Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Andy Rote was having the hardest time at the skating rink in Askov last Friday. He would skate about two feet before his own two feet would fly into the air, and he would land on his keester, as Ronald Reagan would call it. But Andy, like most seven-year-olds, didn’t seem to mind the falls. For one thing, he had six layers of clothes on. His mother, Anne, who grinned from the sidelines, had made sure of that. He didn’t mind that his 10-year-old sister, Elaine didn’t fall down once, or that Tara Loew, at age 14, looked like another Katarina Witt as she circled the rink. Andy just kept getting up, and falling down, and getting up again. Noah and Joe skating, Kevin is doing his very best with Mollie. There’s something about skating that brings back memories for a lot of us. Watching Andy skate last Friday, and skating with my family on Saturday and Sunday, brought back some flashes. Someone always received a new pair of skates for Christmas in my family of ei...

David Heiller It was a good snow, the five inches of snow that fell on January 10. It fell when the temperature was about 30 degrees, so it was wet and stuck to everything. Usually this kind of snow falls in March, and it stays for a few hours. Then the sun shines and the wind blows and the snow drops in big globs, and by noon it’s back to normal. But after last week’s snow, the temperature dropped, and wind stayed away, and the snow stuck like frosting onto every twig and branch for four days. It looked like God had reached down with a big can of whipped cream, and got a little carried away. This snow belonged on a Christmas card by Currier and Ives. The snow brought snowmobilers to life. You could tell they had been waiting for it for two months. They zipped by on the trails and along the roads. They filled the parking lot of the Embassy Bar and the cash registers of Sturgeon Lake One Stop. The snow also brought my son and me out to the woods for a 2-1/2 hour hike on Sat...

David Heiller Music was a big part of my life when I was in the Peace Corps in Morocco from 1977 to 1979. Roger and David making music in Morocco. I played the banjo a lot to pass the time. When I’d get together with American friends, we’d always play music. One of my most memorable musical moments in Morocco came at a workshop that the volunteers were having in Tangiers. I don’t know how much work we got done at this workshop. I do know it was a good time to visit with friends, compare war stories, and play music. We were sitting around in a hotel lobby, playing music, when an English gentleman joined us. He brought out his guitar, and the rest of us soon put ours away. He was good. Very good. The kind of performer you’d pay music to see at a college coffeehouse. He played song after song. Wow, it was nice listening to him. We fell under his spell. And he came up with a classic line that night, one I still remember. One of the volunteers asked him, with a dreamy lo...

by David Heiller What comes to mind when you think of Saturday night as a child? For many people, it’s bath night. Or maybe that should be capitalized. Bath Night, an American institution. David (left) and his older brothers,  presumably AFTER Bath Night the previous eve. As a child Bath Night for our family had a certain ritual. I had seven brothers and sisters. The girls got the upstairs bathroom usually, while my two brothers and I splashed downstairs. Glenn, nine years older, would usually bathe first, because he had places to go and people (usually of the opposite gender) to meet. Danny and I followed. Three years my senior, Danny was expert at taking baths. He convinced me that no soap was necessary. There were little germs in the water, and these germs drove tiny bulldozers that scraped dirt away. Mom ended that theory, possibly after finding no ring in the tub one too many times. After the bath, it was into pajamas and onto the living room floo...