1999 Christmas letter to Grandma ~ December 30, 1999

David Heiller

Dear Grandma:

We came to the stop sign by Banning Junction. My window was frosted over. Cindy couldn’t see the on-coming traffic. I pushed the button and down came the window, all the way down. Cindy has asked me not to lower it all the way down, but I forgot.

The window hasn’t been working all the time lately. It sometimes gets stuck in the open position. I have to open and close the door. Then it works again.

Guess what happened last week? When I pushed the button to make the window go up, it wouldn’t budge. I opened and closed the door, and it still wouldn’t go up.

It was 16 degrees below zero outside. The window was all the way open.

So we drove the last four miles into Askov going 55 miles an hour, which created a wind-chill in the car of 82 degrees below zero.

I put my coat, gloves, and hat back on, but it was still a chilly ride. Good old Sebald Motor Sales fixed it that day.

I blame this little window incident on Christmas, Grandma, because it’s easy to get distracted at Christmas time and put off doing the normal things like fixing broken car windows, or writing Christmas newspaper columns on time.

I don’t know if this was true for you, but there’s a myth about Christmas to me, that it is a peaceful time, like the songs imply.

But it isn’t that way. There is too much to do. The season is more stressful than I like to think about. It’s a time of car windows that won’t close.

Yet there is much to celebrate in the midst of the chaos, as the cartoon For Better or For Worse illustrates. The season hold’s more than its share of joy.

I can still eat your chocolate Christmas cookies. Cindy asked me last week, “What’s your favorite Christmas cookie?” and it didn’t take me long to answer, “Grandma’s chocolate cookies.” So she made them for me because she loves me as much as Scott Domogalla loves Julie.

The kids are easy to appreciate too. Noah complained that there were no presents under the tree for him to poke and prod. He can find the funniest things to complain about. He may be 16-1/2 years old, but there’s a lot of little kid in him. I knew exactly what he was saying. We both laughed about it. I brought a couple gifts home for him to man-handle before Christmas.

Noah, his cousins, and Uncle Randy enjoying tree-time.

Mollie sang at two church services on Christmas Eve and that was nothing to complain about either. She asked me if I would accom­pany her, which I answered as quickly as I did Cindy’s question about your cookies. Yes! I hope her singing never stops.

Is there anything better about Christmas than the songs we sing? Yes, some of them paint Norman Rockwell pictures. But they still hold a lot of love and hope.

Christmas gives me a chance to think about you too, and the good old days. Having you upstairs, playing cribbage, listening to your stories. I find comfort in the past, even though you, no doubt, had your share of stress.

How many times did you tell me about the Christmas when you were a little girl in Nebraska and you got an orange for Christmas, and how good that orange tasted? Not enough times, Grandma, not enough. I can still taste it.

You taught me to be thankful for a lot of things. Thanks for that, Grandma. I hope all is well with you and your old friends Up There.

Love, David

P.S. Is there going to be a Y2K problem in Heaven?

Feeling the Glow of Christmas ~ December 30, 1993

David Heiller

Dear Grandma:

You’re probably looking for my annual Christmas letter to you. Practice for the Christmas program at church started three weeks ago. That’s about when Christmas starts for me.

Noah didn’t have a part. He just had to sing four songs with the other third and fourth graders. But that was more than enough. It wouldn’t be cool for a 10-year-old to admit that singing was fun.

Noah and Grandma Schnick. 
David wrote lots of letters to Grandma when she
was alive, and didn't stop after she passed.

But his actions said something else. Like when he warmed up in the car going to church on Sunday by making up a song. It was something about a missing cat. Mollie joined in at the end of each verse, and harmonized on the chorus. Cindy and I had big grins in the front seat. It was a great song! We didn’t dare interrupt them, being from the Land of Bland and all.

Mollie had a long part, but she didn’t have to memorize it, so she did all right. She played Jingle Bells on the piano too, before the program. She had asked her piano teacher to come hear her, and of course Pat did. Pat had told her to practice 10 times a day in order to get it right. Mollie had obeyed. If we had told her, she would have refused, but not for Pat. Pat is a cross between a grandmother and a saint to Mollie. Something like you were to me.

We sat with Pat on Sunday. We all held our breath as Mollie took her seat. Mary Cronin turned around from the pew ahead of us and gave us a smile of encouragement, as if we were playing, which is how we felt.

Mollie and her piano, the last minute practice.

Mollie placed the music on the piano, and sat up straight in her white dress, and played it loud and clear and perfectly. It’s funny how a simple song like Jingle Bells could sound so good and so pure coming from the hands of an eight year old. It lasted all of 30 seconds, but Handel’s Messiah couldn’t have sounded better to us.

Cindy went up afterward and gave her a hug. Mollie beamed, and said “Oh Mom!”

Christmas pageants sum up the good things about Christmas. No greedy commercialism. No gaudy lights. Just a lot of good songs, and a bunch of kids acting out a story that has a baby for a star.

The girls were dressed in bright calico dresses, and towered over boys their own age. They tried to look like teenagers, but their voices hit the high notes in pitch that reminded us that they are still just kids.

Yet as they stood up there, you saw how they had grown. Pretty soon they’ll be too old for this. Too soon.

The boys huddled together and looked aloof. But their true nature broke through here and there, like when they would smile when they saw their parents. Or like when Noah sang the chorus of “Angels We Have Heard On High.” Gloria, In Excelsis Deo. He sang it “Gloria, It Is Chelsea’s Day-O.” Chelsea Cronin was standing next to him, and I could tell what he was doing by the way Chelsea was smiling. It was aimed at her. I couldn’t yell at him too much though, since I had taught him the verse.

Cindy and I sat and watched it all, smiling with other parents. I put my arm around Cindy’s shoulder, and it felt good there, like that’s where it belonged.

Grandma had a way with those little ones.
Grandma Schnick and Malika.

Maybe you saw that from your seat in the Balcony.

I thought about you Sunday. I liked it when you would watch me in the Christmas programs back in Brownsville. You were always so proud. You never said so, but I could tell.

After the program, Pat gave Noah and Mollie Christmas presents, and told them what a good job they had done. Noah wondered when he could open it, and Pat told him right now, which made him happy. He’s anxious for Christmas to come. To him it comes with presents.

Someday he’ll know it comes with people like Pat, and with Christmas programs that have a baby for a star.

Then we went to the home of some friends. We ate a snack, and sat at their table. It felt good to talk. As we were leaving, we gave one another Christmas hugs.

Riding home in the dark, we felt the glow of Christmas. It had arrived for good that day with those good friends, with thoughtful people like Pat, with the boys and girls of the Christmas pageant.

And with the memory of people like you. Merry Christmas, Grandma.

Love, David

Some Christmas surprises ~ December 2003

David Heiller

Mom tried to sound nonchalant with her request. “Come see what I’ve got in the living room.”

I walked into that familiar room and couldn’t help smile. A bright little Christmas tree stood on the table near the window.

David and Fern

In fact, I was a little shocked, because for the first time this Christmas season, I felt Christmas. Something clicked, and there it was, just a thought, “Hey, it’s Christmas!”

Mom had gone to Mitchells to wish Doris and Mitch a happy 50th anniversary, and as usually happens when people go visit Doris and Mitch, she hadn’t left empty-handed. But no banjo parts for Mom—they had given her this tree.

“It used to be Grandma Heiller’s,” Mom said. That made the tree glow even brighter. Grandma died 20 years ago this November. Her house was always a welcome spot, and never more so than at Christmas. It’s good to have a part of her with us this year in the form of the tree, and good to see it in Mom’s house. Mom was going to go with something less festive. A couple of pine branches in a vase probably would have sufficed. Grandma’s old tree was perfect for her and Cindy and me.

Christmas comes in little surprise packages like that tree.

A second one hit me on Saturday. I stopped at Karen “Beak” Colsch’s house in Reno to take some pictures of “The Bauer Girls” (they definitely deserve capital letters) making Christmas cookies.

Christmas cookie time at our house.

I tried to act professional at first. “Do you have a system?” I asked Beak in a loud voice. “No, just chaos,” she shouted back.

So I dropped my reporter’s pretenses and stood in awe as about 20 people moved through the kitchen and living room, laughing, talking, rolling cookies, baking cookies, dipping cookies, carrying cookies, and yes, eating cookies.

Grandpa Bauer was fulfilling that role. “The kids get to unwrap all the candy, then Grandpa eats it,” his daughter, Cindy Augedahl, said with a laugh.

I took some pictures, which will appear in the December 24 Argus, then left, but not before Cindy presented me with a plate full of cookies.

Another dose of Christmas had snuck up on me at the Bauer’s cookie extravaganza. They eat some of the cookies, and they give some away to very appreciative friends and even a few schmucks like me. But mostly what they do is celebrate Christmas in fine fashion indeed. They are lucky.

Christmas in Christ Chapel.

That afternoon we went to a concert at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter where our daughter Malika was singing. Is there anything finer than watching your child—no matter how old—perform in a Christmas pageant?

The music was beautiful. The congregation joined the choir and orchestra on the final hymn, “Oh Come All Ye Faithful”, and there it was again, complete with goosebumps and a little baby named Jesus. Christmas.

I’ll wait for more surprises in the coming weeks. I hope they visit you too.

Don’t argue with Christmas miracles ~ December 22, 1988

David Heiller

SATURDAY, DEC. 17—A Christmas miracle in the making: Dee Zuk sits with nine children in the church pew, nine children under the age of six. At the front of the church, older kids are saying their parts for the Christmas program. They giggle and stammer and push and read from parts that they should have memorized. Director Mary Cronin leads them along, like Mike Ditka on the sidelines with the Chicago Bears, urging them to cooperate.

But Dee Zuk has those nine children lined up as quiet as the proverbial church mice which inhabit Faith Lutheran Church.

“Do you have a Christmas tree?” Dee asks.

“I have two trees, one upstairs and one downstairs,” Laura Horton answers, sitting on the right hand of Dee the Teacher Almighty.

“Do you have a dog?” she continues.

My son, Noah, answers that he has two, Ida and Binti.

Noah and Malika with their cousin Sarah during a family Christmas. These were little kids at the time of this performance! Extra cute and extra nerve-wracking.

“One for you and one for Mollie?” Dee asks. “No, both for me,” Noah answers.

Dee ushers the nine to the front of the church, like a duck leading her fledglings to water. Mollie, age three, sits next to Noah, who has yet to learn that it isn’t cool to sit next to your sister in a Christmas program.

Dee leads the little kids: “God sent Jesus down from heaven.” They all repeat after Dee, pointing their finger skyward, then arching it back to earth.

“Jesus taught us to love each other.” The kids fold their arms close to their chest, except for Mollie, who has her finger up her nose.

^“Jesus loves you and you and me.” They point their fingers at each other, then at themselves. Mollie takes her finger from her nose, puts it in her mouth.

“Because of His love, we are all His children.”

Their voices are strong with Dee leading them, but when she stops, they are struck dumb, which is another miracle for nine children under the age of six.

SUNDAY, DEC. 18—the miracle continued: Bev Peterson played Christmas hymns on the piano at the left side of the church, which filled up slowly but surely last Sunday morning, like churches do when children give their Christmas programs. Parents like me sat erect, on the edge of the pew; as if they were watching the Vikings play the Rams, and feeling just as jittery.

The piano rang out with Joy to the World, and the parents seemed to relax a bit. The 16-foot balsam Christmas tree next to Bev swayed at the top, as wind from the ceiling fan swished the tinsel back and forth. With the music, you could imagine that tree in the woods on a snowy morning, moving in a gentle breeze.

I sat in the fourth pew from the front, upon strict instructions from my wife, Cindy, who is also a Sunday school teacher. I didn’t know why I should sit so far up, but I don’t question Cindy on matters of religious faith and church etiquette. So I sat there, feeling conspicuous. I glanced over my shoulder and saw many other parents looking conspicuous. Their minds, like mine, were focused on their kids and the Christmas program. They were thinking: Would their children forget their lines? Maybe start crying, or pull up their dresses, or put their fingers in their nose? Maybe start the Christmas tree on fire?

Finally, the bell pealed, and 30 children marched forward, singing Oh Come, All Ye Children. They took their seats in the front, facing us. Cindy sat one pew ahead of me. We both stared at Mollie as she followed Noah up, jostling others to grab the chair on his left. Mollie saw us, smiled and waved. Noah joined her in waving. We both lowered our eyebrows and shook our heads. They stopped waving.

The program progressed, and it progressed well. Mary Cronin had worked a miracle that Mike Ditka would have been proud of. The older kids said their lines without help, holding the microphone like a stick of dynamite. They even showed some football razzle-dazzle, passing the mike quickly behind their backs to the next kid.

Then the pre-school part came. Dee knelt in front of her charges. The kids said their words loud and clear, while Dee whispered along. My eyes were glued to Mollie, hoping, even praying that she would keep her finger pointed to heaven instead of her nose. My prayer was answered. Their part ended, and it went perfectly.

And the miracles continued. The children sang Away in the Manger, and no one even noticed when Knute fell down in the back row. They sang Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, and no one blinked when Laura left her spot to confer with Dee in the front pew. Dee whispered a few magical words, and Laura returned to her place in front.

During Oh Christmas Tree, Mollie started to push Noah, grabbing him by the arm. Noah pushed back, and it looked like the start of a World Wrestling Federation match. Then Mollie glanced at her mom and dad. Actually, her head was turned by the force of our glares. In that instant it suddenly dawned why Cindy had asked me to sit at the front of the church. Our eyes blazed like lasers at Mollie. I’m not a pretty sight even when I smile, but the look I gave Mollie would have sent dogs howling for cover. With Cindy in front, Mollie suddenly was staring down a double barreled shotgun. She put Noah’s arm down, and looked straight ahead.

The program ended as we all sang Go Tell it on the Mountain. Then the little kids returned to their parents’ side, and you could almost hear half the congregation, young parents like me, breath a sigh of relief, and you could almost feel the other half, the grandmas and grandpas who have weathered this ordeal many times, bursting with pride.

Mollie slid in next to me. “Do you have any gum, Daddy?” she asked. I pulled a stick out, and broke it in half, giving part to her and part to Noah. Mollie started chewing, then cuddled up close. “I love you, Dad,” she said, looking at me.

“I love you,” I answered.

Maybe it was the Dentyne, maybe it was Christmas. Whatever it was, I didn’t care. You don’t question miracles.

Waiting for Christmas ~ December 14, 2000

David Heiller

The thermometer read six degrees below zero on Sunday afternoon. I headed for the woods with a folding saw and tape measure in my coat pocket.

The wind had died and the sun was shining, and six degrees below zero didn’t seem so bad, not on a Sunday afternoon in December.

Even MacKenzie, one of our dogs, seemed improved by it. She had lain in the house all weekend, walking on three legs. Noah said he had seen her come up limping after a race with our other dog, Sully.

Mollie wanted us to call the veterinarian. Cindy and I thought we should wait.

Could this be the same MacKenzie on Sunday afternoon, running through the woods ahead of me, with barely a limp to see? She couldn’t resist the beautiful brisk day. Mother Nature is a quick healer.

I walked along the north line of our property, looking for a Christmas tree. There’s a white spruce that would do. But only as a last resort. They lose their needles too fast. We’ve had a few holidays where the tree looks like something only Charlie Brown could love by Christmas. Needles fall like an avalanche every time you brush against it.

I walked west, past big oak trees and sugar maples and poplars and some scraggly balsams. I came to a low spot. My boots hit ice, broke through, hit water. Mud and branches held me fast for a minute. The weather would have to get a lot colder to harden the wet spots.

The land opened up where loggers had done their work about 10 years ago. Ah hah. A beautiful balsam. Almost a perfect shape. A little bottle neck near the top, but a heavy dose of lights and ornaments as only Cindy can administrate would cover that. I’d give it a nine out of ten.

But my nose was into the wind. I could smell a better tree, the way a fisherman can sense when a fish is ready to strike. I kept walking; balsams were everywhere, all shapes and sizes.

Then there it was. A ten. Not too fat. Not too bushy. I took the tape measure out of my pocket Just the right height, nine feet, six inches of perfect tree.

Not Bork Tree farm perfect, mind you. But it would do for the back 40.

Malika and MacKenzie and our back 40 tree.

I unfolded the saw and cut the tree down. Yes, I felt a twinge of regret. A living organism and all that. But there were 10,000 more trees within eye sight of this one. And what joy it will bring to us!

I dragged it to the road in the woods, then walked back to the house and roused Noah off his easy chair. The Vikings weren’t playing for another hour. He grumbled a bit, then put on some heavy clothes. We trudged back to the tree and carried it the quarter mile to its new home

I trimmed another six inches off the stump and cut off a few bottom branches. Then we set it in the stand in the living room. Perfect.

Getting the tree was good for me, because I felt some of the Christmas spirit return for the first time in about 11½ months. It’s been missing for me, and I worry that someday going to be such a crotchety old man that I’m not going to be able to find it.

I found a part of it when I found the Christmas tree. It snuck in with the. cold and sun, with the dogs racing through the woods and the chickadees flitting in the branches, and my son walking by my side. It was written in the snow by deer and mice and squirrels.

We are always waiting for something, Pastor Laura said at church Saturday night. A first kiss, graduation, marriage, children, a new job, a promotion, retirement.

Now I’m waiting for Christmas, and that makes me glad. Waiting for gifts to give and receive. Waiting for company and kids and music and laughter. Waiting for big meals and colorful lights.

And last but not least, waiting for the story that never grows old, about a little baby that changed the world.

1990 Christmas letter to Grandma ~ December 27, 1990

David Heiller

Dear Grandma:

I guess it’s that time again, to tell you about the kids’ Christmas program last Sunday.

The Sunday School crew did “real fine,” as you would say. For a while though, it looked like the halos and crowns would come crashing down, bringing the entire kindergarten class along.

It started with Kimberly’s halo, a heavy wire shaped to fit around her head, then bent into another circle up above and covered with tinfoil. The thing worked for a while. Maybe three minutes. Then Kim figured out that this fancy halo was nothing more than a coat hanger digging into her skull.

Grandma O and Malika and what they both loved:
each other and Christmas treats

So she took it off. Which meant that Mollie and Chelsea and Tanya and Laura all realized that THEIR crowns and halos also felt like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. One by one, they re-arranged their headgear, taking them off, twisting them, having them slide over their eyes, dropping them on the floor, asking their teacher, Missy, for help.

Only Brandi had the will power not to touch her crown, and she did that by folding her hands together and keeping them firmly squeezed between her knees.

The Sjoblom Boys held down the front row. Jacob arrived with the sniffles, after Mona had told me before the service that he was having kittens in the Pastor’s office. But he soon managed a stiff upper lip, and the kittens never arrived!

His older brother, Isaac, had an even better weapon than tears in his arsenal. First he leaned his head up against the iron railing that leads to the altar, rolled his eyes, and sighed. Next, he turned around and visited with the second row of kids through the slats on the back of his chair. Then he bent way over until Isaac reached over to touch the bare skin he had exposed to the congregation. That made him sit back up. Missy tried her best again, but with Mom standing helplessly at the back of the church, Isaac simply shook his head slowly at her, leaned it back up against the railing, rolled his eyes, and sighed.

A better weapon indeed! Is there any more pure torture for parents than to see their kids shake their heads at their teachers, while all Mom and Dad can do is sit and watch? And in church, for crying out loud.

But it made sense in a way. In his sermon, Pastor Sjoblom, better known as Daddy to Isaac and Jacob, had told us to get EXCITED about salvation. Well, maybe Isaac was just taking his advice.

Noah and Malika and some Christmas magic.

And when the pastor asked, “What is more important than salvation?”, maybe those kids were answering in so many words: “Well, tinfoil crowns and coat hanger halos that don’t fit are more important!”

We witnessed acts of courage at the program too. Take Chrissy and Joey, singing solos into a microphone before a full church of staring adults. How many soldiers or ditch-diggers or editors could do that?

Or the courage to stand up and say their lines, after practicing them at the supper table and in the car for the past three weeks. But they remembered, just like we did and Mom did and you probably did too. Some things don’t change much.

“They didn’t call it Christmas, but they knew someone was coming,” Mollie said with a grin at the fourth pew, where we sat.

“Rejoice greatly, oh daughter of Zion, shout aloud, oh daughter of Jerusalem. Lo, your king comes to you,” Noah said. He didn’t look at us, because he didn’t want to smile. You could see he was trying hard not to, the way he held his mouth. But we all smiled, and puffed but our chests, and Grandma Olson brushed at her eyes.

Did you get tingles up your spine over a few sentences from us, standing in front of the church 30 years ago? I did on Sunday. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s one of those great theological mysteries, like why God made mosquitoes and woodticks.

Maybe you know that answer now. I sure don’t, but I don’t want to either, because then these feelings might stop, and that would indeed be a tragedy.

So we—the whole congregation, mind you—sat and watched and beamed and sang and cried and even tingled, and when it came time for Joy to the World, I thought, “This is indeed a time to let heaven and nature sing, because children ARE the wonders of His love.”

Love, David

Relax, it’s Christmas ~ December 12, 1991

David Heiller

Thank goodness for folks like Vonnie Vayder. She imparted a bit of wisdom the other day that almost stopped me in my tracks.

I had just taken a picture of her with some of her students at the Pine County Area Learning Center. They had painted a beautiful Christmas card, four feet high by eight feet wide, and placed it outside their school in Finlayson.

I was flustered by a day with too much to do, with a sick little girl, with forgetting my camera, with a dozen other pressures that always seem to rear up at this time of year, at Christmas-time.

As Vonnie and I walked back into the school, I asked her what she liked about making Christmas cards with her students. She liked the cooperation it brought out, she said. And she said that it gives a more realistic sense of Christmas than what the students might see on television commercials, for example.

Christmas doesn’t always live up to a person’s expectations, she said. “And they (students) get uptight about that,” she said.

That’s what stopped me. She had put words to a truth that had been working its way forward in my mind the past week, and especially that day: I was blaming my pressure-filled day partly on Christmas.

Malika, Noah and Joey: 
scoping out a tree with Queen Ida

I have expectations that this is supposed to be a time of joy and love, a time of fellowship with family and friends. Certainly it is all that. But it’s also a hectic time. At home there is planning and preparing for parties and house guests, there’s house cleaning, tree decorating, cookie making, and much more, not to mention the regular household chores.

At work this time of year, running the newspaper means selling many ads, taking photos here and there, covering the news, writing stories, paying bills, collecting money (these last two go hand in hand), and lots more too boring to mention.

It all adds up to a time of year that doesn’t mesh too well with people gaily laughing and chattering over their favorite champagne, i.e. the television version of Christmas.

THERE’S SO MUCH to enjoy this time of year. Like on Sunday, when we cut our Christmas tree with the help of friend and neighbor Deane Hillbrand. He had some white spruce that needed thinning. We looked over his woodlot, and compared this one and that. Finally we settled on a pretty one for our living room and a smaller one for Noah’s school classroom.

Deane and Kathrine.

Deane is happy to share his trees. He’s been meaning to thin them anyway. What better way than to have them used for Christmas trees in the process? Afterwards, his brother Steve joined us, and we all visited over hot chocolate and cookies. It was fun.

Then we went home and decorated the tree. We put on four strings of lights, and lots of ornaments. (Most of them are on the bottom of the tree, where the kids could reach.) We got out the boxes that hold the crèche and Wise Men and candles and centerpiece and a dozen other Christmas garlands, wreaths, and do-hickeys.

It was a lot of work, setting this all up, and I said as much to Cindy as we sat, stooped and tired, in the sauna that night. “Yeah, but it’s Christmas,” she said. She went on to say that this is a busy time of year, but what better thing to be busy with than cutting and decorating a Christmas tree. When I look at the tree, radiant with color and light, I can see she’s right.

And when I think of the ALC students working together on a giant Christmas card for the community of Finlayson to enjoy, I know Vonnie Vayder is right too: we have to create our own Christmas expectations, and live up to them, and not worry about anyone else’s.

It’s a good lesson to carry with us through the holidays: relax and enjoy this special season the way you like to, the way that’s best for you.

Hit any deer lately? ~ November 16, 2000

David Heiller

The deer steeped into our headlights just as we reached the top of the hill west of Sturgeon Lake.

We were heading home from the Moose Lake/Willow River football game Friday night, at about 11 p.m.

“Deer!” Cindy shouted, the way a soldier might shout “Grenade!” in a World War Two movie.

I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. We hit the deer dead on. It flipped over the bumper and crashed into the windshield.

Both air bags popped open. We skidded to a stop. Everyone was OK, except the deer. We sat in a daze from the crash and the air bags and the awful feeling of hitting a living creature. My mind shifted quickly to wondering how much this was going to cost.

Then we staggered out of the car, coughing from the strong fumes that had emerged with the air bags. Joe Gibson pulled up behind us in his truck.

“Seems like every time I see you, you’ve hit a deer,” he said, trying to inject a bit of humor into the situation. It wasn’t funny, but I couldn’t blame him for trying. He was referring to a night a couple years earlier when I had hit a deer about a mile to the west. He had driven past that night and stopped to see if I needed help.

We found the deer on the side of the road. It was dead, both its back legs broken. Joey asked if I was going to take it. I said no, and asked if he wanted it. “We have five hanging now,” he answered.

The car was drivable, barely. The air bags, now partially deflated, were in the way, and I could just see out of the shattered windshield. A burning odor from the propellant in the airbags gagged us. Joe followed us home, in case we had car trouble, but there didn’t seem to be any engine problems from the crash.

The next day I took the car to Alberg Auto Body. They gave me a repair estimate of $4,272.40. Just to fix the air bags cost $1,200. Luckily we have collision insurance on it.

Does my story sound familiar? I bet if you live in these parts, you have come close—maybe too close—to hitting a deer this fall. They are everywhere.

I called DNR game warden Curt Rossow to ask him about the problem. He had been to the same football game and he had hit a deer on the way home too! Lucky for him it just glanced off the side of his car and didn’t do any damage. It was the second deer he has hit this fall.

Curt said if you hit a deer, you don’t have to call him, unless you want to keep the deer. Then he will write out a permit and you get to pay $23 for the privilege of having $4,000 worth of damage done to your car. But usually if you have a lot of damage to your vehicle, the deer isn’t salvageable, Curt said.

About 15,000 deer a year are killed by cars in Minnesota, Curt said. Game wardens know statistics like that, especially ones that hit two deer in the fall. The main reason why is obvious: there are a lot of deer now. “The more deer we have, the more the chances of them getting hit,” Curt said with the dogged logic of a game warden. And people are driving more too, he added.

People have died as a result of hitting deer, Rossow said, usually because they lose control of the vehicle and hit a tree, or because the deer comes through the window and causes them to crash. Some devices have been tried to prevent crashes, like whistles on the front of vehicles, or reflectors on the side of roads. But the jury is out on their effectiveness, Rossow feels.

I asked Rossow if the DNR is doing anything about the problem. He said more antlerless permits were issued this year. He and other DNR workers would rather see hunters get the deer than vehicles.

The DNR wants to keep a healthy herd, he said, so that sport hunting can continue. “They don’t want too many for the carrying capacity and they don’t want too little,” he said.

A good cold winter will take care of some of the problem, Rossow said; a mild winter will aid reproduction.

Rossow had a few tips for drivers:

·   Dusk, night time, and early in the morning are the most dangerous times for hitting deer.

·   Deer move when the rut is on, which is right about now. The more movement they have, the more likely they are to be on a road. Likewise spring is a bad time, because deer like to eat the grass in the ditches.

·  Be cautious when you drive. “Don’t have tunnel vision. Be prepared,” Rossow said. He knows from experience that that is easier said than done. Drive slower than normal, I might add.

My son, who doesn’t want to be mentioned by name in my column, thinks we should put metal spears in the front of the car so we can “shish-kabob” the deer as we drive.

Cindy thinks a deer catcher would be a good device for our car, like a cow catcher on an old steam locomotive.

Maybe Arild Frederiksen could make some and sell them at the Askov Crafters Co-op next door to the Askov American.

I’ll be the first in line.