Ice fishing is fun, and maybe you’ll even catch fish ~ January 23, 1986

David Heiller

Warm weather in January brings out the ice fisherman in many people, including me. I’m not a hardcore ice fisherman. I don’t have an ice house, or fancy auger. I don’t take trips to Mille Lacs. I don’t even chew snοose.

Still every year about this time, Ι get the urge to follow a primitive ritual and sit on a slab of ice and stare at two holes with bobbers that don’t move.

My wife sensed it coming last weekend. She announced on Saturday night: “I’ll let you go ice fishing tomorrow if you let me sleep-in in the morning.” Even the thought of getting up with our two kids at 6 a.m. didn't quench the ice fishing thirst.

“You got a, deal,” I replied.

Sunday morning I called Stanley Bonk (in a tired voice) in Willow River, to ask him where a novice might have a little luck fishing this time of year. He said that it was slow all around. “How about Long Lake?” I asked. “Νaw, it’s slow there too,” he answered.

Not to be discouraged, I called Calvin Petry at Petry’s Baits in Finlayson. Owners of bait shops walk a thin line. They can’t lie, yet they have to look on the bright side, stress the positive: “It ain’t too bad,” Calvin said. “Matter of fact, I’m weighing a 20 pound northern from Upper Pine Lake right now.”

“I’m more interested in crappies,” I replied.

Calvin told me of a lake west of Finlayson with reports of crappie action. He described how to get there, where to fish, so with a “dozen” crappie minnows—actually about 50 by Petry’s count—I followed his lead and headed out.

Cindy remained skeptical as I left. “Dave, we’ve been married for five and a half years, and you’ve never brought home a fish from ice fishing.”

“Well, maybe I should go more often,” I reminded her. “Besides, I have a feeling today will be different. I’ve got a hot tip from Petry’s.” The thought crossed my mind that other people might have that same hot tip, but I didn’t express that out loud.

“How many other people have that hot tip?” Cindy asked.

“I used to catch lot of fish through the ice before I was married,” I answered, trying to make a point.

“Then let’s make a deal,” she countered. “You’re responsible for supper tonight.”

“Now wait a minute—”

“No, you’re confident, so bring home some fish for your supper.”

She sent me out of the house with that speech of inspiration, and four hot molasses cookies.

When I got to the lake, there were only five other people there. I made my way to a group of three, standing next to a snowmobile. The ice was riddled with their stains, and a bucket full of crappies. I pretended not to notice. “Catchin’ any?” I asked.

“Νaw,” one answered.

“Been here long?

“Yeah,” another answered.

“Any other good spots on the lake?”

“Over there,” the third answered, pointing to a spot as far away from them as possible.

This is not our photo,
but this is how David fished.
(I was at home with kids.)

I took the hint and ambled away, buckets and auger in tow. Another man, this one with a small white dog, greeted me. Anyone who takes his dog ice fishing can’t be all bad. Sure enough, he had a normal vocabulary, and was friendly to boot. He showed me where to fish for northern, which he was after with a tip-up.

“There are only two or three good spots for crappies really. It’s too shallow here. One’s where those three guys are, but the best is right over there. Just walk that way, you’ll see the holes.”

So I took his advice, and settled down over a couple of Saturday holes by myself. For the first half hour, the bobbers hypnotized me with their stillness, staring me down in their holes. But sure enough, my instinct came through. My left bobber sank to the bottom of the hole, and I pulled the first of eight large crappies from the lake. I lost at least three others, so there is good reason to return to that lake.

When I got home, I kept silent about my modest luck. Cindy didn’t ask. She knew by my silence that I had caught something. So I opened the bucket, and showed the fish to my two-and-a-half year-old son.

“Look at the ice fish, Mama,” he said, and I agreed.

Pick your Wicker Basket battles ~ January 7, 2004

David Heiller

Blue Corn. Grape Harvest. Barn. Blue Hour. Harvest Gold.

It sounds like a poet describing a Van Gogh painting.

Wicker Basket. Mannered Gold. Venture Violet. Surf Green.

Or maybe an Amish farmer after his first trip to Bissen’s Tavern.

But it’s none of the above. The answer is C, as in Cindy, at a paint store.

This is our electrician wiring a light 
in the entryway. But mostly it is a picture of 
the color of the entryway/kitchen.
It still pleases me.

Yes, those All-American images are colors of paint that are starting to adorn the walls of our new home, and picked out mostly by my fine wife, Cindy.

Tim Serres, our plumber, summed it up best when he took a look at the bedroom that our daughter, Malika, is claiming. “So who’s the Vikings fan?” he asked. Tim, like all good plumbers, has a way of cutting to the chase.

Sorry Tim, that’s not good old Viking purple. That’s Venture Violet, a color that Malika picked out. She takes after her mother.

And that blue in the downstairs bedroom isn’t blue after all. It’s “Wicker Basket” (upper case letters, please).

AND that bedroom color, it’s definitely a shade of red, but guys don’t name paint colors, so it isn’t called “dark red,” it’s called “Grape Harvest” I’m going to spend the next 30 years (hopefully) looking at Grape Harvest” when I wake up.

It may sound like I’m complaining, but I’m not. I got used to Grape Harvest after about a day. And I’ll be ΟΚ with the rest of Cindy’s rainbow when all is said and done, because I trust Cίndy. She is good at decorating, and I have learned to let the Wookie win when it comes to things like that.

But guys are different than gals, if I may make a sweeping generalization, and building a house brings that to diamond sharpness.

Our builder, John Holzworth, reminded me of it the other day. We were standing in the purple glow of Malika’s bedroom, talking about the house.

“I could live in a house this size,” John said, meaning not the size of our entire house, but the size of the bedroom. “I’m never in the house. I’m always in the shop”

If you’ve ever been in John’s shop, you know why that’s the case. Good old Janny Janikowski would have drooled over John’s shop. It’s better equipped than many a high school, and his refrigerator could lure a few customers from the above-mentioned Bissens.

But his point was still sound: guys don’t need all that space, just like they don’t need four different shades of blue.

But guys have learned something since their Neanderthal days. Pick your battles. When Josephine Neanderthal wanted a bigger cave, her knuckle-dragging significant other moved to France and found her one. And when she got tired of the bare walls, she took out her paints and drew some funny looking bison and antelope and men with spears on the walls and ceilings.

I can hear their conversation.

“Hmm, good picture woman”

“T’anks:”

“How you make that color?”

“Mix clay, oil, sumac.”

“What call it?”

“That Harvest Grape:”

“Hmm. And how you make that one?”

“Mix sand, fat, berry. Me call it Wicker Basket.”

“Ugh. Me going out to workshop”

The missing links of Christmas ~ December 30, 1993

David Heiller

Something was missing that I couldn’t put my finger on. Α good Christmas had just passed, but something was missing.

Illness and cold weather sure weren’t absent. My brother-in-law had missed three days of work before driving seven hours to our house. He arrived sick and exhausted, and had no appetite.

His daughter ran a 103 degree fever on Saturday afternoon and had to go to the emergency room. Then Cindy got sick to her stomach that night. You know what that means.

Mother Nature topped this off with 28 degrees below zero a few hours later. We felt like prisoners in a holiday hospital.

Our typical Christmas involves a lot of this,
not so for the Christmas of 1993.

Yes, there had been presents and church and games of 500 and good feelings all around. But something was missing, and I didn’t find it until Sunday afternoon.

That’s when my sister-in-law Therese and I went skiing. The temperature rose to nine below zero, the warmest it would get. So we took off down the snowmobile trail toward Birch Creek on our cross country skis.

Oh, it was cold at first. We skied downhill, which created a wind-chill, and every exposed bit of flesh froze. Eyelashes coated with ice. Beards turned white—mine did, that is. Therese just had a frozen face.

Therese said she didn’t know how long she could make it. Her shoes were too small, and she had on her city gloves. I skied on ahead of her. I knew she would soon forget about the cold, and she did, and so did Ι.

Therese caught up to me at the Methodist cemetery. We skied together and talked as best we could. Our lips couldn’t move like normal, yet it was pleasant. I think we both needed to be out of the sick house. We needed to feel the fresh air, and burn a few Chrίstmas cookies off our waist line.

After we turned around, Therese pulled ahead of me. I tried to keep up, and I couldn’t. She had me beat by 50 yards by the time we reached the car. That was all right.

I wheezed and coughed all the way home. Therese, who is 11 years younger than me, joked that I should quit smoking. I don’t smoke. But that was all right too.

Because when I stepped out of the car, I felt like skiing another two miles. The cold weather seemed like an invigorating friend, not an icy prison guard. The household didn’t seem so sick inside either.

I lit a sauna. After the stove pipe turned cherry red, Cindy and I went in. I washed her back. We talked about our Christmas. Saunas are good for that. They are a nice way to end a hectic holiday.

It was a hot sauna. I ran outside and rolled in the fresh snow for at least three seconds. That isn’t bad considering the temperature had dropped a few more degrees.

(If you think skiing at nine below is cold, try rolling in the snow in nothing but your birthday suit.)

Looking back, I see now that two things had been missing at Christmas.

One: good health. You can’t take that for granted. This Christmas reminded me of that.

Two: enjoying nature. Sounds like a cliché, but if it is, it’s a darned good one. Going outside, taking a hike, going skiing, snowshoeing, snowmobiling, ice fishing, taking a sauna. These go hand in hand with a Christmas get-together. You don’t realize how important they are until you are either too cold or too sick, or both, to do them.

Rolling in the snow is optional.