The terrible twos eternal ~ September 17, 1987

David Heiller

“Dere’s Pastor Judas (Judith),” Malika remarked in a clear voice as we walked down the aisle at church last Sunday.

“Sshh,” Cindy whispered, as we swing into the fifth pew. “You have to talk like this.”

“You have to talk like dis?” Malika answered in her clear voice.

“Sshh,” I tried, “no, like this.”

“Like dis?” she asked in that same voice. “Dere’s Pastor Judas.”

Malika at two: more at home in a tree, than in a pew.

Cindy and I sighed in unison. Malika had wanted to go to church with Noah, her four-year-old brother who can now behave in church relatively well. We knew we had to give her a sporting chance.

Malika squirmed off Mom’s lap, and walked to the far end of the pew. She eyed Mark Johnson carefully. Mark had sat down in the same pew with us, not knowing he would have been better off in a hornet’s nest. Then Malika stood up and grinned at the folks behind us, a pew full of teenagers. Malika squeezed past me and grinned across the aisle to the pews on the right side of the church. I glanced over to see Ann and Shelley Kosloski grinning back. Church hadn’t even started yet and she already knew half the people there.

Church began with Pastor Judith’s pleasant “Good morning.”

“Dere’s Pastor Judas,” Malika repeated, loud enough for the pew behind us to whisper a laugh.

While the congregation sang The Church’s One Foundation, Cindy and I passed Malika back and forth like a human football. We each got to sing the last line of the hymn, spying the words between Mollie’s flying limbs.

“Where’s the food?” Cindy whispered.

“Where’s the food?” Noah, our son, whispered. “Where’s deh food, Dadee?” Malika said, not in a whisper at all.

The pew behind us leaned forward to see what the food was.

I opened two plastic cups, mixed with Wheat Chex and giant pretzels. They seemed like a good choice on the rush to church. But as the church quieted down, our pew filled with the noise of tiny teeth breaking and grinding cereal and pretzels. The noises might not have been heard in any other room, but in the middle of Pastor Judith’s sermon, they sounded like someone cracking nuts.

"See me? I know that this is daddy's radio."

I could hear the kids in the pew behind us, breathing hard through their noses, trying not to laugh. Malika sensed her audience. She carried her cup of cereal down the pew, showing them to Mark. He smiled at her again. She took the hymnals out of their rack, and began to pour the cereal in the empty space, until Cindy reached over quickly and grabbed her arm. Malika dumped the cereal on the floor. The pew behind us swayed, as the kids there fought to hold back their laughter.

After the sermon and offering, the congregation stood for the offertory response. Malika had by now picked up and dropped and picked up the cereal—several times. Then she moved toward me, and tried to squeeze past, toward Ann and Shelley Kosloski. I didn’t dare glance to see if they were still smiling. Instead, I blocked Malika off with my legs. She knew she couldn’t squeeze by, so she returned to Cindy. As we sat down, I landed squarely on her plastic cup and half a dozen Wheat Chex.

In front of us, De Ann Zuk sat calmly with her son, Jonathan, nestled quietly against her shoulder. Jonathan was holding a plastic bag of bubble gum. He quietly worked a blue piece over with his tongue, showing it to Noah, who answered by grinding away on his pretzel. Jonathan Zuk is two years old, and he did not say a peep through church. He maybe was too busy watching Malika.

Ride the horsey, that works for Malika.

Malika squirmed from me to Cindy as we sang the final hymn Lead On, Oh King Eternal. “This is crazy,” I heard Cindy mutter. She lifted Malika onto her shoulders. This was like a march of triumph to her, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on an ass. The kids behind us couldn’t hold back any longer. Their snickers burst out like bubbles. I glanced up at Mollie. She was using Cindy’s head as a drum, and keeping pretty good rhythm with the hymn at that. She was the queen eternal of two-year-olds.

Noah was joining in too. He moved lightly from one foot to the other, in a quick, tip-toe step. “I have to go pee, Dad,” he said.

Church service came to an end finally, mercifully. Malika descended from Cindy’s shoulders triumphantly. We cleaned up the debris, the blankets and books and crumbs that by then had nearly pushed_, Mark Johnson clear off the end of the pew. People filed by us down the aisle, with cheerful hellos. The teenagers ducked out, trying to hide their grins. George Brabec stepped forward to shake my hand. He looked proud of Cindy and me for surviving an hour with Malika in church. Or could it have been a handshake of sympathy, as he recalled church services with his grandson, Jason, who was Malika’s most serious challenger for the Terrible Twos honor?

Cindy and I haven’t decided if we will bring Malika to church again next week, or whether we will wait a year or two.

There’s nothing finer than music ~ October 13, 1994

David Heiller

My son came home from school two weeks ago with a trombone. I felt like the man who watched his mother-in. law drive off a cliff in his new Cadillac. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

On the one hand, Cindy and I want our children to take up an instrument. It’s good to learn tο read music. It’s a good school activity. He’ll get in with a good bunch of kids. Music is just plain good.

Malika sent me this photo as a homemade
postcard. (A trick she learned from her Daddy.) 
She and David loved to perform 
together both in public and in the kitchen.
They didn't play together nearly enough, though.

But a trombone? By an 11-year-old? In a small house, where lives a man who can hear stairs creak at 50 paces?

We tested it out on Friday night. I was playing the banjo in the kitchen, which is the best room in the world for any musical instrument.

Noah and our daughter, Malika, were playing with puzzles in the living room. They weren’t fighting (for a change), so I risked upsetting that fragile ecosystem by bringing out the banjo.

Now the banjo isn’t exactly the quietest instrument. That’s one reason I can’t get too righteous about the trombone. But when the urge hits me to play music, I play.

And darned if that trombone didn’t sound good. Noah was able to follow the tunes with his trombone, at least to dad’s Dumbo-like ears. Maybe beauty is in the ear of the beholder.

There’s nothing finer than playing music with your family. Here’s hoping for the best for boy and trombone. But even if that match doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the line for Noah and music.

Music is what you make of it. I didn’t play an instrument in high school. I can’t read music. But I love to play and sing. If it brings you joy, that’s all you can ask. If it brings others joy, that’s a bonus.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE musicians is Red Hansen. He plays the piano accordion, and sometimes I play with him. We usually need an excuse to do this, like the Askov Fair Variety Show or an open house at the Askov American (this Friday from 9-noon).

Red and David at the
Askov American office, 1994.

Then we practice. I drive out to his house. Sometime’s he’s sitting in his porch, playing when I arrive. There’s nothing finer than the sound of homemade music drifting off a front porch.

Some of the songs we both know, like Amazing Grace or Grandfather’s Clock. Then Red will play something new. New to me that is. He’ll say, “You know that one, don’t you Dave?”

I’m always tempted to say, “Oh yeah, that one.” I should know it, but I was born 50 years too late. And I don’t dare lie, because then I’ll have to play it.

Red and David's last public appearance was at the Community Theatre in Barnum. Cynthia Johnson was presenting a series of Scandinavian folk tales. David played the button-box for one of them. He and Red played old Danish tunes before the opening curtain. They were a hit!

So I’ll say, “Νο, I don’t” in a sheepish voice, and Red will play, “Believe Me of All Those Endearing Young Charms,” and teach me a new song. There’s nothing finer than learning a new song with Red Hansen.

Sometimes even Red will get stuck on a song. He won’t remember its title, or how it goes. He’ll slap his head and say, “Come on, Hansen.” That makes me feel better. He’s forgotten more songs than I’ll ever know.

AND THERE’S NOTHING finer than a good live musical concert. I’ve been reminded of that twice in the last month and a half. The first time came when Dave Ray and Tony Glover played at Gampers in Moose Lake.

Tony autographed a harmonica book of his that I had bought back in 1975 or so. What a thrill to meet him and hear him play. And listening to Dave Ray play his guitar and sing was spellbinding. He sang and sweated through his shirt and through the night.

Their music took me back to my childhood, when my brother would bring Kohner, Ray, and Glover records home from college. And here they were, 30 years later, still playing to small crowds in a coffeehouse.

Stuart Davis played at Gampers last Sunday. His guitar sparkled too, and his original words twisted and turned in every fresh, original direction you could imagine. He’s a fantastic young musician from Minnesota.

When we clapped and clapped for an encore, he did three more songs. He didn’t want to stop. We didn’t want him to either.

…There’s nothing finer.

Remembering Mother Nature’s best friend ~ November 2, 1989

David Heiller

The porch at Bob Eikum’s house in Moose Lake always seemed special to me. It had no lights, no heater, no glass to cover the screens and keep the cold out. Bob and his wife, Boots, had planned it that way. The better to view Mother Nature, to let her come into your life.

Bob Eikum, Mother Nature
and David's friend.

Mother Nature came into that porch a lot, sometimes with a house full of people at an Eikum potluck, sometimes alone. Even at the end, cold and raw in September, she came to settle on Bob as he sat in a wheelchair one last time, soaking it up on his porch.

Nature was Bob Eikum’s life, from the time he grew up in Mankato, while he studied forestry at the University of Minnesota, when he worked as a forester in Alabama and Florida and Tennessee, as a Boy Scout leader, every job he worked, he worked with nature.

When he retired and moved to Moose Lake with Boots in 1978, he worked with nature as a photographer and as what he called an environmental consultant. He could just as well have called himself an environmental protector, but that would have been too grand for Bob. He never talked about his accomplishments. I was surprised one day to see his office wall covered with awards from past jobs. He was too busy working on something new to brag about the past.

Many awards came from conservation groups in Florida, where he had fought with developers in wealthy Volusia County. That’s where the ground opens up every so often and swallows someone’s Ferrari. I remember one time, eating breakfast with Bob at Chef’s Cafe in Moose Lake, how his eyes shined when he saw a picture in the paper of a car sticking out of a Florida sink hole. He thought it was poetic justice. He didn’t have to say, “I told you so,” because he HAD told them so.

Bob found a few different kinds of sink holes in Minnesota too, or maybe they found him. Like in 1980 when people were interested in mining uranium in Carlton County, Bob helped organize FORE, Folks Organized for Responsible Energy, a grass-roots group that turned into the Minnesota Coalition on Uranium. He helped people see the nonsense in uranium mining around here.

Bob could smell nonsense from a good distance, like the plan to subdivide the Log Drive Creek area west of Askov. Bob joined with other people to testify against this would-be atrocity. He researched it, wrote about it in newspaper columns, spoke out about it, made phone calls. He didn’t stop it single-handedly, but he was always there, someone you could call day or night someone who could answer your questions, someone who would defend you, if you were defending nature.

Boots was his partner in these things, though they took different approaches. Bob would attack a problem in a soft-spoken, academic way. Boots showed more fire. I remember one time after a public hearing in Hinckley, we were sitting around a table at Tobies. I asked Boots what she thought of the land developer’s arguments. “I wanted to slap his face,” Boots replied in her Alabama drawl. I smiled and thought, “If the developer could hear her, he would save himself a lot of time and trash his stupid plans on the spot.” How could he win against a one-two punch like Bob and Boots?

Not all his causes were popular. The fight over pine trees in the Moose Lake School parking lot seemed frivolous to a lot of people, but not Bob. Cutting down one tree needlessly, especially a 100-year-old Norway, was pretty serious. And I remember how mad he became when National Wildlife Federation President Jay Hare met with President Ronald Reagan, who Bob thought hurt the environment tremendously. That was like meeting with the enemy. There was little room for compromise in such matters with Bob. I always took heart in his stubbornness, even when I disagreed. He was someone you could count on, a constant in a world of vacillators.

Bob wrote a column for the Askov American called Minnesota Outdoors. I don’t think writing came easy for him, and he sure didn’t write for the money, because we could never afford to pay him a dime. I suspect he did it because it was one more way for him to share nature, to tell about wild flowers, or the North Shore, or edible plants, or recycling. His pictures were marvelous. The newspaper could never capture their color and beauty.

A bitter person might say that Nature played a trick on Bob, because he suffered from poor health, especially in his later years when he should have been enjoying life. Diabetes literally knocked him flat, until he was bound to a wheel chair, until he asked to leave his beloved porch and go into a nursing home.

Yes, maybe Bob should have lived longer than his 68 years. Maybe he should have died on his porch, or on his bog east of Moose Lake under the stars of a cold winter night, like Sigurd Olson. But when you think of what Bob left behind, you realize he lived at least long enough to teach us all a lesson or two, some through his words and pictures, the rest through his best friends, the pines and rocks, the water and earth, his Minnesota Outdoors.

Dealing with an awful mystery ~ October 29, 1998

David Heiller

Lorely walked from her bed to the kitchen table, and sat down. It didn’t take long before Collin was there to give her a big hug.

Grandma O and the doll house she 
assembled for Malika one Christmas. 

Lorely’s face held pure joy mixed with a little bliss. A hug from a six-year-old grandson first thing Sunday morning must feel pretty good for grandma.

Lorely didn’t sit there long, maybe 15 minutes. She was in a lot of pain. She has had cancer for more than three years, and it seems to be getting worse fast.

She can barely walk or catch her breath. She is most comfortable lying in bed. She hardly eats. She’s staying with us so that Cindy, her daughter, can take care of her.

Some of her grandchildren know the score. I realized that when I saw our son, Noah, sitting on the bed next to Lorely a couple weeks ago, telling about his day, asking about his grandfather and the Good Old Days. He wouldn’t normally do that. But he’s doing it now. Our daughter, Malika, has been asking a lot of questions too.

Nancy, Mom and Cindy on a trek to
 Duluth and Enger Tower. 
She's wearing her wig, but feeling alright, 
happy to be on an adventure with us.

Some of the children, like little Collin, have sensed that something isn’t quite right. They know that when Grandma sits in the chair and asks for a hug, there’s no time for hesitation, it’s just time for a big embrace.

Either way, it's heartening to see, because they aren’t afraid of what is happening, and because they will cherish those moments in the future as much as Lorely cherishes them now.

We hustled around the house on Sunday morning, getting ready for church, where Noah was being confirmed.

I asked Cindy if Lorely could go to church. Seeing Noah get confirmed meant a lot to her. She had been looking forward to it for about three weeks, or maybe three years.

Cindy said no, her mother couldn’t possibly sit through a church service. A week ago she could have. Not now.

Collin, Noah, Malika, Claire,
Grandma O and Grace at the cabin.

So we went to church without her. She stayed home alone. That didn’t seem right, but it’s what she wanted.

During the service I thought about Lorely several times. The ministers have prayed for her often in the past year. So have other people. I’ve felt her in the church with us several times, during certain songs. One that I still remember was Beautiful Savior.

I think she was there with us in spirit again last Sunday, there with Noah when he said his vows.

Grandma wanted a picture of her
and Claire, both chrome-domes.

After church, when we got home, I went into Lorely’s room and told her a little about the service. It had gone okay. Noah did a good job. He had stood up straight and didn’t scowl. He spoke clearly, and sang a song with the others without mumbling too much. Those are victories for a teenage boy when it comes to confirmation.

Lorely said she wished she could have been there. She held my hand very tight, and fought back tears.

Cindy and her sister, Nancy, and sister-in-law, Therese, spent a lot of time with Lorely on Sunday. They talked to her, rubbed her back. Women are good at that, better than me at least.

It must have been comforting for Lorely. I can’t imagine what she is going through. But I know I would want that if I were her. Her devotion to her children is paying dividends.

I don’t have much experience with an illness like cancer. It’s a mystery to me. It comes and goes seemingly with a mind of its own.

Doctors might disagree. But doctors have tried enough treatments and prescriptions on Lorely to make me think they don’t have the answers either.

What the future holds for Lorely, and for her circle of loved ones, I can’t say. We’re taking it one day at a time, while hoping for gentleness and strength and a little help from above.

I wrote the above column on Monday, October 26. It has a sad ending. Lorely Olson died early Wednesday morning, October 28, 1998.

So long to a champion ~ October 31, 2002

David Heiller

There are certain moments that I will never forget. It’s funny how they mostly involve death.

Like when Tom Pringle came into the fifth grade classroom on November 22, 1963, and told us that President Kennedy had been shot. Or when Reverend Graupman sat down at our kitchen table on July 18, 1969, and told us that Lynette had drowned.

October 25 will be one of those days, the time when Cindy called and said that Paul Wellstone had died. The gray day outside suddenly got a foothold on my heart.

I turned on the radio. The announcer said that Paul’s wife had died too, and his daughter and everyone on the plane, and the light faltered even more.

Paul Wellstone: Man of the people.

My friend Dean Dronen from Sandstone called a little later. I could tell he needed to talk to someone. So did I. He told me how much he thought of Wellstone, what a friend he was to veterans. Dean is the veterans’ service officer in Pine County. Wellstone could not have received a higher compliment.

That night we had plans to play cards with some friends. But we didn’t play cards. Instead, we sat around and talked about Paul. We watched the news. We shed some tears and laughed too. It felt so good to do that with people who felt like Cindy and me.

It occurred to me later that everyone in that room in our house had met Paul Wellstone, had talked to him. That says as much about Paul Wellstone as anything. He was a man of the people.

How else could you see a picture of him taken by Christine Carlson that’s printed with this column? My bet is that she doesn’t have pictures of too many other U.S. Senators.

The same is true for this newspaper.

This is a photocopy of Christine 
Carlson's photo that we printed in 
the Askov American. 

She writes: This photo of a young 
Paul Wellstone was taken at Gene
and Becky Lourey's house. 
It was a get-together for Joan Growe. 
The date is September of 1984.
 My deepest  sympathy to the family 
and the state of Minnesota.

He stopped at the Askov American when he was running for the U.S. Senate in 1989. I visited with him for half an hour. I had never met him before, and knew little about him, but boy did he impress me.

I was used to dry, condescending politicians, talking heads who looked over your shoulder at the next press stop.

Paul was different. He listened. He looked you in the eye. He believed in what he said.

“Paul Wellstone visited the Askov American on June 29, and left a strong impression that he can beat Sen. Rudy Boschwitz in the U.S. Senate race in 1990,” I wrote the next week.

And Wellstone did just that.

I asked him what he was most proud of in his political career. He paused for quite a while, then said he was proud of getting people to vote, and of focusing on issues that affect people’s lives.

He said he was proud of voicing issues of rural Minnesota to people in cities, and voicing urban concerns in rural Minnesota. “I really like to think of myself as someone who can bring people to­gether,” he said.

Thirteen years and two terms later, he had lived up to those words.

It was no coincidence that the first person to call me after Cindy was a retired military man praising a senator whose last vote in office was in opposition to a war resolution.

By the time you are reading this, the memorial services for Paul and Sheila and Marcia and Tom and Mary and Will and Richard and Michael will be over. We’ll all be moving on to the political side of the tragedy. It will probably get ugly again.

But I’ll never forget last Friday, October 25, nor the man who we lost, a true leader—a champion—who never lost sight of the common man.

A closed-mouthed, largemouth tale ~ October 12, 1989

David Heiller

Every year about this time, Bob Dutcher comes to the American office and says “I’ve got some fish I’d like to show you, Dave.”

Then I grab my camera and follow him outside, where he and a fishing partner hold up chain of fish.

David, on a later, more successful trip.

That’s when I go blubbery and make a fool of myself. I cannot look at a five pound largemouth without weeping.

So last Friday Bob came into the office and said, “I’ve got some fish I’d like to show you, Dave.” Sure enough, he and his friend, Mike Anderson, held up a chain of fish. This time he had TWO five-pound bass on it, along with an assortment of other fish. (You don’t notice other fish when you are in the company of five pound bass.) I can’t describe a five pound bass. If they were people, they would be weight lifters or pro football players. They are almost grotesque; they are so huge and fat.

I held up well as I took the pictures, asked all the right questions, how they caught them, the bait they used. But I didn’t ask WHERE they caught the fish, because I knew what Bob would say, with his fish-eating smile:

“A local lake.”

Back in the office, after I had quit crying, I decided to try my luck at the elusive five-pound bass. The next morning, Noah and I headed out with a bucket of sucker minnows to a local lake. I had decided on Sand Lake, like Harley Sylves­ter had recommended at the bait shop. But at the last minute I changed my mind to Smith Lake.

As we sat in the front seat of the car, Noah as­ked me a question. “If you saw that guy from Askov going fishing right now, would you fol­low him?” He had this crooked smile on his face. I looked at him in shock.

A six-year-old poses a moral question.

I had been thinking just that same thing all morning. And to have a six-year-old pose such an unthinkable, moral question, one that hit at the very root of honesty and fair play.

I answered with a crooked smile of my own in one-half second: “YES!”

At Smith Lake, we parked our car behind a pick-up truck, unloaded our boat, and pushed off. Another boat drifted ahead of us, but I couldn’t see how they were doing. The wind blew us coldly across the lake behind them, along the lily pads. Noah had forgotten his stocking cap and a mitten in the car. He started complaining about the weather almost im­mediately.

Noah caught a small northern, maybe a pound, and threw it back. I pulled in a three pound northern. That was it. No bass, no other strikes.

After two hours, we headed in, shivering both from cruel cold and bulging bladders. There^’s nothing quite as painful as sitting in a boat with a kid who has to go to the bathroom on a cold day, unless you have to go yourself.

As we floated near the boat landing, the other boat on the lake, the one we had been drifting exactly behind, passed us by. There sat Bob Dutcher and Mike Anderson! I waved and yelled at Bob. He stopped. “I staked out your house last night and followed you here!” I said with a laugh. Bob didn’t smile.

“Catch any?” he asked. I held up my measly northern.

“How about you,” I returned. Mike held up a chain of fish. At the top was another five-pound bass! Now Bob smiled.

We returned to Smith Lake that evening, and caught a few more northerns. But the bass? That’s Bob Dutcher’s domain. I’ll keep trying though. At least I know the lake. Smith Lake. Or was it Jones Lake. I can’t seem to remember…

The family that eats together ~ October 24, 1996

David Heiller

A column in the Duluth News Tribune on October 10 got me thinking.

John Rosemond wrote that a family should eat a minimum of five relaxed evening meals per week where there isn’t the need to go somewhere immediately afterward.

Miss Emma joined us after dinner. (I never used my 
whole chair Emma found this habit of mine useful.)

His point in the column was that family values and strength of character are built around places like the supper table.

He writes: “Unfortunately, too many children these days are growing up in the back seats of their parents’ cars, talking to the backs of their parents’ heads and eating fast food while on the run from one largely irrelevant activity to another.”

I agree with his point of view. It’s something our family does every morning and most evenings. We sit down together and eat together.

At the breakfast meal, it’s a chance to see what the kids have going for their day, or what Cindy and I have planned. It’s a chance to air a problem, or to tell about what happened the previous day.

The supper meal is the same. We talk about our days, tell how school or work went, find out what homework we have.

The television or radio gets shut off, the phone gets hung up, we say or sing grace, and a little peace and quiet settles over the house. Everything seems a little more settled, a little more manageable, when meal time arrives.

Eating together is a good time to get a feel for how things are going. Sometimes not a lot of words are exchanged. Sometimes we aren’t all it good moods. Someone might be angry at something or someone. These things often get worked out during the meal, at least to a point that is better than when the meal began.

Often when the meal is over, I slide my chair back and pat my leg, and one of the kids comes and sits on my lap. So does our dog, MacKenzie. It’s an irresistible call to kid and dog, and sometimes to my wife, when I pat my leg. It’s a good way to end the meal.

A classic example of after dinner lap-sitting
at Randy and Therese's house.
(left to right: David, Rosie, Collin, Therese, Grace.)

I used to see my uncle Wilbur hold his daughters on his lap like that, and I always thought he was a sissy. What an idiot I was.

Our kitchen table is the same table that I sat at when I was growing up. We always ate supper at 5:30 sharp. It was never 5:15 or 5:45. We were a 5:30 family.

There were eight kids around that small table, plus Mom, which seems impossibly crowded. It seems plenty full with four of us now. We had a bench on one side, which was against a wall, and being the youngest, I got stuck in the middle, with my brother Danny on one side and my sister Jeanne on the other. We always sat in the same place.

My oldest brother, Glenn sat at one end. I always thought he was lucky sitting at the end. It was the place for a king, and Glenn acted like a king there. He would watch our manners closely. He wasn’t afraid to criticize eating habits and sometimes he would grab or hit someone who acted out of line.

Sometimes a brother or sister would retaliate, like the time Jeanne dropped a pie on his head. She said it was an accident, but no one believes that.

Mom sat at the other end of the table. Next to her was Lynette, whom Mom had to feed because Lynette had cerebral palsy and couldn’t use her arms. Then it was Kathy and Mary and Sharon. Sometimes one of the sisters would feed Lynette.

Supper was a time to say a fast prayer of “Come Lord Jesus be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed,” and then to eat. I could never figure out how food could be considered a gift. It was just food to me, and usually pretty good food.

The extended family version of eating together. 
No children's table for us!

I don’t know if eating supper like that built character, but it sure built muscle. I remember one time we had baked potatoes, and I wouldn’t eat the skins. Glenn knew that a girl in my grade, Ann Wiedman, was taller than me, and he knew it bothered me. I guess I had talked about it at the supper table.

He told me that if I ate the potato skins, that I would soon be taller than Ann Wiedman. So I started eating my potato skins, and the skins of the other siblings who didn’t want theirs. I really wanted to be taller than Ann Wiedman.

Lo and behold, pretty soon I did outgrow Ann Wiedman! It was a miracle, which I attributed to brother Glenn and not Mother Nature.

The supper table saw a lot of changes in our house. It saw Sharon leave, then Glenn, then Kathy and Mary and Jeanne and Danny. They all grew up and left home. It saw an empty chair when Lynette died in 1969. And finally I left, and the table had just Mom to keep it company. She passed the table on to me. I felt honored by that, and I still do. If tables could talk, it would have some stories.

Sports is just sports ~ October 12, 2000

David Heiller                                                                                                                                                                                     

“How did you sleep?” Cindy asked when I woke up on Tuesday morning.

“Great,” I replied. “I slept the sleep of a Vikings victory.”

And it was true. Monday nights I don’t often sleep well, as I ponder what the heck to put in the Askov American for that week.

But the Vikings had won, and I had drifted off to sleep with scenes of the, win playing through my smiling head.

Of course, there is another side of this coin.

I saw an old college friend, Scott, on Saturday. I hadn’t seen him for a couple years, so we tried to catch up on each other’s lives, which for guys means talking about sports. I was shocked to hear that he didn’t care to watch the Vikings, and hadn’t for several years. He said he was disgusted with their pampered egos and their silly antics. But he also said he couldn’t stand the roller coaster of emotions when they lose.

He didn’t use those words. Only newspaper editors use words like that. But translated from Martian, that’s what he meant.

My son and I watched the Vikings game on Monday night together. When they fell behind late in the game, I turned to him and said, “Now I know why Scott doesn’t watch the Vikings.”

Our smaller Vikings fan.

Yet they won, and I slept well, and that’s one reason why I do watch them.

Another reason I like sports is that it is something I can share with my son, who is 17. We don’t always have a lot to talk about, and the Vikings bridge that gap.

But dealing with losing is a big challenge, something that both children and adults have to deal with.

I remember last year, after the New York Mets lost in the playoffs. The final game ended at midnight. It was a tough loss. I knew my friend, Steve, who is a big Mets fan, would still be awake. So I called him at midnight, which is something that I would not do with anyone unless I was the bearer of bad news. In a sense, I was that grim messenger, although Steve already knew the score.

Steve was indeed awake. He was almost despondent. He said with some bitterness that his kids had gone to bed, had given up on his beloved Mets. He had told them the game wasn’t over, but they hadn’t believed. Maybe they were like Scott and didn’t want to have their hearts mauled.

Steve was about as sad as a person could be without involving a death in the family.

We talked about the game, about this player and that play. I let Steve do most of the talking. I think it helped him. At one point he even said something like, “I’m glad you understand.”

Sports is just sports, but in a way that’s like saying water is just water. They are both pretty important in our lives, as the fall season of sports reminds me every year.

They can keep you awake at night, and they can give you a good night’s sleep too.