Missed anyone’s birthday lately? ~ August 3, 2000

David Heiller

“Happy birthday Cindy.” Hazel Serritslev said that to my wife on Tuesday morning when we got to work.

At the office of the Askov American,
where birthdays were never an after-thought.

Good old Hazel doesn’t forget birthdays. She even bakes a cake for everyone at work when their birthdays roll around, which happens once a year, so I’m told.

I’m not as good as Hazel at remembering birthdays.

In fact, when Hazel said “Happy birthday, Cindy,” a moment of pure surprise hit me, and it really did feel like a ton of bricks.

I had totally forgotten this momentous occasion for my wife, Cynthia Anna Olson Heiller.

Before I had a chance to say anything, Cindy walked to the front of the office, where Cindy Jensen greeted her with another “Happy birthday.”

I expect if I had turned on WCCO radio, I would have heard the announcer wishing Cindy a happy birthday.

1960... I loved that cool cake my grandma made for me.

I apologized to Cindy, but she answered truthfully, “Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it.” I hate to admit it, because I consider myself an organized person. But when it comes to remembering birthdays, I’m a failure. If I’m lucky, it will come to me a day or two in advance, usually with the help of someone saying something like, “What are you doing for Cindy’s birthday?”

Then I can clear my throat and say, “Well, we’ll probably take in a movie, or maybe go for a bike ride,” all the while breathing a big sigh of relief that I’ll remember this time.

A friend of mine told me on Tuesday (after she asked what I was doing for Cindy’s birthday) that I should write it on the calendar. That’s not a bad idea. I write haircut appointments and doctor visits on the calendar. Why not birthdays?

It isn’t just Cindy, by the way. It’s Noah and Mollie and Mom and Sharon and Glenn and Kathy and Mary and Jeanne and Danny and on and on. In fact, I sometimes don’t remember my own birthday.

Maybe a shock collar type of device would work too, like you put on a Doberman pinscher. It could go on the wrist like a watch. You could program birthdays into it, then have it send about 200 volts into you a week before the event. Unless you shut it off first. That might help you remember.

I’m saying “you” here because I’m sure that, other people have this problem too, right? In fact, if you have this same problem, please write to me. I’d like to share your stupidity—I mean forgetfulness—with the 2,000 readers of the Askov American. We could even start a support group. Individuals Devoting Intimacy On Their Spouses. If the acronym fits, wear it.

Another side of Mrs. Spinner ~ June 29, 1995

David Heiller

Last week my mother sent me an obituary of Doris Margaret Spinner of New Albin, Iowa who died on June 8, 1995, at age 81.

She was known as Mrs. Spinner by most of the kids in Brownsville, where I grew up. She taught grades five and six there for 20 years.

Malika, Brooke (Jeanne's daughter), and Noah
playing school in one the Brownsville classrooms,
turned local history room. 

My sister, Jeanne, remembered Mrs. Spinner well. “To me she was a wonderful teacher,” Jeanne said on June 23 from her home in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

“She explained things real well. She put a lot of her own wisdom into her teaching. She had a lot of patience. You could tell she was a mother and a teacher. She would mention her own children and experiences. She had that caring side.

“We never had a substitute. In those days she was always there. I just felt she was a warm, caring person.”

“She didn’t have any favorites. She was fair. She just had all the qualities you have in a good teacher. She might have been strict, but she was positive.”

Noah and Malika are playing on the swing set outside 
of the Brownsville school house.

Jeanne said things were different when she went to school than they are today. I agree. For example, I was the only kid in my class who didn’t have a father. Everyone else had a mom and dad. There were no broken homes, no divorces, and no students with special needs. That’s not the case today. I think teaching is harder now.

Jeanne wished she had written to Mrs. Spin­ner before she died, to tell her what a good teacher she was. I think a lot of folks feel that way. Teachers need to know that they have a positive effect on people’s lives, even if they don’t always hear a thank you.

Mrs. Spinner was one of my favorite teachers too. She had a split classroom, grades five and six, with about 36 students altogether, but she was always in control.

My mom had a poem about four of the teachers at Brownsville, Mrs. Sauer, Mrs. Boettcher, Mrs. Colleran, and Mrs. Spinner. She would watch them drive past the house on their way to school. Her poem went:

Mrs. Sweet went up the street,

Mrs. Boettcher couldn’t catch her,

Mrs. Colleran stood there hollering,

But Mrs. Spinner was the winner.

She was a winner of a teacher.

I still remember one incident that showed a side of her that we hadn’t seen before. I was in sixth grade, so it must have been 1964 or 1965. I even remember where I was sitting.

This was probably taken one
of the years David was in
Mrs. Spinner's classroom.

One morning there was a knock on the door. Mrs. Spinner opened the door, and there stood a young man in a Marine uniform. He didn’t say a word. Mrs. Spinner’s face changed from anger to shock to joy in about two seconds.

Then she gave him a big hug, and a big kiss.

It was her son, Robert, who was in the Marine Corps. He was stationed in Okinawa, and was part of the blockade of the Gulf of Tonkin. Mrs. Spinner had been worried about him, and that worry transformed itself into joy before our very eyes.

I called Robert, who now lives in Topeka, Kansas, on June 23 to see if he remembered this incident. He did.

“I knocked on the door and mother turned around and looked at me like, ‘Mister, what are you doing in my classroom.’ She thought I was a policeman, I believe, bothering her school.”

He doesn’t remember the kiss, but I do. The thought of Mrs. Spinner kissing someone, even her son, had never crossed our minds. Her emo­tional greeting of Bob gave us all a new respect for her. It sent a tingle up my spine then, and it still does.

Bob, 50, told me a few more things that I didn’t know about Mrs. Spinner. She was mar­ried at age 16, so didn’t finish high school until 27 years later, after her six children were mostly grown. Then she went back to New Albin High School, and graduated in 1959, the same year as her son, James.

This was before the days of alternate schools, so she studied mostly at home and met with her teachers once a week. She didn’t want to embarrass her children.

“She knew all the teachers. She was probably older than most of the teachers anyway,” Bob said.

I told Bob I didn’t know this about his mother. “She had two lives,” he responded, her home life and her teaching life. They came together when Bob knocked on the door that day.

Mrs. Spinner is gone now. The school she taught in for 20 years has been torn down and replaced by a community center. Life goes on. But you never forget a teacher like Mrs. Spinner.

Move over, Barbie: Kirsten’s here ~ July 29, 1993

David Heiller

You can’t help but feel sorry for Barbie. The blonde one there in the rocking chair next to me. She’s lying face down like she’s crying. If she’s not, she should be.

Kirsten Larson has taken away her little girl.

Kirsten is new to our family. She has flaxen hair that came in a Swedish braid. Her eyes match my daughter's eyes: a light blue. (In fact some people think she bears a striking resemblance to me.) She has leather shoes, nice socks with no holes, pantalettes, a dress with an apron, and a bonnet.

Kirsten is famous. She has had books written about her. The first one is Meet Kirsten. It tells of her family’s trip to their new home in America in 1854, of their struggles as immigrants on a farm in Minnesota. Mollie has the book.

Malika and her Kirsten doll

My daughter, Mollie, put Kirsten in her back-pack on Sunday night, July 18, and we rode our bikes to the local ice cream store. As we were standing in line, a tiny little girl came up and stared wide-eyed at Kirsten, who was poking her head out of the pack.

They were eye level. I’m sure the little girl thought Kirsten was a real baby.

She’s not. She is a doll, complete with pioneer accessories and a family history. Mollie saved her allowance and birthday and Christmas money for 10 months to buy her.

My grumpy reaction at first was that Kirsten was too expensive and too commercial. After all, a real-life Kirsten didn't have an $80 doll in 1854. She had a rag doll at best, and they both had to walk barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways.

My wife pointed out that Kirsten is an educational, high quality toy. And even I have to admit that. When I pick Kirsten up, she feels almost like a real baby. Maybe I’ll end up playing with dolls yet.

And Mollie loves her. They can play together for hours on end. That’s almost as much fun for me watch as it is for Mollie.

This past Sunday night, Mollie packed for a weekend camping trip that we’re taking in a couple of weeks. For Mollie, at least half the fun of vacations is packing. I tried to talk her out of  packing two weeks in advance, but failed, as usual.

After half an hour she showed me what she had done. Along with her own suitcase and sleeping bag, she had packed a small bag for Kirsten, including a tiny doll.

A doll for a doll. You can’t get any more real than that.

Meanwhile, the Barbies, all five of them, have fallen on lonely days. They lay around face down on the rocking chair, or stuffed in a plastic bucket in the closet. Their hour-glass figures don’t measure up anymore. Kirsten looks like she’s been drinking milk and eating butter. The Barbies look like they throw up after every meal.

So I guess I’ll take Kirsten after all. I know Mollie has.

If you go fishing, don’t ask why ~ July 15, 1993

 David Heiller

You never know what you’ll discover from a little girl in a fishing boat. Her name is Grace. She’s my niece and she’s four. Grace likes to fish, and I like any kid who likes to fish. So Grace and I and my two kids, Mollie and Noah, made several excursions in the boat last week.

Mollie and Noah can take off their own fish now, for the most part, so I got my hopes up. Maybe I can actually try fishing myself. Any adult who has fished with little kids knows what I mean.

But Grace brought me back to reality.

The power of a four-year-old brings reality into focus.

It started when I wanted to troll around Star Lake. Maybe catch a small northern like the one mounted on the cabin wall. Just a 12-pounder.

Trolling didn’t go over big with Grace. She was holding Mollie’s hand firmly with her left hand, and her Snoopy rod and reel in the other. Her feet couldn’t touch the bottom of the boat. She was ready to roll, and here we were, going two miles an hour while Uncle David held onto a fishing rod.

“Why we going so slow?” Grace asked. Her tone demanded an answer, and quick.

“I’m trolling.”

“What’s TRO-lling?” she asked, wrinkling her nose and holding out the word like you’d hold out a dead mouse.

I tried to explain about trolling.

“Why we trolling?” she asked next. To catch a big fish, I said.

Grace didn’t care about big fish. She cared about little sunfish, four inches maximum, that she could haul in on her Snoopy rod. She also cared about speed, and so she returned to her original question. “Why we going so slow.”

I’ve seen this logic before. Grace has discovered the one word that teaches parents patience: WHY. You might as well try to stop a glacier than battle a four-year-old armed with WHY. So I reeled in and Grace held tight to Mollie’s hand and I gunned that six horse Mercury over the lake to our hot spot.

Grace, the inquisitor, and Malika

I’d like to say that this was an isolated incident during our three days at the lake, but it wasn’t. Grace reminded me that when you take kids fishing, you usually forget about trolling and trophies. You find a hole of sunnies and spend your time taking off fish, throwing them back in the lake, and putting worms on hooks on Snoopy rods.

And you listen to questions. I can’t remember all the WHYs Grace hit me with. But three stand out.

The first came one evening at our sunfish hole. A golden retriever was running around on shore, all by itself. No owner in sight. It saw us, and swam about 50 feet out to the boat, then swam two laps around us. We had to pull out our lines.

Grace asked, “Why is that dog swimming around us?” That was the best question she asked. I sure didn’t know the answer. She could have asked next, “Why you swearing, Uncle David?” but fortunately she did not.

The second WHY came a few minutes later. A small sunfish had swallowed a hook, and was floating motionless near the boat.

“Why isn’t that dead fish swimming?” she asked. Noah, my 10-year-old son, pounced on that with a laugh. “Because it’s dead!” He thought he had won.

“Why?”

Noah sighed and didn’t answer. He had enough sense to know he’d been licked.

The third WHY came as we headed back to the cabin. Grace’s mom and dad were out in the canoe, paddling toward a group of six loons. We shut off the motor and watched. As the canoe edged closer, two loons would rear up and flap their wings and scream. They looked like a couple of King Kongs beating their chests.

I told Grace and Noah that the loons were threatening the canoe. They were trying to frighten the intruders away, I said rather profoundly.

“Why aren’t my mom and dad afraid?” Grace asked.

I tried to answer, but as usual, it fell short. I’ll let her parents try. They have more experience than me, thankfully. And hopefully more patience.

Beware the perils of P.I. ~ July 11, 2002

David Heiller

“David, be careful with that poison ivy!” Mom scolded. “Use a hoe.” Mom had asked me to remove a patch of poison ivy from her backyard on July 4. So I donned a pair of rubber gloves and started pulling it up.

Fern's backyard was famously and beautifully WILD.
Poison Ivy was an issue.

“You don’t use a hoe on poison ivy,” I scoffed, ignoring her rare exclamation point.

Mom had reason to worry about P.I. She had battled a rash on her arms a couple months ago. It could have been used in a textbook on bad cases of poison ivy. She had a huge, boiling, oozing red rash.

I worked carefully, grabbing the plants by the roots, pulling them up, and piling them in the yard. Some of the branches had berries. The woody stalks were half an inch in diameter.

They reminded me of a camp-out I had made with some friends when I was a teenager. We were fishing for bullheads in the Reno Bottoms, seven miles south of Brownsville. We went out to gather wood, careful to avoid the poison ivy and its three glossy leaves. That’s hard to do at night in the Reno Bottoms, where P.I. rules.

One kid brought back a bunch of small sticks and threw them in the fire. The next day he was in the hospital with a severe case of P.I. We figured out later that the sticks he had gathered were poison ivy branches. Not only did he get a bad rash on his body, but sitting in the smoke had transferred it to his mouth and throat. He could barely breathe. It was scary.

I scooped up the pile of poison ivy in Mom’s backyard and carefully put it in a plastic bag. Then I took off my gloves and washed my hands and legs—I was wearing shorts. Mom made me throw the gloves away, and I had to put the towel and washcloth in the bath tub so that no one else would use them. I changed clothes too. I felt like I had just cleaned up a toxic spill and I teased Mom about her precautions.

Malika and Noah with Fern and her sunflower which 
resulted from a sunflower seed that the birds and 
squirrels missed in her back yard.

But she got the last laugh the next day, although she didn’t actually laugh, at least out loud. My hands and arms were fine, but my legs bubbled up with that familiar rash.

I hadn’t had a good case of P.I. since my childhood. I had forgotten the misery it brings.

It started out innocently. A few little pimples here. A cluster there. I put on some clear ointment that we had in the bathroom and thought it would be fine.

Then the main crop appeared whole fields of P.I. on my calves and thighs.

I went to the store and bought a bottle of calamine lotion. I took a small sponge paintbrush and painted the familiar pink lotion over my legs. It felt so good, because the itching disappeared. Once again I was transported back in time, when kids wore that pink lotion like war paint.

Calamine lotion stops the itching for a while. But soon it returns. There is nothing more maddening than having a poison ivy itch and not being able to scratch it. I think a very effective prisoner-of-war torture would be to rub poison ivy on a person and not let them itch it. I wouldn’t advocate using it, except for on Osama bin Laden.

I am refraining from scratching my P.I. itch, for the most part. It’s hard to totally abstain, because scratching a poison ivy itch is one of those sensations that really, really feels good. It’s a strange sensation. Scratching it feels good, then it starts to burn and hurt and itch, so you have to scratch it again to make that go away, and it feels good for about 10 glorious seconds, then it burns and starts to itch again, and so on.

And then it spreads, and the spirit of the P.I. plant is happy. It has done its duty.

So heed your mother’s advice. Use a hoe on that poison ivy patch. Or else go borrow a suit of protective clothing from your local nuclear power plant before you try to remove those rotten plants.

Casting for a fishing story ~ July 3, 1997

David Heiller

If your ear lobes are intact now, guard them with your life. I taught a four year old how to cast a fishing lure.

It started innocently enough last weekend at The Cabin. When my four-year-old nephew, Collin, arrived, the first words he said to me were, “Uncle Day-vid, I caught more fish than you last year.”

He had out-fished me one evening, and he wasn’t about to let me forget it after only 12 months.

Uncle Day-vid and Collin at the cabin: fishing buddies

The next morning we went to the dock to catch sunnies. Usually with a four year old, that means dropping a line from your Sesame Street rod and reel straight down into the water, and watching half a dozen panfish converge on the worm.

They have a brief conference, then elect the smallest one to investigate further. You end up pulling in a fish only slightly bigger than the hook itself. This gives the kid a great thrill, which gives the adult a great thrill.

But Collin’s Sesame Street fishing rod and reel were broken. Why is it they only last one summer? Could it be a conspiracy?

I gave Collin my best rod and reel. I figured I wouldn’t need it. When you fish with kids, you don’t really get much fishing done yourself anyway.

Collin was thrilled to sit on the dock and catch small fish. But I couldn’t resist showing him how to cast his bobber out further, where the bigger fish might be.

Learning to cast a fishing rod is a milestone in a child’s life, like riding a bike or hitting a baseball. One of my earliest memories is of fishing with my brother, Glenn, and trying to cast with a rod and reel.

Glenn must have been in a good mood that evening to let me use it. Usually it was Cane Poles Only.

The open-faced reel had a thick black line. You used your thumb for a drag. It was virtually impossible to cast without getting a backlash the size of an eagle’s nest.

I think I made one cast, then spent the rest of the evening trying to untangle the line. Glenn was not pleased, to put it mildly. But I was thrilled to have been given the chance to actually cast my bait. I eventually mastered the reel, and was able to cast it at least five feet.

Getting the bait on is the step before casting.

With that rite of passage in the back of my mind, I showed Collin how to cast. I showed him how the line-release button worked. I showed him how much line should be dangling at the tip of the rod when you cast.

I told him how to bring the rod back to two o’clock, then bring it forward to 10 o’clock. I don’t know if he knows how to tell time, but he nodded dutifully. I held his hand and we did it together. The bobber soared out at least five feet.

No fish was hooked, but Collin was. He couldn’t believe he had done that. He grabbed the rod from me. “I want to do it now, Uncle Day-vid,” he said.

“Let me show you one more time,” I said. But we both knew that wasn’t necessary. He kept the rod and kept casting.

Most of the time he looked like a mule skinner whipping a team of horses. He churned up the water with short casts. Once in a while he’d get one out 20 feet.

Fishing pretty much stopped for Collin at that point and casting took over. He would simply cast and reel, cast and reel. He paused only long enough to have me bait the hook after a fish had caught up to it long enough to strip it bare.

On Saturday night, I took Collin and two adults out in the 14-foot fishing boat. I sat in the rear, manning the six-horse Mercury and keeping a close eye on Collin.

Watching a kid cast on a dock is one thing.

You can give him a wide berth. Sitting next to him in a boat is another. There’s no place to hide.

Collin worked both sides of the boat. He cast to the front and to the back. He would announce his direction with a polite sentence. “Excuse me, Day-vid.” “Excuse me, Nancy.” “Excuse me, Mike.”

We wanted to excuse him into the lake. But instead we just hunched our shoulders and lowered our heads and waited for the bobber to go whipping past.

Collin was sitting on a boat cushion. Each time he cast, it inched off the seat. Finally after one mighty cast he ended up with a crash in the bottom of the boat.

No, I didn’t hope he had a broken arm. But I couldn’t help telling him that that’s what happens when you cast so much. “You need to let your bobber sit for a while,” I told him for the umpteenth time.

But Casting Collin wasn’t going to let a bruise or two stop him. He kept on casting, and we kept on ducking.

I know I could have made him stop and sit still and be quiet. But fishing is supposed to be fun, and Collin was having fun. So I let him cast away.

I ended up catching three keepers to his one. “I caught more fish than you,” I said with a smile that he recognized. “Maybe that’s because you did too much casting.” He didn’t say anything. It was a four-year-old dilemma.

We got back at dark. Collin held a flashlight while I cleaned the fish. We ate them the next day. There’s nothing better than fried sunfish fillets, rolled in flour, fried in butter, and seasoned with salt, pepper—patience!

Time will tell where Collin goes, fishing-wise. I tried to teach him how to put on a worm and take off a fish. He didn’t want learn that mundane skill quite as eagerly. But I’ve got a hunch he will.

Once you learn how to cast, the rest is all downhill.

Thank you, Good Samaritans ~ July 17, 2003

David Heiller 

The Good Samaritans came through again: It happened last Friday afternoon.

Our daughter, Malika, was on her way to a wedding in Redwood Falls. About half way there, she had a fender bender. It wasn’t a bad one, but it did something to the car she was driving so that she could not shift out of drive.

She was an adult, but
when things go really wrong:
this is who she is in your heart.

It’s an automatic transmission, so Mollie was fine as long as she didn’t shut the engine off.

So she pulled off the road and shut the engine off.

She claims I told her to do that. Maybe I did. When she called Cindy and me, we might have panicked a bit. We were traveling ourselves, and felt very helpless trying to talk our daughter through the situation while we were in our own vehicle.

So Mollie was stuck on the side of Highway 2, somewhere east of Cass Lake, in a car that wouldn’t start.

I called Sebald Motors, thinking they might have a solution for me. They’ve saved me more than once. But about all Rich Thomsen could do was diagnose the problem over the phone. “Sounds like a shift cable,” he said.

We don’t have AAA, so that tow-truck option was out. We didn’t have a phone book for the Cass Lake area. It appeared that Mollie was on her own in the middle of nowhere, and that was scary.

Enter the Good Samaritans.

A middle-aged couple that was heading the other direction stopped. Mollie told them what had happened. So they turned around and drove her into Cass Lake—10 or 15 miles, Mollie said. The man found a garage with a tow truck and arranged for a tow. Then they were back on their way. They were going to a wedding.

Mollie filled us in on all this as it was happening in a couple short phone calls. As she did, relief washed over me like a cool wave on a hot day, and I thought to myself, “I knew that would happen.”

I had for a few tense minutes forgotten about the goodness of my fellow man and woman.

They did what you or I probably would have done, what we have done in the past and will probably end up doing a time or two in the future, if we are lucky.

Yes, it’s good to be on both the giving and receiving end of that line.

Parents: Moms, Dads always
want to be there for their kids.
But sometimes we can only be
grateful for the ones who are willing
to be there when we can't be.

The tow truck took Mollie and the car to Bemidji, to a Ford dealership, where it turned out that Rich was right, it needed a new shift cable. Another Samaritan appeared there, a receptionist who drove Mollie to a store and restaurant where she could pass the time.

Then there was the Samaritan at the motel who let Mollie watch TV in the lobby until Cindy could arrive with a ride home.

I don’t know the names of any of the Good Samaritans that helped our daughter. But they proved that some things haven’t changed for about 2,000 years.

We live in bad times right now. Soldiers are dying in a senseless war every day. People are losing their jobs. We are fearful of the next shoe that will drop.

But people are good, and that is a priceless thing to keep in mind. The people who helped Mollie brought that fundamental truth back to Cindy and me.

For their help, and for their reminder, I give them my thanks.

There’s a little Heaven at The Cabin ~ July 23, 1998

David Heiller 

Cindy and I and our kids when to a cabin last weekend to see her mother and sister and brother and his family.

We've been going to The Cabin so long that it really is a proper noun, like Heaven. A lot of good things have happened there.

Sometimes I write about them in a specific way, like taking the small-fry fishing.

But the broader picture of The Cabin can't be sketched out in a cute anecdote. It's about many things.

Noah, mid leap, at The Cabin

It's a place to relax, to take a nap without feeling guilty, to play a rigorous game of bocce ball in the morning and a tough game of cards at night.

It’s a place to eat fantastic salads made by Cindy, and fantastic shish-kabobs grilled by her brother, Randy.

It’s a neutral place where family battles and personality clashes are put aside, for the most part.

It’s a place to fish and to teach kids how to fish. That always awakens the kid inside me. I’ve taught my two kids how to fish there, and although they don’t fish much now, the seed has been planted and it probably will re-emerge and grow some day.

I’ve helped a nephew and niece learn to fish there too. No matter how hard it is to talk to kids, to “relate” to them in modern lingo, if you can take them fishing, you will connect.

You won’t get any fishing done yourself. Don’t even try. You’ll take off tiny sunfish and bait tiny hooks held by tiny hands, and you’ll hear the craziest questions, like “Why isn’t that dead fish swimming?” And it will be wonderful.

A second niece of mine, age three, had me show her how to cast her little rod on Sunday. She didn’t do well. She’s a little too young, and I didn’t push her. These things must be done delicately.

But she will learn how to fish, because there’s always next year at The Cabin.

Collin

Next to fishing is swimming. Some people are lucky and live on a lake or river. The rest of us have to be content with visiting places like The Cabin. This one sits on top of a steep hill. It takes a long walk down 46 concrete steps to get to the lake. But it’s worth the walk to go swimming.

Is there anything finer than jumping into a cool lake on a hot day? It feels especially good after a hot bike ride, or a nap that has left you groggy.

You don’t have to swim laps in the lake. You don’t have to have a purpose on the water. Remember, no guilt is allowed at The Cabin. Just sit in the water like a jellyfish. Take an occasional swim to the diving dock, to show the rest of the folks that you haven’t turned into a human jellyfish. Throw your arms over an inner tube and float around with your wife and get some serious small talk done.

And watch the kids play. That’s another joy of The Cabin. If you ever feel jaundiced about children, if you ever want to say “Kids today don’t know how to have fun anymore,” take them to The Lake at The Cabin. Yes, we really should capitalize The Lake too.

They can play all day. It always brings back a lot of good memories, watching children play in water. I think of the countless hours. I did the same on the Mississippi River when I was growing up. Literally every day in the summer. Wow, it was fun.

Grandma and the Grands at the cabin, 1996.

Now it’s almost as fun to watch them. Funny how things change. I think that is true for my mother-in-law, Lorely. She couldn’t go swimming, but she sure spent a lot of time sitting in a comfortable chair on shore and watching her grandkids play. Sometimes she pretended to be reading a book, but I know better.

Our family is lucky to spend a weekend a year at The Cabin. It belongs to my sister-in-law’s parents. They have a big family. They really get their money’s worth from it. The Cabin is booked almost every week of the year. I’m sure our family’s experiences there could be modified and repeated by many other families. I know we really appreciate it and value it.

I could go on and on about The Cabin. But you get the picture. Hopefully you have access to one of your own.

My sister-in-law’s brother, Mike, put it well on Sunday. He had been swimming on that perfect afternoon, watching the little ones, soaking up the warm sun.

He walked up the concrete steps to where I sat, playing the banjo. (Did I mention that The Cabin is the perfect place to play the banjo?)

I don’t remember his exact words. Reporters don’t take notes at The Cabin. But he said that if Satan rolls back the big iron doors and lets us out from Hell a million years from now, and gives us one day, one time, one moment, this is where we’ll come.

I couldn’t agree more.

Everybody won on this fishing trip ~ July 20, 2000

David Heiller

“Time to get up, Collin.”

I sat next to my nephew at 6 a.m. last Friday morning, expecting a battle.

But Collin popped out of bed like a piece of toast. He was wide awake before his feet hit the floor.

Collin and his lunker

Fishing will do that to a boy age seven.

It hadn’t been quite so easy for the 46-year-old. I spent 15 minutes getting out of bed and opening my eyes (in that order), then getting dressed and climbing up to the loft to wake Collin.

“Look at the loons,” Collin said when we stepped out of the cabin. Seven loons were paddling side by side across the middle of the lake. They looked like they were practicing for the Aquatennial Parade.

We got in the boat and headed for our hot spot, which is usually luke-warm at best. Collin asked if he could steer the boat. But it was too early for that. My eyes weren’t open all the way yet. “Later,” I promised.

I eased the 14-foot boat through a narrow channel and into a smaller lake. We drifted with the current, and started casting our jigs.

Collin caught the first keeper, a crappie about a pound in size. I put it on the stringer. Collin watched in admiration. He doesn’t like to touch fish. Then he caught a small bass. I took it off the hook for him.

I didn’t have to lecture Collin about how he had to learn to take off fish if he wanted to be a real fisherman. For one thing, my son, age 17, had ridden him pretty hard about it all week. (This is the same son who wouldn’t wake up when Collin had jumped out of bed.)

Collin and David, fishing buddies, swimming buddies, just good buddies.

And Collin knew he had to learn to take fish off. But knowing and doing are two different things. That’s what learning is all about. He had made his first small step the day before, when he borrowed my handkerchief to take off a sunfish for the first time. It was a good use for a hanky.

We left the spot after an hour and headed for another place that Collin had “heard about.” Already he is spreading gossip about where the fish are biting. That’s the sign of a true fisherman! It was a half mile away, which Collin also figured into the equation, because it gave him a chance to steer the boat. He knew I would say yes this time.

I was finally awake, and the lake was glass, so I scooted over and he took the throttle of the seven horse Mercury, and we made our way, although not in a straight line, to the next little lake.

Collin had lost his red jig, which he felt bad about, because it had caught a few fish and he thought it was lucky. “Do you have a white lure with red eyes?” Collin asked. “Uncle Mike lost a big walleye with a lure like that.”

“Yeah, it’s called a Red-Eye,” I said, taking one out and showing it to him. That was the one. I hooked it onto his leader. We started casting.

“There’s no fish in this lake,” Collin said, and not more than three seconds later, he had a strike.

Collin’s rod bent over. He reeled in steadily, with only a word of age-old advice from me: Keep your rod tip up. Is there anything finer than watching a kid reel in a nice fish?

He brought it to the side of the boat, and I lifted it in. It was a largemouth bass, about 14 inches long.

That was a lunker for the lake we were on. “Can we keep it?” he asked.

“Let’s take it back and show everybody,” I stalled.

We fished a little longer. On almost every cast, Collin said, “There’s no fish in this lake.” But that trick usually only works once.

Collin steered us back to the cabin, then jumped out of the boat with the fish almost as quickly as he had jumped out of bed. He showed his mom and dad and sister and cousin and aunt. He let everyone know how he had out-fished Uncle David. That didn’t bother me. It was a win-win situation, in today’s parlance.

We took the bass back to the lake. I had broken the news that this bass wasn’t quite big enough for a respectable fisherman to keep. I pulled out the stringer, and laid the fish in the water. I held it by the tail and pulled it back and forth, until its gills were working hard. Then we watched it swim off beneath the dock. That’s a good feeling, watching a fish swim away, to be caught another day:

I cleaned the crappie. Collin watched. It’s another fishing skill he will soon master. We ate it for breakfast. It tasted great!