. It sounds strange, but I prefer an outhouse over a regular bathroom. Every once in a while, I’ll talk to some old timers, and mention my outhouse, and they will get a wistful look in their eye, and tell me how much they miss their old outhouse. I am not kidding.

It’s a place to get away from the dull roar of the household on a school morning. It’s quiet. The Farmer’s Almanac is handy, with it zillions of facts about old varieties of apples and when the moon is full. A couple of new catalogues are waiting if I want some new reading material, or if I need them for other reasons.

The outhouse keeps me in touch with the seasons too. This time of year, I can see Orion on my way to the outhouse at night. I can watch the snow fall an arm’s length away, and see the tracks of deer in the garden.

In the spring, I’ve got a good view of a bluebird house on a fence post 20 feet away. That’s fun to watch. In the summer, I like to look at our garden. Sometimes our dog, Ida, will come in and say hello.

There ARE a few January days and nights when I don’t enjoy the outhouse. But only a few.

SO WHAT KIND OF man would be selling his outhouse, I wondered. (I knew it had to be a man and not a woman.) I called the number last Sunday evening, and asked the man (I was right) if he still had an outhouse for sale. “I sold that,” he answered.

“Was it used?^” I had been waiting month to ask that question, and I managed not to laugh.

It was a new outhouse, he said a bit smugly, I built it.” It had measured four feet by three by seven feet, and a lady east of Cloquet had bought it because she was having trouble with her septic system, he said.

I got the feeling that this guy cares about his outhouses, takes pride in them. He knows the case histories like a social worker.

“I build a couple of them every once in while,” the man explained. Most of the buyers put them in the back of their trucks and take them to their cabins up north. Sometimes they have to portage them, he said, which is why only builds one-holers.

“I like them to last.” he added. “I’ve sold them for $125 all the way to $75.” That barely covers the cost of materials, he said.

He asked if I wanted to buy one. He could make me one if I wanted. I said no, I guess not. He’d have to pay ME to replace my outhouse I thought with equal smugness, but I didn’t tell him that.

The interview ended. At first I was disappointed. I had been hoping for some old guy who would talk about the good old days on the farm, and how he missed the shack. What I got was an ambitious guy my age who made a few extra bucks on the side building outhouses.

But now that I write this, I’m feeling better. It’s reassuring to know that other people still use their little house out back.

Old outhouses never die, even though they may smell that way. They just get taken up north. General MacArthur said that.

So if that outhouse builder becomes flush with success, more power to him.

Thank you, Mr. Stark ~ October 19, 2005

David Heiller

It was interesting visiting with Bob Stark last week. Or should I say Mr. Stark, That’s how I always thought of him at Caledonia High School.

I went to his house on October 13 and took a picture of him with an award he received from Winona State University.

Mr. Stark (old habits die hard) told me how much he liked my writing. He recalled my mother—she had red hair right?—back when my brother Glenn first signed up for football, probably in 1957. He reminisced about Johnny Winslow. He talked about how much he loves Caledonia, how good the city has been to him. 

Mr. Stark, from the 1971 yearbook
(Thank you for sending 
me this, Jane Palen)

I left with a hearty handshake and a pat on the back. “You take care!” he said. I felt like charging out of the house and onto a football field.

That’s the kind of guy Mr. Stark is, and was.

Allow me three trips down memory lane. I remember at the end of eighth grade, my first year at CHS, I told some friends that I wasn’t going to go out for football the next year. Mr. Stark was the football coach then. He tracked me down. It was in the gymnasium. I can remember where I was standing. He put his arm around my shoulder and asked if it was true, that I wasn’t going out for football in the fall.

I answered somewhat hesitantly. This was the head football coach talking to a measly eighth grader. I said yes, it was true, I wanted to go fishing and hunting instead. He told me that he thought I was a good football player, that I could help the team, be a part of the future. Then he said what I was doing was OK. I think he looked in my eyes and saw that that’s what I wanted to do, That’s what he wanted to see.

A couple years later I was standing in line outside the gymnasium—I remember the very spot—with other football players (I had returned to the fold.) We were all getting a mass physical. It must have been August of 1969. Mr. Stark came up to me again and put his arm around my shoulder and said he was sorry to hear that my sister Lynette had died. I was totally unprepared for the comment. A wave of grief came boiling out of those hidden places. I tried hard and failed to hold back the tears that I thought had dried up a month earlier. Guys around me looked away or down at the floor. It was a powerful moment, very emotional. I felt embarrassed and a little angry at the time. But it was one of those little things that really helped me process my sister’s death. Somehow knowing that good old Mr. Stark knew enough about me to say he was sorry really helped.

Then there was the time when he knocked on Miss Tweeten’s English class door—I remember the exact classroom—and asked to talk to me. There was a father-son banquet in town. Mr. Stark knew I didn’t have a dad. There was a good speaker I would like. Would I be interested in going with him?

I said no. Hey, teenagers do dumb things, and that registers right up there. But in a way it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he asked; he thought about me, he cared. That is a good teacher, and a good person.

So it was good to see Mr. Stark again last week after 34 years. Good to feel that handshake and slap on the back. Caledonia maybe has been good to him, like he said, but he’s been even better for Caledonia, and for all of us.

Too smart for her own dog-gone good ~ October 20, 1994

David Heiller

It finally dawned on me on Monday, and a chill went up my cliche-filled spine. This dog is too darn smart.

I’m referring to our Australian Shepherd, McKenzie. We got her a month ago from Kathy Horvath.

MacKenzie

Kathy is the biggest animal lover this side of Cassanova. She takes in homeless animals. McKenzie had been given to her because she kept running away from her home in Duluth (McKenzie did, not Kathy). The dog had learned how to open the door, and couldn’t resist the sound of children playing down the street.

Kathy and a group called Aussie Rescue in turn gave her to us. It was pretty much love at first sight, even for me. I didn’t want another dog. We already had one, a six-year-old flugel^-hound named Ida.

But the other three family members begged pretty shamelessly. “Let’s just try it, and if she doesn’t work out, we can take her back,” Cindy said. Yeah right.

McKenzie is hard not to like. She catches Frisbees with spectacular leaps. When we play catch with the football or baseball, she runs back and forth, hoping someone drops the ball so she can chase it. She carries a rubber ball through the house, chewing on it to make it squeak and hoping we’ll give it a toss. When we don’t, she bounces it on the floor herself like a basketball player.

She chases almost anything. Any chipmunk or rabbit or bird in our yard had better move fast when McKenzie is around. Three steps and she’s in a dead-run.

David with Ida and MacKenzie

If you shine a flashlight on the ground, she even chases the light. We tried it in the house, then we noticed that she bit holes in the linoleum floor. The only thing she doesn’t chase is cars, which is fine with us.

When you open the car door, she hops in and sits in the front seat, then looks at you with an expectant smile. “Where are we off to now?” she seems to ask.

At night, she lays in bed with us, until I kick her off. Cindy won^’t kick her off. If I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, she’ll be lying in my spot when I come back (McKenzie will, not Cindy). In the morning, I’ll find her cuddled up by Cindy. Then she’ll lay her head over Cindy and look at me and smile.

When we go outside toward the garden or the woods, McKenzie will take off ahead of us in a confident trot, as if she knows where we are going, and by George she’s going to show us the way.

She’s always happy. Her fur is silky. You can’t stop petting her.

A change occurred

Last week we started debating whether to take McKenzie on a trip to see my mother in Brownsville. I said no, and the others said yes, but we needed a unanimous vote for that, so McKenzie was going to stay home.

Malika showing a sick MacKenzie love and support.

That’s when a change came over McKenzie. When we came home from Sunday school on Oct. 16, she was laying in a window well. At first I thought she was trying to stay out of the rain. But she wouldn’t come when we called her.

Then she limped toward us, favoring her right front leg. Later that afternoon, she was favoring her left rear leg. By Sunday night, she could barely get up. She staggered when she walked, like she couldn’t keep her balance.

She wouldn’t sleep with us. She couldn’t jump on the bed. Our happy dog was now a sad dog. It was almost like she was depressed. She would barely eat. We worried about her all night.

On Monday morning we took her to the veterinarian. She had a fever of 104, two degrees above normal. The symptoms of lameness, lethargy, loss of appetite, and depression all pointed in one direction, and she was diagnosed with Lyme Disease.

McKenzie was given tetracycline to take three times a day. Cindy gave her the first one, and informed me that McKenzie WAS going to go to Brownsville with us. I had to agree.

And that’s when McKenzie’s miraculous recovery began. She perked up before the pill had even dissolved in her stomach. She went to work with us Monday and paraded from desk to desk. She smiled when people petted her silky fur. She “buried” a bone that Hazel gave her between my spare shoes in my office. She slept with us Monday night, and played football with us Tuesday morning before the school bus came.

It may be the first time in modern history that a dog has faked Lyme Disease in order to take a trip. Like I said, this dog is too darn smart.

She’ll be editing this paper before long, although some people think that doesn’t take a lot of brains. But that’s another story.

Sensing a perfect day ~ October 12, 2005

David Heiller

It was one of those fishing moments that don’t come along real often.

I had just brought a big sheepshead to the side of the canoe when something hit my other line. It was even bigger, and the way it fought, heavy and hugging the bottom, I knew it was another sheeper. This one finally surfaced by the first one, and for a few seconds my two rods sliced the air like a conductor at Carnegie Hall. Only this was much nicer than Carnegie Hall.

Both fish ended up in the bottom of the canoe, one 26 inches, the other 21 inches.

Some people aren’t real fond of freshwater drum, which is the fancy name for sheepshead. I like them fine. I want to try smoking some, and these two will work well for that experiment.

Autumn view towards the quarry at Fairy Rock

It It was a fitting end to a fine fall day. The sun was setting on Wisconsin, and the hills stretched to the north, dappled in calico. Brownsville ended the procession, jutting out further than the others. I’ve always liked the looks of those hills. They’ve been landmarks for many people, and they always convey a feeling of security and stability. The rest of the world can be going to heck, in fact it seems to be doing just that these days. But those hills aren’t going anywhere, and for some reason I take reassurance in that.

It’s that way with the river too. I can throw in my canoe and I know there will be fish waiting. I can sense them. My wife wonders why, if I can sense them so well, I don’t sense a few crappies instead of those sheepshead. But that’s not the point. The beauty is in the sensing.

That’s the way it was Sunday night. Further up the river a big flock of geese called to each other. They were settling in for the night, taking refuge in the refuge. Maybe some swans mixed in, some ducks too. It was a good sound to hear. They are noisy cusses, but it was music to my ears. It reminded me of where we are right now, the peak of a beautiful fall.

Another hike, this one in the late fall, early winter.
Alex, Laura, Cindy and Malika.

That peak hit me earlier in the day too. Five of us had hiked down into the Reno Valley. I walked with my nephew Alex and his girlfriend, Laura, while Cindy and her girlfriend, Sara and the dogs took off at a brisk pace ahead of us. (Why do women walk so much faster than men?) We didn’t meet a soul, which surprised, but didn’t disappoint me. The sun cut through the trees, which it couldn’t do just a few weeks ago. Alex pointed out a huge bird circling high over a bluff on our right. Another bluff further on to our left jutted over the valley. A hawk high-tailed it over that bluff, heading south. The area is a major migration route for hawks.

“Does that bluff have a name?” Alex asked.

“Probably,” I answered. I didn’t know it. “It’s too far from my territory?” That’s the way it is. Five miles from home and it’s wilderness in hill country.

Alex pointed out a path coming down the hill. “Deer trail,” I said. He knew that, but I had to sound like I knew something.

We came to a huge oak trunk that had been cut a few years back. I counted the rings, 135.

The mauve bluffs of Wisconsin at sunset.

Laura at some unnoticed point had followed her womanly genes and sped off ahead of us. Now she waited by a fork in the trail to make sure we would find the way that the gals had gone.

“I left a sign on the trail,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if you would see it so I waited.”

“Of course we would have seen it,” I said even before I did see it. You have to show confidence on a good hike. She had drawn an arrow in the dirt, about 18 inches long, pointing to the right. I don’t know if I would have seen that. I personally would have used three logs about six feet in length to make an arrow, like Melvin Miller taught us to do in Boy Scouts. But I didn’t tell Laura that. After all, she had waited for us.

We finally caught up with Cindy and Sara, who wondered what the heck had happened to us. Then we proceeded up the hill, a perfect hike on a perfect day followed by perfect fishing in the perfect place that we all call home.

Rattlesnakes are worth the effort ~ October 4, 2006

David Heiller

If you saw a rattlesnake, would you kill it?

I sometimes wonder about that. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and I respect that, but I can’t see why a person would kill a rattler.

I have to admit I once dispatched one, in the front yard of the parsonage where Gary and Maureen Meiners now live. That was in 1969, and there were so many Blair kids running around I figured it would nail one or two of them.

But chances are that would not have happened. The snake was probably a little out of its territory I could as easily have lifted it up with a shovel and moved it as the nearby ravine. It didn’t want to be there any more than I wanted it to.

Fear and emotion and a certain panicky dislike for snakes won out. Admit it, you see a snake and it startles the heck out of you. They just do. That goes way back to Genesis.

But I’d like to make a pitch for the lowly rattlesnake. For one thing, they are disappearing. You might scoff at that, but it’s true. When was the last time you saw one? People gathered them up by the thousands for their bounty over the past 50 years. The bounty numbers are incomplete, but here’s an example: In 1941, 5,957 bounties were paid in Houston County. In 1979, 4,955 bounties were paid.

That program ended in 1989, thankfully In 1996 timber rattlers were put on a list of threatened species.

Jaime Edwards, who is a rattlesnake specialist with the DNR, told me two weeks ago that she went to a prime rattlesnake spot for five years before she saw one snake there.

One of Edward’s career goals is to see that there are still rattlesnakes when she retires. She is 37 years old.

Her co-worker, Dave Spiering, said some spots that historically had a lot of snakes have been totally wiped out. All the snakes are gone. You might not believe that, but I do.

It might seem unlikely, especially if you live in some places around here like the Winnebago Valley, because snake encounters there are not unusual. About 40 rattlers were reported there just as as road kills last year.

But that’s deceiving, because Winnebago Valley is probably the richest rattlesnake habitat in Minnesota. It’s not like that anywhere else. It’s almost a last bastion for them.

There’s also not a lot of wiggle room for snakes, pardon the pun. A rattlesnake doesn’t even mate until it is 9-11 years old. And it only mates every other year. It gives .birth to 7-11 young. That’s not a prolific creature.

A lot of their habitat is disappearing too. The hills that used to be bare around here in all those old photos are now covered with red cedar. That eliminates snake habitat, particularly the sunny rocks that the females need for gestation of their eggs.

I was glad to go out with Edwards and Spiering last week and see that they are working to preserve the remnant prairies and the rattlesnakes. I think it`s money well spent.

I actually take pride in the fact that we have rattlers around here. What other part of Minnesota has those bragging rights?

There are no documented human deaths in Minnesota due to a rattlesnake bite,

So why kill them?

If you have a snake in an area, move it using a shovel or hoe. Or call the sheriff or state park or game warden. They will find someone to move it.

I think it’s worth the effort.