Growing up in the sixth pew ~ February 19, 1987

David Heiller

We stood at the back of the church, hand in hand. A scattering of people spread through the back pews on the left hand side, our side. The very back pew sat vacant, but nobody sits in the very back pew of a church. It’s bad manners.

So hand in hand, we stepped forward one pew, two pews, three pews, breaking new ground as we progressed six pews up, the farthest ever for us. No more hiding in the back of the church. The sixth pew challenged us, and we took it up like soldiers of the cross, marching as to war.

Α solitary figure satin the sixth pew, as we slid in beside her. I recognized Mardy Youngberg. She smiled at us. I nodded back and gulped. Here was the test, the sixth pew, all those people behind us taking notes, and Mardy Youngberg at our side. Ι could just read her column of Bremen News in this week’s American:

Α mild uproar occurred last Sunday at Faith Lutheran Church as David Heiller and his…

A tiny voice interrupted my thoughts.

“I want to go home, Daddy.”

My son, Noah, looked at me. The tiny voice echoed into a louder whisper: “I want to go home, Daddy.”

Noah had been looking at Mardy Youngberg too and he eyed her once more as he repeated the question. Here he was, sitting in the sixth pew, Carnegie Hall to a kid three and a half years old, with a full audience staring from behind and he’s got to be wedged in between his old man and a lady who looks like his grandmother. How the heck can you have any fun in church like that?

Child raising, reduced to its simplest form, is nothing more complicated than a series of threats, promises, and bribes, all of which can best be wielded when the right powers prevail. I carefully noted Noah’s expression as he eyed Mardy Youngberg and slid closer to me. This was not his usual church turf. Usually he had an entire pew farther in the back. Maybe two pews. In his prime, rivaled a busy bowling alley with his noisy crawling, stomping, pounding and whining. But blocked into the sixth pew like that, he couldn’t even lie down, let alone run wild and free.

So I held the power, on a sheer stroke of luck and Mardy Youngberg, and Ι knew it, and Noah knew I knew it.

Noah and David, a fine team!

‘We’ll go to Landwehr’s after church,” I promised. “I don’t want to go to Landwehr’s,” Noah said. “All right then, we won’t.”

“I want to go to Landwehr’s,” he said two seconds later.

“Then sit quietly, please.”

And that’s what Noah did. We read Little Red Riding Hood until the first hymn began. Noah sat when we sat, he stood when we stood, he even folded his hands on cue. I greased the wheels a little with a plastic bag of raisins, granola, and Cherrios. That’s the bribery part Ι mentioned.

Pastor Judith Wilt started the sermon, while Noah picked Cheerios out, one by one, and chewed them, one by one.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so,” Pastor Wilt said to begin her sermon. “Everyone knows that song by little children.”

“I’m not little, I’m big,” Noah said in a voice almost loud enough for Pastor Wilt to hear.

Mrs. Youngberg glanced at me, and smiled at Noah. Noah smiled back.

“Yes, you’re big, so you have to be quiet in church,” Ι whispered. Noah sat quietly through the rest of the sermon.

Αs the service ended, we headed hand in hand for the door, leading the way in a march of triumph.

Pastor Wilt reached down to shake Noah’s hand. He looked up at her in surprise, as he shook her hand. “Aren’t you going to bless my head?” he asked her, putting his hand to his brow.

“That’s only at communion, at the front of the church,” she answered in a somber tone that hid her smile.

“Pastor Wilt forgot to bless my head,” Noah complained as he put on his coat. Here he had sat quietly through an entire church service, in the sixth pew no less, and all he gets is a handshake? Not even a pat on the head?

Well, maybe next time. And who knows? The seventh pew is beckoning.

The day went to the dogs ~ February 8, 1990

David Heiller

The temperature had hit 30 degrees when I pulled into Jim Sales yard south of Askov. It was a beautiful February Sunday morning by our standards, but a little warm for Jim’s family.

His family of dogs, that is.

Jim Sales owns a bunch of them, stout-hearted, young-hearted, good-hearted dogs. You get the impression Jim is from that mold too.

They’re sled dogs, real sled dogs, Malamutes and Samoyeds, and when I pulled up with two kids, they opened up like a pack of kids, jumping and yelling. My daughter Mollie wouldn’t get out of the car at first. She seemed to realize she may have met her match. Even the day care doesn’t sound that loud on a Friday afternoon.

It was a musical sound, not ear-splitting like some dog barks; more like the sound of a pack of coyotes on a winter night close up.

Jim and his son, Jon, hooked up four of the Malamutes to Jim’s sled while Noah, Mollie (now in my arms) and I stood to the side. It takes a lot of muscle to bring the dogs to the sled. They weigh about 70 pounds each, and can easily pull 100 pounds apiece.

Jim grabbed his trail lead-dog, Kemo, by the harness and waltzed him along on his two hind legs. “They’ll pull you to death,” he said. He steered a wide circle around Smuta, a Samoyed who was staying home this trip.

“These two have a thing about who’s the dominant male,” Jim explained.

Smuta and the other Samoyed stayed home because it was too hot. Even the Malamutes don’t like this 30-degree nonsense. Anything warmer than 10-above and they get hot under the collar.

I took some students dog-sledding in Ely, Minnesota once-upon-a-time. These junior high students had as much fun as David and Noah and the dogs at Jim's house, and way more fun than Malika had.

Finally the four dogs were in place: Kemo in the lead, Anana next in the team position, then Demon and Tobuk as wheel dogs, closest to the sled.

Noah and Mollie climbed into the sled first, then I kneeled behind them. Jim hopped on back, and we took off. And I mean took off. You don’t think of sled dogs as going fast, but sitting a few inches off the snow, eyes level with a dog’s rear end, and you feel like you’re moving, Jim figured they had a load of 400 pounds. They didn’t look like they were even pulling hard. That was easy for me to say.

“Kemo, huh, hup,” Jim shouted. “Hey, hey, hup.” Jim half-ran, half-rode behind the sled, talking to the dogs. He explained that “hup” means go, probably from the Eskimo word for “huk.” He thinks that’s where football players got the word “hike” too.

Through the Woods

We leave the open field, and enter Jim’s woods. “Haw, Kemo, good boy.” Jim runs ahead again as we take a right turn. “He doesn’t always listen to me,” Jim says of his leader. “He doesn’t think he has to.”

Kid check: Noah has been smiling most of the way. Mollie has been whimpering. Except for when we go down a hill. Then they both laugh. There’s a big difference between age 6½ and 4½ when it comes to riding on a dogsled through fields and woods.

We come to a small hill, and Jim runs to the lead and starts to pull with the team. “I’m a team member,” he says between breaths. “They seem to respond—when they know you’re working—better.”

That’s my cue to get out of the sled. I push the sled up the hill while Jim pulls. The dogs are feeling the heat now.

The trail snakes through an old stand of birch and maple. It’s right off a [Les] Blacklock calendar, pure white, birch and snow and sun. “I was getting firewood off here, but my son won’t let me now,” Jim says. Mighty pretty.

I ask the kids how they are doing. Noah is fine, but Mollie wants to head back. Soon we’re back on the field. Jim points out some coyote tracks. He says they come calling in the night, and his dogs call back. “We’ve got pretty understanding neighbors,” he said.

We pass a ditch that leads into a marsh, and Kemo suddenly swerves into it. “Ho, ho Kemo!” Jim yells, chasing his leader while I stomp on the sled’s brake. “Must have seen a grouse,” he says. He untangles Kemo, I turn the sled, and we are heading home again.

Home again. The dogs know it. They kick into overdrive and take off. Jim does too, running alongside. I’m left in their dog tracks. I hope I’m in that kind of shape when I’m 57, I think to myself. Heck, I wish I was in that good of shape RIGHT NOW.

Jon comes out to meet the team as it pulls up by the row of dog houses under the pine trees. Jim tries to plant the snow hook into the snow, but there are only a few inches, and it doesn’t hold. So he and Jon unhitch the dogs together, one by one. This time the dogs walk on all fours back to their houses while Jim holds the harness. No waltzing now. They’re all danced out after that two mile run.

Mollie walks up to Anana. “Anana” is the Eskimo word for “little girl.” Mollie pets her, and Anana says thanks with a leap and a slurp. They rubbed noses, that’s for sure, and it sends Mollie back to me in tears. She’s had enough of that little girl.

In fact, she can’t stop sniffling enough to say thank you, so Noah and I say a couple extras for her. “That’s OK, I saw her smile a few times out in the woods,” Jim says.

It was definitely a day worth smiling about.