Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller  The widow maker stood in our woods last Thursday morning, calmly waiting for a man to come its way. Deane circled it cautiously; chainsaw in hand, the way a cowboy might circle a raging black stallion. He eyed the basswood t ree, which had snapped in a strong west wind about eight feet above the ground. Its top rested on four other basswoods, and a large birch, all of which were bent from the extra weight. What I saw was a lot of fi rewood, dry on the stump, waiting for my woodstove. What Deane saw was a spring loaded, three-ton wooden widow maker. Finally he turned to me with a grin. “I’m not cutting that down,” he said. “Mother nature will take care of it for you.” I was surprised, for perhaps two seconds. Deane Hillbrand handles a chainsaw better than anyone I’ve ever seen. He builds log and timber frame homes for a living. Trees fall where he wants them to . Deane and Kathryn Hillbrand But part of a person’s skill with a tool includes knowing w...

David Heiller Christmas is a season, all right, and it’s here now. It wasn’t here last week, but it’s here now. Don’t ask me to define the difference that a few days can make. Maybe flipping the calendar over to “December” made the difference. It shouldn’t, but on Saturday, December 1, I felt   THAT FEELING for the first time in 11 months, the feeling that the Christmas season had arrived. It comes with a certain slant to the daylight, the soft light of short days with the sun hanging low in the south, and six inches of fresh snow underfoot. Malika, Noah, Joey and Queen Ida Christmas tree hunting. It’s a light that’s great for walks down back roads with a seven-year-old boy who has deer-antler fever and thinks maybe we’ll find a set that some hunter forgot. It’s a great excuse for a hike, and we do find a lot of deer tracks in the snow. We find a glassy patch of ice in the culvert and watch bugs crawling through the water just a few inches from our noses. We...

David Heiller David loved working with his tractors! (And he wasn't afraid of getting stuck, either.)   The field was wet and muddy But I trusted to my luck, And with a load of firewood I got my tractor stuck. My darling wife had warned me Not to take the tractor out To the woods on Saturday. “You’ll get it stuck, no doubt, Like you did the last time.” Yes, I remembered well, Hauling in a load of ash. It made me mad as heck. But part of making firewood Involves a little luck Hoping that you don’t get hurt Or that you don’t get stuck. I knew that it was a risky But that’s what makes it fun When you take a chance at work And when that work gets done. So I hung my muddy pants On the clothesline outside. And came in wearing boxers And a grin of manly pride, And I told my darling Cindy, And I took the “Told-you-so’s,” And hoped by Sunday morning That the soft would be froze. We had a low lying fi...

David Heiller We lost a friend on Saturday, a century old friend that we have known for the past six years. When we moved to our homestead in May, 1981, this friend welcomed us. He stood erect to the southwest of the house, leaning over the house towering above us, a full 70 feet. He made us feel at home, just as he made the family of orioles feel at home in their swaying nest our first two summers here. Orioles love elm trees. After the elm was felled, it started snowing.   Noah grabbed an  umbrella  and played  jack-in-the-box in the hollow stump.  The hollow stump held  flowers for many  years  before that too, had to be removed. But the next year, 1984, the orioles did not return. Our elm tree showed us why. A few of the outer limbs had turned brown in June, their leaves shriveling too early in the summer. The orioles weren’t taking any chances. Dutch elm disease had arrived. Still, for the next two summers, the elm...

by David Heiller The Hillbrand Boys came over last week with a tiller in the back of their truck. I had been going to borrow Steve’s tiller, after I had first weeded the garden by hand. I like to weed first, then till. I use a Mantis mini-tiller, which is so light that it’s more like vacuuming the garden than tilling it. I don’t like to till in weeds. I like clean dirt. I pull weeds out by the wheelbarrow-full almost every day at this time of year, then I till, and for at least a week, there isn’t a weed in sight. But Steve said he needed the tiller and couldn’t let me borrow it, so it was now or never with the tiller. He was already unloading the tiller as he said this. David tilling our new garden spot  after we moved to the Denham area. That put me in a dilemma. I wasn’t ready for the tiller, but how do you turn down a free till? Steve had tilling on his mind — I could see it in his eyes — so I said OK. He backed the tiller out of a wooden box that h...

David Heiller When people live in the country, and have a young family, they welcome the chance to have playmates for their kids. So neither Cindy nor I objected at all to the request from some friends to take one of their three sons while Mom and Dad got away for two days of kid-less joy and skiing last weekend. My wife and I both think it is good for our son and daughter to be with other boys and girls their own age for all the obvious reasons that most parents list: they learn to share, they can express themselves on another level with their peers, they can play together. Maybe they can even stay out of Mom and Dad’s hair. Noah and his firetruck Of course, experienced parents also know that these lofty goals don’t always show themselves in obvious ways. Things like fire trucks get in the way. Noah’s new fire truck, for example. He got it from his Grandpa for Christmas. This truck has two parts, a cab section measuring 15½ inches, and a ladder section, 23½ inches long. ...

David Heiller “I only saw wood in April,” Ken declared on Saturday morning, April 5. “And May if I have to.” He made that declaration to Deane and me before we got going on a pile of black ash logs. He was saying it tongue in cheek, like he often does. But there was a grain of truth to it also, which I came to appreciate over the next two days. “What’s a sawmill like this worth?” I asked him as he was assembling his Wood Mizer LT40. “Catch me on the right day and I’ll give it to you,” he answered with a smile. We worked for the next two days with that sawmill, and I don’t think he would have given it away, because it worked like a Swiss clock, and it was run by a master. Deane and his crane lifted our  black ash logs onto Ken's sawmill. Deane Hillbrand and Ken Peter worked as a team. It was a joy to be a small part of it. Deane would lift eight-foot-long logs onto the sawmill with his crane, and Ken would saw them up with his sawmill. I had the challenging job o...

David Heiller A friend of ours asked my wife if he could bring his three kids over for two days and two nights of babysitting this week. Cindy asked me if I would mind. I told her no, that should be fine. I would be at work during the day and most of the night too, since this is Askov Fair Week. “Oh by the way, honey,” she added nonchalantly, “I’ve got a meeting in Minneapolis on Monday. But I’ll get Glenda to babysit.” “That shouldn’t be any problem, I replied, thinking of Glenda, poor Glenda, who has five kids of her own. If anyone could handle five more kids, Glenda could. Two of the usual suspects So our friend’s three kids arrived Sunday night, and our friend drove off to his job in St. Paul with a smile on his face, a smile only a single parent can have who is returning to work without three of his kids. Inside the house, the volume on the kids went up 150 percent, which is the increase in lung power we suddenly had inherited. But I didn’t mind. Noah woke up, and ...