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.

Old friends and music never die ~ July 26, 2001

David Heiller

I hadn’t seen Roger for 22 years, since we left the Peace Corps and went our separate ways. We had served together in Morocco from 1977 to 1979, teaching English as a foreign language.

Roger and David making music in Morocco, 1979

We were good friends there, even though we grew up in very different ways. Roger was raised in suburban New Jersey, me in rural Minnesota. But we had a lot in common. In fact, our differences may have brought us together. I was fascinated with his Italian background and big city connections. He seemed the same way about me and my roots in “Minn-Ah-SO-Dah.” (We talk funny to people in New Jersey.)

But our main connection was our love of music. We shared ballads and blues, traditional tunes and new songs, and some that we had written. When we got together, we wouldn’t even need to talk. We would just play and sing for hours, sometimes all night. That doesn’t happen too often.

Roger was a gifted guitar player. He could weave notes and chords into original songs that seemed to flow for hours. I loved to listen to them. He was in a whole other league than me, musically. But he liked my simple banjo tunes and my singing. He always encouraged it and complimented me, which meant a lot.

We tried to stay in touch after we left the Peace Corp, but life got in the way, as it often does. The letters quickly stopped. When my Christmas card to Roger came back “address unknown,” I figured I would never see him again. That saddened me. Every so often I would miss him, and wonder what happened.

Then about a year ago I got an e-mail from him. He had found me using an Internet source. It seemed like a miracle, hearing from him again.

Our letters picked up where our friendship had left off. We arranged for a reunion at his house in Bloomington, Indiana. Cindy and I and the kids drove there last week.

I wasn’t sure what it would be like. A lot can change in 22 years, and a lot had changed. But the reasons we became friends in the first place had stayed the same.

Roger with Maria on a hike
 with the Heillers in Kentucky, 2001

Yes, Roger definitely had gray hair and a gray beard. I guess I looked a little older too. And we both had had a lot of different life experiences. My rural roots bad grown even deeper, and Roger had settled into a very cosmopolitan city and life.

We sat and talked and saw the sights and hiked in the mountains. I got to meet his daughter. He got to meet our two children. We caught up on each other’s lives, on our joys and struggles. That was great.

We played and sang for hours, and that was even better. Roger had stringed instruments everywhere, and he played them with the same love and intensity as before. Our songs meshed again, not only the old ones, but new ones. We hadn’t communicated in 20 years, but we had learned many of the same songs since then, listened to a lot of the same singers. Our lives seemed to be on parallel paths.

I got to know Roger again, and somehow that reminded me of who I was, too.

At times music is like a miracle to me. Last week I discovered that finding an old friend can be pretty magical too.

Saying goodbye ~ July 20, 1989

David Heiller

The small black suitcase lay before me on the bed, and I hesitated before opening it. The suitcase stays in the top dresser drawer in my old bedroom, but I had never opened it before. And now, I hesitated just a second before lifting the two metal clasps, like you hesitate before lifting the phone receiver to call a friend you haven’t seen in a long, long time, not knowing who’ll answer.

Inside the black vinyl case, two bright scarves lay on top, and two hand-made pot holders, and a ceramic wall hanging, carefully painted but with colors running into each other, the yellow banana flowing onto the green foliage. Some construction paper posters were carefully folded, along with two hot pads, and a Girl Scout sash with 16 merit badges from Troop 93, Peace Pipe Council.

David and Lynette with Grandma Schnick.

I touched these things carefully, seeing for what seemed like the first time in 20 years, the smiling girl who had made them and worn them, my sister, Lynette.

Letters filled the rest of the suitcase, some still in envelopes with four cent stamps, some lying loose, scrawled in pencil. I hadn’t seen that writing for so long, the careful printing that didn’t quite stay on the line, like the ceramic colors that didn’t quite stay on their mark. I could see the toes as they gripped the stubby pencil so tightly, see the short strokes stab the paper slowly, carefully.

You know these pink slacks you made me, well their too baggy, Lynette wrote on April 29, 1968. Why can’t I get a dress for Kathy’s wedding? Everyone else is.

In a letter from Worthington Crippled Children’s School on February 20, 1966, Lynette told Mom: I will send you a copy of the paper we wrote. Boy, will you be surprised what I wrote. I miss you all, even Glenn and Sharon (the cats too).

A letter from the University’ of Minnesota Hospital on March 16, 1965, said to Mom: I hope I can go home Friday. Will you make Kathy come with you. I wanta see so bad, and she is my best sister (don’t let the girls read this or they’ll be mad at me). Glenn came Saturday night. Love to all, Lynette.

David and Lyn at Christmas

A letter from Kathy that same year lay next to this letter. I hope now that you are feeling better and can get around more, Kathy wrote. After an operation, no one feels like doing anything. Boy I bet you sure had fun when you were home, didn’t you? I suppose everyone was so glad to see you.

There was a letter from Mary Ellen to Lynette at the hospital, with a card and a kiss drawn in red taped to the page. I’ll send you a piece of gum, Mary wrote. I hope they let you chew it. I know how you love it!

There was a check-off list of things to take to Camp Courage, where Lynette loved to go every summer. Lynette had crossed “playsuits” off the list and written in “pant dresses,” more befitting to a teenager.

There were letters from Lynette when she was at Camp Courage too. Today is windy, she wrote from camp on June 23, 1964. Janet is always making me laugh. Did you get my radio fixed yet?

Two little autograph books in the suitcase had messages written to Lynette from Camp friends. One message read:

You’ve been a great camper,

Even in the heat.

But I’m still jealous

I can’t write with my feet!

Love, Margaret.

Other messages were more somber. A girl named Mary Beth wrote: You’re really the best roommate a camper could ever hope for. I’m going to miss you when you have to go on your own way and I on mine. I just hope you never forget me.

Grandma Schnick had some practical advice in the autograph book. She wrote: I just can’t think of any verse to write so will just say how very proud I am of the way you are improving and know you will keep right on. Love, Grandma

Finally there was a message from Mom: Lynette: I hope you never forget how to laugh. Love, Mother.

Laughter. Mom knew her daughter better than anyone, and in one sentence had touched Lynette’s shining star, her laughter.

Amidst all the letters was a folded piece of scratch paper. Mom’s familiar handwriting stood out on the clean side:

I knew the time had come to put away

The things you’d never use nor see again.

“Be calm, detached,” I said to me.

“These are but things.” 
But oh, they were so dear, For they had known your touch.

And in your purse I found a little mirror.

Long I gazed into its depth,

Hoping for a reflection of your smile

Captured there.

But all I saw was my own brimming eyes

And I knew the searching was in vain

And you were gone.

I closed the suitcase, just as my mother must have. Cindy lay beside me. I put my head on her chest, and cried, feeling the sheet turn wet beneath my face. I cried like never before, never since July 21, 1969, at Lynette’s funeral, three days after she had drowned at Camp Courage.

It wasn’t that long ago, 20 years, and I haven’t forgotten her, but somehow, I had never said goodbye, until now.

So long, old woodstove friend ~ June 17, 1999

David Heiller

The woodstove is gone. A neighbor bought it. We moved it onto his trailer last Friday, and it was no easy task.

I had grown attached to the woodstove. On the one hand, it was about as inanimate an object as you could find, steel and brick, and as solid as a tiny Gibraltar. There’s nothing colder than a cold stove.

On the other hand, when that stove was full of oak on a winter night, it was as good a friend as you could ask for. It was the center of our household universe, and it didn’t have to beg for attention.

Malika showing her great strength hauling 
wood for the stove. Noah got stuck
 hauling far more wood than she did,
 but that is the subject for a different column.

Our first dog would lie with her head under the stove. She would get so hot that we thought she might burst into flames. We called her the heat sponge.

My wife, Cindy, wasn’t quite that desperate for heat, but on cold days she would sit as close to the woodstove as humanly possible. Sometimes after her morning shower, she would stand with her back to the stove and steam would rise off her robe like she was on fire.

When company would come in the winter, often someone would comment about how good it felt to stand next to heat of the woodstove. “There’s nothing like a woodstove,” they say. It seemed to bring back a lot of childhood memo­ries, pleasant ones.

We told stories in front of it, lying on the floor and watching the coals shift and glow. Having a fire to focus on is an important ingredient in a good tall tale.

A kettle of water always sat on top, to fill the air with moisture. A whirligig sat there too, made by Red Hansen, He made it from a piece of aluminum and a piece of wire. When the stove top reached a certain temperature, the alumi­num would start to spin.

Sometimes the stove would get too hot. When company came in the winter, I had the bad habit of throwing a piece of wood on at the last minute. It would kick in at about the time we sat down for dinner. The person who sat closest to the stove would slowly turn red and break into a sweat and start shedding clothing. It was pretty fun to watch.

David would open the wood of the woodstove, sit on 
the floor with Collin, and tell stories.
 The woodstove a necessary part of the equation.

I asked a neighbor and friend, Tim Peebles, if he wanted to buy the woodstove. He had often admired its heat, and wished he had one in his house. Yes, he wanted to buy it. We agreed on a price, and he came over on Friday to take it home.

I’m proud to say that the two of us moved it alone. When I first tried to lift it, it wouldn’t budge. It seemed to be attached to the floor. Maybe it didn’t want to leave. It must have weighed 400 pounds. It was unbelievably heavy.

We slid two 2x4 pieces of lumber, eight feet long, under it, and lifted it like we were carrying a stretcher, although when we were done, I felt like I needed a stretcher. Even Tim, who used to play football for a college team in Ohio, had to strain a little. Amidst great groans, we moved it in short hops out of the house. Once it tipped a little, and for a second I thought it would fall and crash through the floor and end up in the basement. But we caught it in time.

To replace the woodstove, we are buying a gas stove. It will sit in the same spot, and will look like a woodstove. I’m glad we have made the change. It will be cleaner and safer, and will require less labor from me. I’ve written about that labor a time or two in this column, how much I loved it, and that’s true enough. But the one thing I don’t have enough of is time, and making 10 cords of firewood a year took a lot of time. It seemed to consume all my free time in the fall. I came to that realization about six months ago, at almost the same time that Cindy did, and we both agreed that it was time to make the switch.

I won’t miss some part of heating with wood, like the dust and dirt and ashes and grit, or the chore of cleaning the chimney. Our son, Noah, will definitely not miss bringing in firewood every day. At least he won’t miss it for a while. I used to have to remind him to fill it properly, to actu­ally fill it and not make a little clubhouse inside it. I predict some day he will look back on that chore with fondness.

I’m glad we have sold the stove to a friend who lives just down the road. He^’s going to get a knock on his door some day this winter, when it’s real cold, and I’m going to walk up to the old woodstove and stretch out my hands and say, “There’s nothing like a woodstove.”

Amen to the end of the snake show ~ July 14, 1988

David Heiller

Wrapping "Baby Tato" in it's blanket
 (a napkin), rocking it to sleep.

Children go through streaks where they have favorite things, at least mine do. For awhile, Malika had her Baby ‘Tato", a huge spud that she carried around and even slept with until it started getting a little gamey. Now she has a pink elephant pajama bag that was given to Noah before she was born. We dug it out of the closet a month ago, brand new, but instead of stuffing it with pajamas and hanging it by her bedside, she brings it to bed with her.

Noah has his tiger, a fancy molded piece of hard rubber, painted fiercely, with sharp teeth. It says “Made in Hong Kong on the stomach. He brings the tiger with him on car trips, to the beach, to the day care, and to bed. It is his security blanket.

They also have a favorite television show, which we made the mistake of taping for them. VCRs are a great investment. I hope ours works for the All Star game. But they can have their bad points too. Taping the snake show was VCR abuse, although Noah would argue.

The snake show is narrated by Leonard Nimoy, and it has the same Mr. Spock eeriness that he brought to Star Trek. The show has some of the most fabulous snake photography ever recorded, but it’s all geared to a five-year-old.

One of Noah's vast menagerie, a pterodactyl.

Snakes lead a violent life, and the show pounds that point home. There are snakes eating mice, snakes eating eggs, snakes eating other snakes, even a boa constrictor eating an alligator. There are owls eating snakes, and monitors eating snakes, and people having rattlesnake festivals, rounding them up and beheading them in a frenzy that makes Willow River Days look like an ice cream social. There are dozens of close-ups of rattlesnake fangs and spitting cobras and many other poisonous varieties we will never see in real life, hopefully.

Noah likes the snake show, and he has hooked Malika on it too. They want to watch the snake show every night. Noah lives for the scene when a giant monitor lizard stalks onto the screen and battles with a spitting cobra. The monitor wins a violent, shaking battle, and now the monitor is Noah’s second favorite animal, surpassing the grizzly bear, and second only to the tiger.

Noah even prays about snakes. On Monday night, he offered the following bedtime blessing :

Malika and Noah dreaming of snakes

Dear God:

Thank you for making people and mammals and reptiles. And thank you for making Santa Claus and Jesus. I love everything. And especially I like tigers and the monitors that fight the spitting cobras. Thank you for that.

Bless Daddy, bless Mama, bless Mollie, bless Sandy.

Amen.

One of these days the snake show will accidentally be erased. Maybe by the All Star game? I will add an amen to that.

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.

It’s just a snake… isn’t it? ~ July 7, 1984

David Heiller

Snakes. Just the word sends a shiver up most people’s backbone.

I don’t mean that everybody is afraid of snakes. Most people aren’t afraid of snakes, once they spot them and get over the initial shiver. It’s that first sighting, when you see the grass move and the snake slither, that makes everybody jump.

This first heart-pounding surprise is what gives snakes a bad name. Take a group of kids, and put a snake in their midst, and that snake’s future will be gravely in doubt. I remember when I as about 12, some younger kids caught a big water snake by the river, carried it up to Main Street, and proudly killed it for all the town to see. I saw it, and yelled at them. “Why did you have to kill the snake?” They looked at me like I was crazy. “It’s just a snake,” they mumbled.

Of course, the other strike which snakes have against them is that some are dangerous. Marlin Perkins will testify to that—remember that Wild Kingdom episode when a python nearly squeezed him to death in an African swamp?

(I presume there were some people off-camera watching very closely, waiting for a signal to come to the rescue. Plus he had good insurance from Mutual of Omaha.)

Grandma Schnick

    There aren’t many pythons in Minnesota, but there are rattlesnakes. In southeastern Minnesota, where I spent my first 17 years, rattlesnakes were killed every summer. For all the running I and my cousins did in the hills and woods, it’s surprising we never stumbled upon one. The only one I saw in the wild happened to meet me right in town, in July, 1969. I had just finished mowing the parsonage lawn, and was heading home, when I nearly stepped on a large timber rattler. It was a mottled brown, about 18 inches long, just lying there uncoiled. I thought about letting the snake go on its way, but the sound of kids playing a block away ended that idea. A well-aimed shovel put the snake in the dump, and gave me a trophy of nine rattles.

My Grandma Schnick has always warned about snakes. She will be the first to admit that snakes are her least favorite creature on earth. Anytime anyone goes hiking in the woods, she says, “Now you just take a stick with you, for snakes.” Then she usually follows that advice with the most recent rattlesnake story to drive home her point.

Grandma and my mother came up for a visit last week. It was a pleasant three-day stay. On Saturday, we went to the Duluth Zoo, and happened to see two snake exhibits. One of them had about 10 snakes in a large cage. The snakes were lying on top of each other. You could see Grandma shiver, even on the other side of the thick glass walls.

Oh, the outhouse!

    When we got back home from the zoo, I started working in the kitchen, while Grandma went to use the outhouse (we have no indoor bathroom). After just a short time, I heard a fast pounding on the door. There stood Grandma. “David, grab a stick, there’s a snake in the outhouse,” she said in a very urgent tone of voice.

I carried the broom which I was holding and pounded down to the outhouse. I had no intention of hurting the garter snake, and Grandma knew it. Still, I peeked into the small room, spotted a rusty old coffee can, and jumped back, heart pounding.

“Did you see it? Is it there?” Grandma asked.

“No, it’s just a coffee can,” I answered, sheepishly.

Of course, the snake had long gone. Still it was a snake, and it reminded me of all this. I must admit that I still like to carry a stick with, me when I walk in the woods. Even though there aren’t any poisonous snakes around here. Are there?