Some fish never stop growing ~ July 6, 1989

David Heiller

We did a lot of fishing when I was a kid, growing up on the Mississippi River in southeastern Minnesota. I have a thousand memories, but one stands out. It’s so old, I only remember remembering it, if you know what I mean.

It was a summer evening, when I was about six. We were fishing off a dock south of Brownsville, in the backwater. The dock was full of us kids. I had a cane pole, of course, and stood at the edge of the black water, which lapped over the old wooden planks and onto our feet. It was that still time of day, with the warm smell of summer evening in the air, a smell kids know, a mixture of fish and water and wet wood and mayflies and warm sunshine.

I remember that smell, and I remember my cane pole just about jumped out of my hand as a fish took the huge bobber under. I pulled up, the black line straining, and suddenly a huge bass lay thrashing on the dock. It shook out the hook, and started flopping toward the water. Glenn, my older brother, stood and gawked for a split second. Then he pounced on the fish like a cat, and clutched it in 15-year-old hands, a lunker large mouth.

It seemed like a lunker to me, anyway. We measured it at 16 inches on the spot. By the time we got home, it was 18 inches long. That’s all the longer Glenn would allow it to grow, and it has stayed there for 29 years. I admired that black bass for years. I used to hold my hands apart 18 inches, and tell myself, “That’s how long it was.” I could see its green back, the black line running down the side, the huge mouth, the red in its eye. It’s been my favorite fish ever since.

Noah's bass

This past weekend, we took a family vacation to a cabin on Pelican Lake, near Orr, Minnesota. As soon as we had unpacked the car, we piled into the boat, and headed for a fishing hole, my son, Noah, my sister-in-law, Nancy, and me.

We pulled up at a narrow channel between two small islands. It looked like a good spot, according to the resort map. “Reef,” it said, showing tiny lines in a circle. Besides, another boat was here too. They must know what they were doing, I thought. That’s a basic rule of fishing: If you don’t know what you’re doing, find someone who looks like they do. One of the guys from their boat was in the water, tugging at the anchor rope. “Anchor’s stuck on the rocks,” he called out as we pulled up 30 feet away.

Noah cast a nightcrawler out from his Mickey Mouse rod and reel, while I bent down to bait my hook. Suddenly there was a splashing. Noah yelled, “I’ve got one, I’ve got one.” His rod, all three feet of it, was doubled over the side of the boat out of sight. It pulled him to his feet.

“Pull it in,” I said, thinking it was a sunny. Then I saw the swirl of a large green back in the water. I gawked for a split second. “Help him, Nancy,” I called. She reached out, grabbed his line, and hoisted the fish into the boat.

“Look at that, Dad,” Noah said. He held up a largemouth bass, about 16 inches in length. It must have weighed a pound and a half, maybe a little more.

Good fishing for Noah, David, and Nancy.

“Nice bass,” the guy in the water called from the nearby boat. It was an honest compliment, but did I detect a touch of jealousy, a wistful tone in his voice? Where had I heard that before? From my brother on the dock south of Brownsville 29 years ago?

The fishing peaked then and there. We caught plenty of sunnies the next two days, plus perch and crappies and smallmouth and rock bass and a two pound northern. But no more largemouth bass like that.

Which was fine with Noah. Because the largemouth began to grow almost as soon as it was filleted and refrigerated. “How big was it, Dad?” he asked that evening as we returned to the hot spot. He held his hands maybe two feet apart. “That big?”

“No, not quite,” I answered, trying not to smile.

“That big?” He moved his hands 18 inches palm-to-palm, but they immediately drifted apart, like opposite poles on a magnet, and the fish grew some more.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, smiling.

And for a split second, I smelled it again, that smell of fish and water and wet wood and mayflies and warm sunshine.

On hiking and biking and growing up ~ June 23, 1988

David Heiller

“Daddy, will you take the training wheels off my bike this morning?”

I looked at my son on that bright May morning. It was not the first time he had asked the question. “I took them off once before, and that didn’t work so well,” I reminded him as gently as possible. They were off for about two weeks, and 14 bruises later, back on again.

Noah lifted each hand, as if weighing a couple of cantaloupes in a grocery store. That was his gesture that signaled the coming of a profound, four-year-old statement, "But Dad" he said, shrugging and raising his hands, "that was before. I'm older now. I'm almost five."

The bike with the training wheels. There appear
to be no photos AFTER the training wheels were gone, I guess because, he never stopped!

“And Matt can ride his bike,” he added. That’s the real reason, I thought, grabbing a wrench from the garage. We had been riding along the Hinckley Fire Trail a month earlier, Noah perched on a seat behind me. We had passed his friend Matt pedaling his own bike, without training wheels. Matt’s grin was as wide as the bike trail.

So Noah’s training wheels came off again. Cindy and I left for work, leaving Noah to practice with a babysitter, Josh. When we came home that afternoon, Noah ran up to us, proclaiming the miracle that he had learned to ride the bike without training wheels.

Sure enough, as we watched beside the car, Noah wobbled forward about 10 feet on his own. At first he had a hard time getting going, and Josh had to give him a push. Sometimes his feet would pedal backwards instead of forward, and the brakes would stop him cold. But he was definitely on his own. Like a bird leaving its nest, he could fly.

Over the next few weeks, Noah’s bike riding skills improved in quantum leaps. He would ride the little 12-inch bike at every spare moment—when he got up, when he got home from day care, after lunch. Soon he could turn circles, then he could ride standing up. One time, he barreled the full length of the driveway, and down the hill toward the outhouse. I stopped from working in the garden as he sped past, and I thought he would end up head first down one of the two holes. But he slammed on the brakes and slid to a grassy stop in front of the door.

“See Dad?” he said, smiling, reading my worried look.

When Gradma Olson came up for Noah’s fifth birthday two weeks ago, Noah had to show off his bike riding skills. He ran naked from the sauna and streaked down the driveway on the bike.

Last Saturday, Noah traded his bike for his hiking shoes. We were camping in Tettegouche State Park on the North Shore. On Saturday, we headed for a long hike. I carried Malika on my back most of the way. Noah walked at a pace that let him search for animal tracks along the trail. We stopped a couple times along the way. Once, a red squirrel scolded us. Noah claimed it was a chipmunk. We stopped at one lake, where Noah watched a fisherman pull in a stringer of nice northerns, one at least seven pounds. On we walked, through cedar swamps and huge hardwoods, up hills and over planks. We ate lunch at an old logging camp. I admired a white pine so large that two people couldn’t link hands around its base. Noah admired a wood chuck which had its home under a root cellar.

As we headed back on the last leg of the trip, Noah started complaining. But Cindy told him, “If you are a good hiker Noah, maybe we can go camping for a whole week in the mountains.”

Noah channeling his totem, the Siberian tiger.

“In the Rocky Mountains?” he asked. Yes, we answered, knowing that the Rocky Mountains held his second favorite animal, the grizzly bear. (His favorite is a Siberian tiger.)

With that inspiration, Noah hiked on. His pace slipped a little, but he kept on. He had to be carried twice, for a quarter mile or so. When we got back to camp, we carefully measured the trip at seven-and-a-half miles. Noah, we figured, had hiked seven of those by himself.

Both Noah and Malika went to sleep quickly that night, curled in their bags in our tent. A storm came up at about 11, as our campfire flickered. By the time we had settled in next to the kids, a real thunderstorm hit. Thunder boomed, and lightening lit up the top of the tent with white and yellow flashes that hurt our eyes, lying in the black tent.

We grabbed the flashlight and shined it on the kids. Noah sat up. “Where’s Mollie?” he asked. “Is she all right?” ‘

We shined the light on Mollie for him. She stirred a little, but did not wake up in spite of the pounding rain and thunder and lightning.

Noah lay on his back next to us. When the lightning flashed, we could see his eyes wide, staring at the top of the tent. It was high adventure for the Great Hiker, the Great Bike Rider.

I found myself thinking too, not about the storm but about our son. I thought about his bike riding, how he could now do little “wheelies” and ride one-handed. I thought about him hiking seven miles and still lying awake, while my back was killing me from carrying Malika all day. I thought about how his muscles were changing, how his legs had the shape of men’s legs, with strong calves. I thought about his first reaction in the storm, asking about his baby sister. Was she safe?

For a second time stood still, frozen by a lightning flash, and it flashed to me—my son was growing up.

Minnesota weather—June frost and relative humility ~ June 5, 1986

David Heiller

Minnesotans are a humble folk. We aren’t known for our decisiveness, our positive thinking. Ask someone how they’re doing, and they’ll likely reply, “Not too bad,” or “I can’t complain,” “Pretty good, I guess.”

Even my three-year-old son realizes his humble fate. He thinks we live in Maybe-Soda, and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis. It’s a state-wide shyness flowing from Lake Wobegon to Lake City, from Worthington to Warroad. Steve Cannon of WCCO is perhaps the only person in the state with relative humility, and that’s just during the weather report.

 Noah thinks we live in Maybe-Soda,
 and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis.

I had some personal insight into al this on Sunday. Last week’s weather had broken all kinds of records. Duluth had 86 degrees on May 28, International Falls: 91. We were somewhere in between. The warm weather held through Friday, as we got our garden ready for spring planting. I even took a day off for the ritual. Cindy, my wife, drove with confidence to a greenhouse and bought 24 tomato sets, 12 peppers, and some odds and ends for the weekend planting.

The last of the garden beds were finished by Sunday. Cindy and Noah went to church in the morning, while Malika and I stayed home and fertilized the soil with bone meal and blood meal. Sunday afternoon, under 60 degree, partly cloudy skies, we planted tomatoes and peppers and flowers and Brussels sprouts. The clouds broke, sunlight blessed our hard work, and a lady on the radio said temperatures would be in the 70s on Monday.

After the kids were tucked away Sunday evening, I returned to the garden. Two robins chirped to each other in the spruce trees. A pair of goldfinches sat atop the end spruce, the bright gold male a step higher on the branches than his mate. Two cedar waxwings perched quietly in the dead branches of the elm tree next to the house. The wrens nesting in their home on the clothes line pole stayed inside, the mother warming her tiny eggs.

God was in his heaven, all was right with the world. It was enough to make a Minnesotan downright confident and happy, even a newspaper editor. I brought a paper bag full of old newspapers to the tomato beds, and started to spread them next to the plants. The first batch held shoppers. I placed them with a vengeance on the ground, thinking they would finally be put to a good use. Then I opened up a Pine County Courier, and laid Richard Coffey next to a plant. I felt like reading his column first, but knew he would understand, and his wife Jeanne would be proud to have him play such an active role in weed control.

But I soon ran out of other newspapers and even the Omni-present shopper. I went to the garage for a bag of Askov Americans. I had been saving them to submit to the National Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest, which is why they were still in the garage. Relative humility.

I spread them around the tomatoes. Joel Mortensen crowded one plant. “That one will have a strong taste,” I thought. One of my outhouse columns nestled another. Good fertilizer there.

Soon the tomatoes were nicely mulched. I sprinkled hay on all the crooked headlines and blurred photos, and walked into the house feeling very content. Humble, as only a person who can put a year’s worth of work on his tomatoes feels, but content.

The story should end there, but remember, folks, this is Minnesota. Our one-year-old daughter woke up with a cry at 1 a.m. She may have sensed the danger and warned us. As I stumbled in parent stupor for baby aspirin, I glanced at the outdoor thermometer. Suddenly the stupor disappeared. Thirty-five degrees and falling.

I hurried outside, grabbed the flashlight from the car. I carried sheets from the garage, plastic, blankets, anything I could find, and spread it all over the tomatoes and peppers. I knew I couldn’t sleep till they were all covered.

Cindy called me at work Monday morning. I knew before she said a word the bad news, like a phone call in the middle of the night when a relative is sick.

“The tomatoes, David, all but three have died.”

“Which three didn’t?” I asked. I hope they had been mulched with the American.

“The first three,” she answered.

I started to swear on the phone, then stopped. My Minnesota Confidence had glowed for a day. What the heck. It’s not so bad. We’ll buy more tomatoes. I can’t complain.

Taking her out to the ball game ~ June 4, 1992

David Heiller

How do you define baseball? If you are a six-year-old girl, it’s by the length of the licorice, and the taste of the pop, and Kirby Puckett’s first grand slam.

I took Malika to her first game last Friday. Before the game, I tried to engage her in Baseball Talk (BT). This is the second most boring language in the world (behind the mating noise of a three-toed ground sloth). You say things like, “Wow, Puckett has seven hits in his last 12 at bats.” And your friend answers, “But Lieus can’t hit worth beans with men in scoring position.” Boring.

Fortunately Baseball Talk on Friday was tempered by Kid Talk (KT), which has all the logic of a computer that just fell off a desk. It almost makes sense. Here are some samples of our dialogue, which I jotted down on the back of my scorecard.

Daddy~Daughter Dynamic Duo

BT: Larkin is playing right field.

KT: Who’s Larkin?

BT: You know, Gene Larkin.

KT: Who’s Larkin? What’s a Larkin, Dad?

KT: I see Kirby—the guy cleaning the area out there (around the pitcher’s mound).

BT: No, that’s the groundskeeper.

KT: How many more minutes (till the game starts)?

BT: Twenty

KT: You already said 20.

BT: No, I said 30.

KT: Oh.

KT: I want pudding.

BT: Where’s pudding?

KT: That guy’s holding it.

BT: That’s not pudding. That’s beer.

KT: Oh.

KT: I’m hungry.

BT: (Silence.)

KT: I’m hungry.

BT: (Silence.)

KT: I’m hungry.

BT: (Silence.)

KT: I’M HUNGRY.

She talked about a zillion other things too. She admired in a loud voice a woman’s earrings, which were shaped like little baseballs. (Now THERE’S a good birthday present for Cindy.) She checked out ladies’ purses, and told me (in a loud voice) every time she saw one she liked, or one that resembled her own 47 purses.

Noah and Malika working
 on their Twins imitations

She ogled a baby across the aisle, a kid all of one month old, who was passed between Mom and Dad while they ate pretzels and drank beer.

In between talking, Malika ate. It was a miracle. Her stomach normally holds half a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich, max. But at the game, where food prices are inflated as much as the stadium, she consumed a can of orange soda, three strips of button candy on paper, 67 peanuts, and a licorice rope two feet long.

She finished it all by the fifth inning. “I want a hot dog,” she said. Sure, for another $3, I thought. I put my foot down (on a carpet of peanut shells) and said no. But not until I’d bought myself a glass of “pudding” for $3.25.

We did manage to talk a little baseball, thanks to the idol of every kid who plays catch in Minnesota, Kirby Puckett. Kirby came through. He moved from groundskeeper to hero when he came up with the bases loaded in the fourth inning, and lined a homerun over the right-centerfield fence. We stood and roared with 26,000 other fans. Malika gave me a high-five and hollered, “A grand slam!” I didn’t even know she knew what a grand slam was, but she yelled it. I heard her. There’s hope for her yet.

We didn’t quit clapping until Kirby stepped out of the third base dugout and tipped his cap. A true hero, for the umpeenth time. Then at the top of the fifth, the crowd rose again as Kirby ran out to center field. The scoreboard announced that it was his first grand slam in the majors. It showed a replay, then a close-up of Kirby, who modestly doffed his cap again, and gave it a short swirl to the crowd.

My spine tingled. It was a special moment, one I’ll remember for a long time. Malika won’t. But I’m glad she was there with me to share it.

The Twins ended up winning, 17-5. But they could have LOST 17-5 and Mollie wouldn’t have known the difference. She had her food and her questions and her purses and earrings and her Kirby and her Dad. What more to baseball is there?

When we were leaving, she showed a new dance step to anyone who cared to watch, something between the Radio City Rocketts and some Nazi Storm Troopers. Then she tiptoed down the sidewalk, missing every crack for two blocks in honor of her mother’s back.

In the car, she made the predictable announcement: “I don’t feel so good.” Stomach hurt? “Uh-huh.” But no disasters would end this adventure. The car rolled northward through the night, and the dash light soon wrapped a sleeping girl in its warm, green glow.

The next morning, I asked Mollie what she thought of the game. “I just loved it,” she said dramatically.

“What’d you love about it?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders. “The Twins won. I want to go to another game next time.” Sounds good to me.

Moms, dads beware—the secret weapon is awake ~ June 6, 1985

David Heiller

I have a secret weapon that could probably be sold to the highest bidder and used in the torture chambers of totalitarian regimes throughout the world. This weapon doesn’t cost millions of dollars, wasn’t developed by the military, and isn’t even illegal. But under controlled situations it will force the stiffest of upper lips into jelly, and melt nerves of steel into lead.

I discovered the weapons Sunday morning, at 5 a.m. My wife and I had celebrated our fifth anniversary the previous night, with dinner and a Greg Brown concert in Duluth. We had finally got the babysitter home, and settled ourselves into bed by 2 a.m. That made the weapon even more potent three hours later.

Small cute boy?
Not really, more like a diabolical 
weapon on the morning here described.

Cindy heard it first, and deserves much of the blame. Thump. The sound of bare feet sliding out of bed in the next room. Pad-pad-pad-pad. Those tiny feet approaching with both stealth and firmness. The blankets tightening around two groggy adults, as two little fists grab, pull, and hoist 29 pounds of boy onto the bed. Up lift the blankets, in slides the weapon, warm, snuggling, smiling.

For perhaps a minute, all is well, the calm before the storm. While Mom and Dad pull the covers up to their chins and mumble something to each other, the secret agent’s eyes open. All semblance of fatigue is gone from those blue eyes. They are the eyes of a wide awake, two-year-old boy at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

This agent goes by the name of Noah. In your house, it may be Emily, or Mathew, or Joseph, or Amber. Names differ, but techniques are universal.

“Mo-mower grahch,” he starts, standing on the mattress looking out the window. “Mo-mower grahch. Mo-mower grahch.”

Yes, the lawn mower is in the garage,” I answer. My eyes are open slightly, staring at the ceiling and the towering boy.

“Why?”

I started to answer, then catch myself, and instead turn my back to him. He kneels by my head, grabs my beard, and pulls my face to his.

“Daddy.”

I don’t answer.

“Daddy.” Two quick kisses. Something is up. “Daddy. Dasses, OK?”

Now I am awake. Two kisses in his mind are worth my glasses, which rest on the night stand next to the bed.

“No, you can’t have my glasses,” I say while catching his arm as it passes over my head.

“Why?”

I don’t answer him. Instead I call out to Cindy. I want to make sure she is a part of this. “Why did you let him in bed?” I ask.

“I thought he’d fall right asleep,” she answers in an embarrassed voice. A two-year-old falling back to sleep on a Sunday morning once in bed with Mom and Dad? She seemed to realize now how foolish the notion sounded.

Dancing with Mama and her midsection.

But my diversion worked. Noah turned his attention to Momma He started grilling her with small talk. The birds are singing. April was here last night. She’s a nice babysitter. I would like a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. The lawn mower is in the garage. Is Margot coming today? Binti is sleeping. Miss Emma is sleeping. Let’s go downstairs. I want juice.

Cindy rolled over onto her back. That seemed to be Noah’s intention. He eyed the 22 extra pounds of a soon-to-be brother or sister on Momma’s midsection. His eyes sparkled like a mountain climber gazing for the first time at the Matterhorn. Then he started climbing, draping the bulge like a barrel.

“Noah. Daddy, help!” Cindy groaned.

“You let him in bed,” I said, not moving.

“I know, I know,” she answered, holding back expletives with sheer Mother willpower.

By this time, we were both awake. The clock said 5:30. The Sunday sun was almost over the horizon. Birds were calling everywhere, catbirds, robins, mourning doves.

“What the heck, we might as well get up, huh?” I suggested.

Noah was already sliding off the bed, leading the way downstairs. The secret weapon had won.

Bear 1, Campers 0 ~ May 25, 1995

 David Heiller

Jim and I were paddling across the east end of Vera Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area last Friday when Jim let out a holler. “There’s a bear in our camp!”

We were about a quarter mile away. You don’t realize how slowly a canoe travels until you paddle toward a campsite that contains your food pack and a bear in the same tree.

We bore down on the camp. “Paddle Dave, paddle!” Jim said. I wasn’t exactly dozing in the sun. We started yelling. The bear must have heard us. It dropped out of the tree and scampered happily into the woods.

We had hung the food pack in a tree, like we always do on our annual trip into lake country. We knew a bear would come calling. The day before, it had left teeth marks on a few dry food items by our fire grate. Things in plastic bottles that we don’t usually hang, like rice and salt.

It struck pay dirt on that first visit too: we had accidentally left out a quart of Heiller’s Pure Maple Syrup. It bit through bag and bottle and licked it up. That made us as mad as it made the bear happy.

Then Jim and I had to watch from the water while the bear hung like a double-jointed gymnast and picked out other goodies, such as the blueberry pancake mix and Cindy’s chocolate chip bars.

It gets worse.

Early Saturday morning the bear returned. We heard a crashing noise by the lake. Jim crawled out of his bag and shined his flashlight on a very big black bear on the ground below the food pack. It raced away, but not before taking a jar of Tang and a bag of apples and the last of the bread.

That was enough for us. He was eating us out of tent and campsite. We figured if we stayed any longer, he’d take over the cooking duties for Dave, and Dave is pretty touchy when anyone growls about his cooking.

So on Saturday we headed for new territory. Before we left, Dave scratched on a rock: Beware bear. I hope that bear can’t read.

Blame it on the new guy

It’s all Steve’s fault.

Steve took the place of Paul, who had traveled with Jim and Dave and me for eight straight years up north. We hadn’t even seen a bear in those eight years.

Then along comes Steve, who had dreamed about a bear just a week before the trip. And a bear comes and takes all our food? Pretty suspicious.

In fact, it might have even been Steve up in that tree. It’s been a while since he’s had a shave and a haircut.

Steve, Jim, Dave, and David: different crew,
slightly; different shenanigans, slightly.

Steve isn’t much of a fisherman. He caught a lot of things, but none of them were fish. Mostly he caught trees and rocks and logs and a lot of good natured ribbing, most of which he gave himself.

Sometimes when Steve got a snag, Jim would coach him off it. Jim missed his calling as a sports announcer. We didn’t catch many fish, so Jim had to practice on snags. “Come back the other way with the line, Steve,” he would say, while Steve’s rod bent against a 10 pound rock bass. “Keep it tight. Now jiggle your rod tip. Now pull from the other side.”

Steve attracted gnats. They may have thought he was a bear. Every evening, he would sit by the fire and a cloud of bugs would settle on him like a hair dryer. Steve would put on his sunglasses to protect his eyes, which worked great for the gnats but didn’t help him see his way around too well by the light of the campfire.

When it rained, Steve donned his new rain suit. The coat fit fine, but the pants were an extra large, something which Steve is not. So the crotch of the rain pants came to his knees, and the hem came out somewhere near the lake. He looked like a little kid in big, rubber-coated pajamas. We all laughed about this too, including Steve.

A lot of laughter and exploring

Laughter is a main ingredient of a good canoe trip. There’s plenty of serious conversation, and times when we don’t talk at all, like on a lake at night when the loons are calling back and forth.

A new canoe partner for David.

But everybody gets teased. We laughed at Dave’s voice, how it rumbles like a distant thunderstorm across the lake. Dave reminded me several times about the day I jumped into the water after a fishing rod that a fish had pulled in.

We recalled Paul trying to keep warm on our first trip, soaked and bedraggled to the bone while he insisted everything was just peachy. And Jim stripping off his clothes and washing up in the lake, then giving us the play by play of what it was like.

And Steve’s rainsuit.

Another part of a good canoe trip is exploring new country. We did that when we canoed down Knife Lake one clear, calm morning. The water was a beautiful emerald green. You could see down 10 feet. We sat in the sun and Dave cut thick slabs of meat and cheese for sandwiches. We climbed Thunderhead Point and could see for miles and miles.

We visited Isle of Pines, where Dorothy Molter lived for 60 years. We found a pile of her old bottle caps. I felt the spirit of the Root Beer Lady in the wind through the huge pine trees and her little lilac bushes.

We didn’t catch fish that day, but Dave put it best when he said it was a perfect day to not catch fish. It was a perfect trip too.

Except for the bear.