Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller We weren’t the only ones with an idea for a Saturday evening walk on the spillway. There were the fishermen who met us on the way to their cars. Three different groups, and they all had a contented look that said the fishing was good. The first guy said the bass were biting. Another man gave me a rundown on a big carp — it must have been 10 pounds, he said with a laugh. The third guy mumbled that he caught a few, which translates in fishing language to fantastic fishing, although I’ve yet to hear the latter statement, ever. Bob and Gail with me and two of the dogs on a fall spillway walk.  The river is a good place to go and reconnect yourself. Then there was that family fishing by the spillway, the kids all lined up oldest to youngest, and the little guy’s pole bending with a bluegill. That was almost too pretty for words. A father and son pedaled past us on their way to the unspoiled waters of the second spillway. You could almost feel their ener...

David Heiller We picked apples on Saturday, I’m not sure what kind they are. They are soft and early. When you cut into them, they turn brown before your eyes. But boy do they make good applesauce. Just ask Cindy. 1983: Our apple tree and I were both in full bloom! Every year I bring in two five gallon buckets of these big apples into the kitchen. Every year she groans like Atlas. And every year she makes the world’s best applesauce. It starts with the picking. This year Noah and his friend, Ryan helped me. They climbed the step ladder and reached what they could. Then I climbed and reached what I could. I tossed them down to the boys, who put them in the buckets. Since it was Ryan’s first time picking apples with us, he got to hear my only apple joke. It’s an old joke, passed down from the beginning of time. ADAM: “What’s worse than biting into an apple and seeing a worm?” EVE: “Biting into an apple and seeing half a worm.” I told the boys about picking ap...

David Heiller School starts this week, and along with all the advice parents will be giving their children, I’d like to add this: If you ride on a school bus, keep your windows up. Let me repeat that in a different way so that you understand clearly. The narrator of this cautionary tale . Don’t open your windows on the school bus, kids, unless it’s an emergency. I know, there’s no rule that says you shouldn’t open school bus windows. And on a nice September morning with the smell of dew and apples drifting by, you may think I’m nuts. After all, my son is going to ride on a school bus 80 minutes a day, which works out to six and a half hours each week, or 10 days out of the year keeping Dave Nyrud company. Shouldn’t he be able to smell the burning leaves along the way? Keep your window closed, Noah. Take it from someone who rode a bus to high school for five years, and who has never forgotten that one morning, lo these 20 years ago... My cousin, Jeff, was sitting i...

David Heiller Monday night. Already I could feel the butterflies in my stomach, thinking about the first day of school. Not my first day. Thank goodness, those are done. No, I was worrying about my son. I was thinking about Wednesday morning at 7:20, when he would climb onto Dave Nyrud’s bus and disappear down the gravel road toward Willow River. The very first of 13 first-day-of-school photos Do people remember their first day at school? I remember mine. My mom took me by the hand, a block up Main Street to the red brick building. Mrs. Escar was waiting, grandmotherly smile, wearing a shiny green dress with little seahorses on it. Mom had her first competition. The next day, I stood ready for Mom to take me to school again, but she inform­ed me that I would have to walk all by myself. I wonder how she felt as I trudged off at the heels of my seven brothers and sisters. Now I know. Noah stood in the driveway last Wednesday morning, not saying much, just waiting patiently....

David Heiller If Miss Emma could talk, she might tell you that fall is just around the corner. Other famous female weather watchers like Helen Feldt, Dutch Jones, and Sue Thue can put their noses to the air and sense that fall is close by. Miss Emma was a good hunter, but her only opportunity for bird hunting was from the picture window. Dutch knows it when her bear friends out east of Bruno stop making amorous advances and head for a warm winter bed. Helen knows it when the temperatures in the Cloverton area drop below 40 degrees and threaten tomato crops. Sue knows it when she starts daydreaming about the smell of her wild rice parching west of Sandstone. But Miss Emma knows it’s fall when the mice start to move into the house. Miss Emma, you see, is our cat. Miss Emma, like all cats, is fat, lazy and ar­rogant. But she can catch mice. She doesn’t eat them. Instead, she lays them out for us to see, like trophies. In the late fall, she will sometimes have three mic...

David Heiller The empty feeling settled over me on Monday morning, August 27. I had been waiting for it to come, and when it hadn’t, I felt a bit puzzled and relieved. Bad feelings have a way of sneaking up on people. Malika on her first day of  kindergarten at Willow River. I was lying in bed, trying to pry myself awake, when it finally hit, and I remembered that Mollie wasn’t upstairs. She wasn’t upstairs this morning, and she wouldn’t be upstairs tomorrow morning or the next. We had taken her to Golden Valley the day before, in a car packed with boxes and bins, to her new home, a high school dormitory. We were excited to see her room, to help her unpack, to meet her roommate, to look at the other kids filtering in. They all seemed to be equally excited and scared. I still remember those feelings from 30 years ago when I went away to college. The parents looked the same way. Trying hard to be happy. Telling themselves, This is the right thing to do.  We'...