Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

Editor's note : I believe that this was David's first column as the editor of the Askov American. The idea of a weekly column was just  beginning  to  percolate  in his mind. So, the format  and the style were a little different. The story is a beloved one in our family.   ON CAMP COURAGE: David's older sister Lynette went to camp, D avid and I met at camp (he was the cowboy, I was the cook).  My brother and sister-in-law worked there.  Our daughter, Malika worked at camp.  It is not a stretch to say what an important place Camp Courage was to our family. David Heiller   Every week, newspapers like the American are inundated with press releases from people, organizations or businesses who have some information they would like passed along. Some of the press releases are for good causes, others are blatantly self-serving, little more than free advertising. The press release on the front page of this week’s American from the ...

David Heiller Our favorite photo of Grandma  Heiller.  Thank you Jeanne Roster! THINK OF Α SONG FOR this season, an old favorite, not something that you   might hear on a popular radio station. It’s too early for Christmas carols, and there’s no national holiday to sing about. But there is one song that fits Thanksgiving time, and it’s been on my mind this Sunday, November 20, 1983. “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow. Over   the river and through the woods, oh how the wind doth blow. It bites the nose and chills the toes, as over the ground we go.” I’m thinking of that song today because I’m thinking of my grandmother, Edna Heiller. She shared many Thanksgivings with her eight children, with her 29 grandchildren, and even these last few years with her 17 great grandchildren.   Sometimes she would be the hostess, and we’d all con...

David Heiller “What are the odds of that happening?” I’m not talking about football odds, like the odds of Los Angeles beating Washington 38-9. I’m talking about coincidences, hard-to-believe ones. I think everybody has a few experiences which they like to tell about that are hard to believe, because they are so coincidental. Here are a few of mine. The first coincidence I can recall happened when I was in seventh grade. Our teacher, Mrs. Sauer, assigned us to write a report on South America. I turned in a sparkling account of the country, and it read word for word like the report turned in by Jerome Traff, a classmate. It turned out that his family and my family bought the same set of encyclopedias from the same salesman who blew through Brownsville one day in the mid-1950s. That wasn’t much of a coincidence, but it was a start. The first real coincidence happened in 1975, when I was in Montana backpacking and visiting friends. I needed a ride back to Minnesota, and was ...