Bring on the wimpy weather ~ December 18, 1997

David Heiller

The mild weather we are having this fall has brought some interesting reactions from people.

Normally we would be calling this season “winter,” even though it doesn’t officially start for three days. But I’m still calling it fall, because it feels like fall.

We had 40 degrees last Sunday, December 13 It was a beautiful October day.

The weather is topsy-turvy, thanks to El Niño ( International Falls had a record 44 degrees ABOVE zero on Sunday. yet Guadalajara, Mexico, had 11 inches of snow and minus 11 degree temperatures.

I asked a friend that day how he was liking the weather. He answered something like this: “It’s great, but when winter hits, look out. We’re going to pay for this. Wait till the other shoe drops.”

A more typical Christmas evening at our house.
 Noah and Collin 1996.

My wife, Cindy, stands to the left of that conservative stance. She wants some snow. She wants her brother and sister-in-law to be able to go skiing when they come up for Christmas from balmy southern Wisconsin.

This is Minnesota, by cracky! One thing we can brag about is our cold and snow.

Not this year, and that’s fine with me.

A friend at church a couple weeks ago said that the warm weather was a gift, that winter would go by a lot faster, because winter hadn’t begun when it normally did. “Our winter is going to be a lot shorter,” he said.

He had a grateful look on his face. He is no wimp about winter. Quite the contrary. He fishes and skis and even goes camping in minus 23 degrees. I went camping with him on a trip that chilly last year and nearly froze to death.

After the last two years, he wasn’t about to look a gift El Niño in the mouth. He summed up my feelings exactly.

I like to ski and snowshoe. I know snowmobilers are itching to get out and do their thing. I know farmers need snow cover to protect alfalfa. Businesses are complaining. Yes, some septic systems need a blanket of insulation.

But let’s be selfish just this once. Let’s pretend we live in Missouri. Let’s work outside with just a flannel shirt on in the middle of December. I did that on Sunday and got too hot!

Normally by this time of year, our woodpile has a sizable dent in it. This year, it almost looks untouched. It’s a good sight to see in the middle of December.

Brown Christmas? Bring it on!

Now that I’ve written that, you can bet it is going to snow and get as cold as a coal miner’s keester.

How warm is it? It’s so warm that Tom Brabec is thinking of having a sale on softball bats instead of cross country skis. Pat Mee at Askov Deep Rock is delivering ice cream instead of oil. Askov firemen are making a swimming pool instead of a skating rink.

The warm weather has one more positive effect. It makes you forget when your favorite football team loses on the last play of the game like the Vikings did on Sunday.

You can blame this goofy weather on El Niño but you can’t blame the collapse of Minnesota Vikings’ on it, because they collapse every year at this time. Blizzard or heat wave, it doesn’t matter to the Vikings.

I felt so depressed after the Vikings game:

So did Cindy and our son, Noah. Then we went outside and sawed some wood and stacked it in the warm sun. Snow dripped off the buildings. It felt good. It helped us forgive the Viking’s.

Then I went out to check on my bees. They came swarming out to chase me away. That’s never happened on December 14 before. I’ll take it as a good sign.

Praise the Lord and pass the water ~ November 4, 1999

David Heiller

What is it with people who drink a lot of water? People have water bottles on their desk, in their car, by their bed stand.

Is it some kind of a fashion statement to carry a bottle of water with you?

I could go on, but I’d better not, because I’m one of those nerds that has a bottle of water close by most of the time.

I never thought I would be this way. I always thought it was fine to just take a drink of water before you go someplace, and take a drink when you get to where you’re going. In the meantime, if you got thirsty, so what? It’s not exactly a hardship.

I always laughed—to myself—when I would see my mother with her bottle of water in the car, and hear her talk about how she likes to have a bottle of water with her when she drives.

But something changed a few years ago. I started noticing how much I enjoyed a glass of water, and what good things it did for me.

Strangely (or maybe not), I now notice that I am thirsty a lot. I often seem to be dry and in need of a shot—of water.

It reminds me of when I was a kid. I bet you can relate to this… When we played baseball or football at the school grounds, we played hard and non-stop, or so my rose-colored memory recalls. No one had a bottle of water nearby then. You would have been laughed off the field.

A water bottle is the perfect gift for Dad from
 his college freshman!

But after the game, or sometimes half way through if it was a hot summer day, someone would say, “Let’s get some water,” and we would stampede across the street to Irma Bissen’s pump.

Mrs. Bissen had a hand pump that was about as old as the city. It was Civil War era, with a long iron handle that you had to pump quite a few times to bring the water up.

She kept a dipper hanging from a wire on the pump. We would take turns pumping for each other. It took two hands to pump. One person would pump while another person would hold the dipper under the spout. It took teamwork to get a drink of water.

That was 30 years ago or more, but I can still hear the sound as the water rose up the inside of the well and reached the spout, then came blasting out into the dipper. That water tasted good! I wonder how many kids drank from it? We didn’t worry about anyone’s germs either.

Mrs. Bissen always seemed to be home, and she always seemed to be watching us from behind her screen door. If we pumped extra water just to see it pour out, she would magically appear and tell us to stop. Once she even threatened to take away our water privileges. That was enough to keep us in line.

We didn’t think about the fact that the water was good for us. We just knew we needed that pump and that water. I don’t think any of us thought about how that water rejuvenated us. But it did, and it still does.

I read quite a few years ago that if you are working and are feeling tired, you are probably dehydrated, and you should stop and take a drink of water.

After reading that, I started taking a bottle of water with me when I was cutting firewood. When I felt a little fatigued, I would take a drink of water, and it was amazing how that perked me up.

It became a habit for me to have a bottle of water handy for other activities, like working on the house, in the garden, or when skiing or hiking or biking. Now I take a bottle of water with me to work, and drink it in the car like my mother does!

I keep a bottle on my desk. Taking a big drink has the same rejuvenating effect when I get tired at my tough desk job.

I’m preaching here, but I think everybody ought to have a bottle of water handy.

One minor detail, and I almost hate to mention it. But in keeping with my policy of being brutally honest: make sure there’s a bathroom nearby.

What are the odds... ~ November 24, 1983

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 prepared to hitchhike. The day before departure, I walked into a bank in Missoula, and there stood a friend from Camp Courage, where I had worked that summer. She was driving back to Minnesota the next day, and she was able to give me a ride. That was lucky.

Another time, my Grandma and I were playing Scrabble at home. We turned all the letters face down, then each drew one, to see who would play first. She drew a blank letter, and I drew a blank letter. There are only two blanks in the game. What are the odds of that happening? Some of you math people can probably tell me.

A strange coincidence happened last year, when I was playing cribbage with my wife, Cindy. I dealt the cards, and threw two face cards, both hearts, into the crib. Cindy threw her two cards in and cut the deck. I turned up the card—the ace of hearts. When I came to count up the crib, I found a royal flush, the 10, jack, queen, king, and ace of hearts.

David "What are the Odds" Heiller
on his skis. Taking up cross-country
skiing was no coincidence! 
"What are the odds?" was one of 
David's favorite refrains. There
was usually eye-rolling that
 accompanied this phrase...

Those were coincidences of chance. Other times, people question coincidences and say, “Maybe it was more than chance. Maybe it was something more that led to that.” Example: A couple of weeks ago, a man left for work from his home in Willow River, heading for Chmielewski’s gas station in Sturgeon Lake. About half an hour later, his dog was scratching at the station door. It had somehow followed him the five miles up Highway 61, and knew just where to turn and where to go to find his master. That dog was guided by more than chance. Lassie fans of all ages know that.

And then there is Providence, a coincidence that some people believe was more than luck or instinct, something from a Higher Order. I had an experience on those lines in 1973. I had been backpacking in Yosemite National Park for a week, when a blizzard stranded me high in the mountains. I struggled, off and on, for nearly three weeks, trying to make it back to the center of the 1,100-square-mile park. On the nineteenth day, with still about 10 miles to go through deep snow, I came to a clearing. There, about 100 yards ahead of me, was a man cross-country skiing. He was just passing through the high country, on a trail seldom used in the winter. Five minutes later or five minutes sooner, I would not have seen the man, who helped me get back to civilization. Was that a coincidence, or was it something more?

The philosophy of the bait shop owner ~ August 10, 2005

David Heiller

I went to buy minnows on Sunday at Tri-State Bait and Tackle in La Crescent. As I was plunking down my $1.60, I asked the owner, Bob Veglahn, how the crappies were biting.

“Great if you can find them.”

I started to laugh, but stopped just in time. Bob wasn’t joking.

The fish were biting fine. You just had to find them.

Wow. It was a classic bait shop owner statement.

I’m not criticizing Bob, or making fun of him. Bait shop owners have a way with words that rival Socrates, and I have great respect for that.

Think about what Bob said. He didn’t say the fish weren’t biting. I have never heard a bait shop owner say that. He didn’t say they were biting great, because that would be a lie, and good bait shop owners don’t lie. They want to maintain their credibility so that that they can sell you more minnows.

What he said was the perfect statement. The fish were biting great. Hey that’s good news! You’ve just got to find them. Hey, I can do that. It was a pep talk and an optimistic forecast all rolled into six little words. Poetry.

I read another bit of bait shop wisdom a couple months ago in The La Crosse Tribune. The writer had his weekly fishing update in which he calls local outdoor store owners. The fishing was very slow, but the bait shop owner being interviewed said, “The fish are on the verge of biting.”

Brilliant! Everybody knew the fishing was bad, but rather than say that, this guy coaxed up our hopes, like Bob had. The football coach came out. “They’re on the verge of biting. Hope springs eternal. Give me a dozen minnows and make it snappy!”

Just once before I die, I would like to hear a bait shop owner say this: “Fishing is lousy. Nobody’s catching anything. You don’t have a chance of getting anything tonight. You won’t get anything more than a mosquito bite. Don’t bother going out. And there’s no need to buy those minnows either.” But I bet I never hear those words.

Bait shop owners are good salesmen too. They could sell sweet corn to Dean Myhre. It’s a subtle art, and I’ve learned to put up my guard when I enter bait shops now. I think to myself, “I’m not going to buy anything, I’m not going to buy anything.”

I remember one time when I was younger, going fishing with a buddy from Camp Courage. I went into a bait shop by my friend’s cabin. A kindly old lady stood behind the counter. She engaged me in conversation, mentioned how the pike were biting, especially on the lake we were going to. Why, someone had pulled a 12 pounder out just last week. “Have you ever seen this Pike Jaw Spreader?” she asked. She held out a piece of steel with a spring built into the base. You squeezed it together, then when it was released, it would spread open the jaws of a pike so that you could extract the hook without getting raked by those razor sharp pike teeth. It looked like a medieval torture instrument, and it had enough torque to lift a barn off the ground. I pitied any pike that ever had one inserted in its mouth.

When we left the bait shop, I had spent about 1/50th of my summer wages.

The internet says this is a pike jaw spreader...
 I really wouldn't know, since the one
 David bought was never, ever used...

“You didn’t buy a Pike Jaw Spreader, did you?” my friend asked.

I had to admit that I was now the proud owner of one.

My friend shook his head and laughed. “She does it every time.”

I never did get the chance to use my Pike Jaw Spreader. It turned into a mass of rust in the bottom of my tackle box and I finally threw it away. But it served as a Bait Shop Lesson that I’ll never forget.

Now it’s time to go fishing, which should be great, if I can just find the darn things.

Let the games begin ~ June 30, 2004

David Heiller

We are hosting a big family reunion this weekend. About 20 people will be here for a couple days.

I’m not sure what we’ll be doing for a lot of that time. My sisters were supposed to plan some activities, but last I heard they hadn’t put anything together.

Our homestead, the venue for
 a fun-filled family reunion

So as I^’ve been working around the farm the last few days, I^’ve come up with some creative games that I think everyone will enjoy. I^’m sharing them here in case you need them for a reunion of your own.

Move the Freezer. The chest freezer in the barn needs a new home in our basement. This simple game takes four strong adults to carry it to its new location.

Kill the Burdock. This is a healthy activity that appeals to the outdoorsman. Glen Jostad is the honorary chairman, since he is an authority on the subject. We will each be given a garden spade, which Glen will sharpen. Then we will walk back and forth on our six acre home site and use the spades to slice through the stalks of burdock plants, right below the soil. This is an effective way to kill burdock.

Move the Woodpile. Another fun outdoor activity! Just carry those pieces of wood from under the maple tree down to the fire pit. The person who can carry the most pieces in their arms gets a prize: a guaranteed spot in the Grass Seed Extravaganza.

Grass Seed Extravaganza. This is a game that involves a little of everything. First we will rake the ground around the house, removing any rocks we find. Then we will sprinkle grass seed over the ground. Then we will lightly rake over it again.

Fill the Gullies. This game is closely associated with the Grass Seed Extravaganza, because every time I plant grass seed, we get torrential rain, which causes gullies, and wouldn^’t it be fun to fill all those mean little gullies? Of course it would!

Saw the Kindling. This is a game for the older kids, like say age 30. It’s an exciting game, because you get to start up a 14-horse power Briggs and Stratton engine, slip a belt on the pulley, engage a 20-inch cordwood circle saw, and cut up a pile of scrap boards, creating a beautiful pile of kindling. And the winner gets to:

Stack the Kindling. Making a nice straight kindling pile is an art form as well as a satisfying activity. All are welcome to try.

Screw Down the Roof. In this fun game, you get to climb on the west lean-to of the barn, find all the loose nails, pull them out, and replace them with ring-shanked screws. It’s fun, and you get to use a cordless drill! Plus you can admire the scenery from up high. The winner gets to do the same thing on the east lean-to.

Move the Dirt Pile. That pile of black dirt by the side of the driveway is just waiting to be moved. It^’s easy–just grab a shovel, fill up a wheelbarrow, trudge on over to the garden (you can pretend you are a dump truck and make dump truck noises), dump the dirt, and go back for more. There are only nine yards of dirt, so it shouldn^’t take more than a day for this game.

This is just a start of my activity list for our family reunion. I’m sure more things will come to mind as the week progresses.

I^’m excited about our family reunion. It^’s always good to get together, renew old acquaintances–and play a few games!

Great challenges don’t always seem so ‘great’ ~ October, 1985

David Heiller

Challenges come in all shapes and sizes. For a baseball player to bat .400, that’s a challenge. For an executive to earn $892,000, as does the head of Pillsbury, that’s a challenge.

Sometimes, challenges go unnoticed that may be just as important to the individual as those that make the headlines. I can think of a few, and I bet you can too.

One is the tea challenge, or the Tea Cup, driving to work without spilling your hot coffee, or tea, in my case. This competition has certain ground rules. The cup must he filled to the brim when you leave the house, and it must be boiling in the cup, so that a spill will sear flesh and possibly affect your regenerative future. You must also drive a stick shift. The car must have at least 100,000 miles on it. You must cover at least five miles of gravel road with the full cup, in northern Pine County. Roads closer to the county seat are too well maintained to be part of the Tea Cup.

Often, I’m lucky to get out of the driveway before spilling my tea. Sometimes I back over the logs that are waiting to be cut up by the garage. Backing over the logs sends tea cascading off the cup platform by my knee, usually into my briefcase on the floor.

Sometimes the curve at the end of the driveway spills the cup, since I’m often late for work, and am going 30 miles an hour by the time I get the 20 yards to that corner.

Once out of the driveway, the greatest hazard is shifting gears, especially in Lucy. The 1979 Bobcat with 156,000 miles does a two-step when changing gears, if she doesn’t stall first. With all this lurching, you have to be holding the cup of tea, which means one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the stick shift, and one hand on the cup of tea. Three hands are better than one.

But there are those days that you can brag about, the rare days when you make it out of the driveway, around the curves, over the potholes, and onto the blacktop, as the tea cools to 130 degrees and you can sample it with a cautious slurp.

I had such a day about three weeks ago. I had made it out of Denham, on the detour road, heading for Sturgeon Lake. The cup of tea, still full to the brim, as waiting at my side. I was reaching for it confidently, smiling in anticipation, when the road opened up before me in washboard glory. Lucy bounced wildly over several dozen small canyons in the road. The jolt caused the door on my side to swing open. Instinctively, I reached down with my right hand and grabbed the tea, before it could tip over into my briefcase. Not a drop spilled. I slowed Lucy, grabbed the door and swung it shut, and proceeded on my way.

That was the most enjoyable cup of tea I’d ever drunk. I felt I’d earned it. The Tea Cup was mine for the day.

Challenges like this will never be applauded like the baseball player named to the Hall of Fame for his .400 average or the executive honored for his leadership and his high salary.

But little accomplishments may be just as important, in a relative way. The Tea Cup was a funny example, here’s a more serious one: A month ago, I was babysitting the child of a friend. Andrew, a nine-month-old boy, was sitting backwards on the, edge of the couch, his butt hanging over edge. I was standing about 10 feet away. He had his back to me, and in an, instant, I saw what he was losing his balance, and was falling backward off the couch, his nine-month-old mega-head about to meet our hardwood floor.

I dove across the room, parallel to the floor, arms outstretched. My elbows hit first, just as my arms slid under the baby head and knees, three inches from the floor.

In that split second, it was over. Andrew lay on the floor in my arms, unhurt, wondering what he was suddenly doing there, what I was doing there, holding him on the floor.

I lay there too, laughing, my elbows crying, thinking, “That catch was just as spectacular as the one Willie Mays made against Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series. But no one will ever know.”

Such is the nature of domestic challenges.

Open season on open houses ~ May 30, 2002

David Heiller

 We’ve been to a lot of graduation open houses over the years, but last Sunday’s was the first one we’ve actually put on.

I use the word “we” loosely. To say “we” put it on would be like counting a mule as a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

I was the mule.

I won’t go through the blow by blow of our open house. It would be easier to describe the invasion of Normandy than to describe all the details that went into the open house.

I think it started when Noah was born, and Cindy started making lists, mentally at least, 18 years ago. “Let’s see, we’ll have to wash the curtains, and fix the blinds, and build an addition.^”

The real lists formed about three months ago. Lists of food to buy and make. Lists of things to borrow. Lists of home improvement projects—big ones!—to do.

I can speak with authority on that last item. That hole in the wall in the entryway did need to be fixed. And it had been 10 years since the living room walls were painted. That flower bed on the south side of the house did need to be re-landscaped.

That’s the beauty of an open house. All the improvements aren’t just good for one day. They are good for another 10 years! Or until the next open house, which unfortunately for us is one year from now. (I’m joking, Mollie.)

You learn to appreciate friends when preparing for an open house. We borrowed many items, and we borrowed their time, which is even more precious. Cindy’s brother, Randy, and his wife, Therese, worked almost non-stop for two days helping us get ready, then they helped clean up the mess afterward.

I never knew so much work went into an open house. I’ll never go to another one without tipping my hat to the hosts.

You appreciate good fortune too. The weather forecast for Sunday called for a 40 percent chance of rain, which would have put 50 people in our small house.

I thought of Lisa Cotton, who told me she had called her grandmother the day of her daughter Molly’s open house last year, and asked her to pray for good weather. The weather cleared like the parting of the Red Sea for Molly^’s party.

I thought about asking Lisa for her grandmother’s phone number. But maybe my grandmothers were looking down on me too, because after a cloudy morning with sprinkles of rain, the sky cleared and we had a beautiful day.

The real joy of the open house, of course, came with the friends and family members and acquaintances who attended. It was so great to see them all. Some drove a long way; some came from just down the road. It meant a lot to see them. And even if you don’t get much of a chance to visit—which you don’t—there’s something uplifting in just giving hugs and handshakes, just seeing those people and knowing they are a part of your life and the life of your child.

It was good for our son too, although he wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of an open house in the first place. He did a good job of greeting people, of visiting and saying thank you and good bye. That’s a good skill to have, no matter what you decide to do with your life.

A couple comments stand out from the open house, both from seasoned open house veterans.

One was from Sue Breeggemann. She said that you don’t savor an open house until about half an hour before it’s over, when you can finally relax. That’s true.

The other was from Elaine Kiminski. I asked her how she could come to Noah’s open house when they had an open house of their own that night for their son, Jake.

Elaine looked at me like I was crazy, then said with her usual good humor, “We’re Polish.” That explains a lot of things.

Whatever your nationality, I hope you are having a good open house season.

Music and spaghetti are both getting heavy ~ April 30. 1987

David Heiller

A friend of our family called Monday morning with the urgent news that her son had a serious viral infection and needed to be rushed to Duluth for medical care. She asked if we could look after her four children after school while she and her husband stayed in Duluth at the hospital.

Of course, I answered, of course. Three children, and one teenager, we can handle that.

My wife called later in the day and told me to pick up a jar of spaghetti sauce. “The biggest one you can find,” she added.

“Do you need hamburger?” I asked, trying to hide my excitement. Hamburger in our house is a rare treat, and so is store-bought spaghetti sauce. I say that knowing my wife will understand that it brings back fond memories of my college days, Hamburger Helper and all that.

Cindy assured me that she already had plenty of hamburger on hand from our friend’s freezer. After I bought the half-gallon jar of spaghetti sauce, I thought about renting a movie for the kids. But I shook off that notion. “We don’t need the television as a crutch. We can handle this,” I thought.

When I got home, all four of the guests, plus our own two kids, were sitting in front of the television. “What are they watching?” I asked Cindy.

“Oh, I rented Pinocchio for them to watch on the VCR,” she replied. She’s no dummy.

The spaghetti sauce smelled wonderful, filled with chunks of hamburger. Cindy threw a huge handful of noodles into boiling water. We use whole wheat noodles, which are not your normal, white noodles. They resemble the color of a frog. They taste fine though.

But the kids didn’t think so. The oldest guest, April, ate hers, showing great courage and leadership for a 14-year-old. But Josh Sarah, and Lizzie nibbled around the edges, and put their plates down. Our kids, closely watching their visiting heroes, put their plates down too.

Normally, kids not eating their supper gets my goat. But this time it got my stomach. As I eyed those full plates, my stomach reasoned with my brain. I forgave the kids and ate the leftovers.

Three platefuls later my stomach started having second thoughts. Bubbles began rising into my mouth, popping and fizzing. I felt like Thanksgiving with an after-taste.

“Ooohh,” I said loudly in Cindy’s direction. “What kind of spices did you put in that stuff?”

“None,” Cindy answered in a triumphant tone.

When Pinocchio ended, April and Josh washed the dishes, while I cleaned tables and supervised. Dish washing is a great time to talk to your wife, or your kids, or your friends’ kids. But for Josh, who is teetering on the abyss of adolescence, it’s a great time to listen to music. He happened to bring some cassette tapes with him, 16 in fact.

“What would you like to hear, Dave?” he asked me.

“What have you got?” I asked with some reluctance. Nothing tells your age like talking about music with a 12-year-old boy.

“Let’s see, there’s Z.Z. Tops, you might like Velcro Fly or Sleeping Bag.”

“Too heavy,” April warned. Hearing a 14-year-old tell a 12-year-old that music is too heavy is like hearing a five-star general tell a four-star general that there’s too much uranium in that last nuclear bomb that rolled off the assembly line. I took it seriously.

‘Well, how. about Mike and the Mechanics?” Josh continued.

Where does he work, at the Deep Rock in Askov? I felt like asking. But I held myself back. Serious kids don’t understand a good joke.

“There’s Bon Jovi,” Josh continued. “He’s Christian. He’s totally cool.”

“Too heavy,” April warned again. Christian music, too heavy? Whatever happened to bongo drums and a folk guitar?

“All right, Scorpions!” Josh yelled.

Sarah, his 10-year-old sister, chimed in cheerfully from behind us, “It’s heavy.”

After a long list of other possibilities, we settled on Tears for Fears. Even I, Mr. WCCO-KDAL, had heard of them.

After dishes, they piled into the car and Cindy drove them home. I thought, “Gee, that wasn’t so bad after all.”

My stomach started to argue, but I wouldn’t hear a word. That was my own fault.

The good old springtime dance ~ April 6, 2005

David Heiller

It was kind of comical, although no one saw it, and that was good.

I was heading out to the barn on Sunday morning. I spun to my left and started walking toward the garden, then I spun to my right and went toward the garage.

I must have looked like a 51-year-old ballet dancer. Not a pretty sight, I might add.

Yet I bet I wasn’t the only guy doing the Springtime Pirouette.

That’s the kind of day it was. A real spring day. Not a temptress like I wrote about last month, the kind that beckons with a coy smile and dumps 18 inches of snow on you.

No, this was the real deal.

Hence the dance of the undecided. There is so much to do, and so much you want to do. So it’s off to the barn to move that pile of lumber. No wait! That garden soil is ready for its first hoe of the season. And the car in the garage, got to take that battery charger off. They all have to get done, and all at once, because it’s a beautiful spring day.

Ah, but then you stop. Daylight savings time just kicked in. The days are long and getting longer. And you realize that while you may not have all the time in the world, this is a day that needs some good pacing, and a smile or two. Settle down. Find that good old work pace.

It always goes that way for me, every year about now, like clockwork. Maybe it does for you too, if you work a day job, and have spent the last five months going to work in the dark and getting home in the dark. You lose that rhythm of outside work, the kind that comes naturally to loggers and farmers and carpenters. For the rest of us, there’s a bit of rediscovery.

It doesn’t take long. For me, I just did my goofy dance, then it was time to enjoy the day of work.

Enjoy work? Yes, those words go together this time of year. Temperature in the 60s. A slight breeze. Birds singing like mad. The grass turning green practically before your eyes. How can you not enjoy that walk through the soft soil of the garden? You see the possibilities, see the squash vines, the ripe pumpkins.

That pile of lumber, it practically moves itself. It’s a fun job, fun in a strange way to feel the strain in your back, the scrape of wood on your bare arms.

And that good spring day needs a bit of relaxing too. Mid-afternoon, a cold soda, some chips. A visit with a good book on the deck, out of the sun.

Then work calls again. Walking the yard, picking up sticks, Grandma Schnick style, raking up pine cones.

And eyeing projects. My Sunday ended with post hole digger in hand. It was such a fine Sunday that Cindy’s clothes line had moved the the top of my list. She’s only waited a year. It’s time! Now if there is a tougher job than digging a post hole in Grade A Thomford clay, I would like to know it. But on a fine spring day, even that job was decent. OK, not fun, but I didn’t die.

A couple more days like last Sunday and I’ll get it done.

A lesson from Fatna ~ November 23, 2005

David Heiller

I had a lot of memorable experiences when I was in the Peace Corp from 1977-1979, but one of them has always stood out in my mind. I’m thinking about it a lot these days.

I taught English as a second language in Morocco, which is a Muslim country of primarily Arab people on the northwestern corner of Africa. For a few months I rented the bottom level of a house in the middle of the city from an elderly Moroccan couple, Fatna and Driss. They lived upstairs.

They took me under their wing, so to speak, and we became good friends, as good as a Moroccan family could be to an American guy. There were a lot of cultural and religious barriers that prevented what I would consider real closeness.

I moved to another house on the edge of the city because I felt too claustrophobic in the middle of the bustling medina. But I kept in touch with my Moroccan family. Every Friday, which is their holy day, they would invite me to a noon dinner. It was great for me. I not only got a delicious meal, usually couscous, I also got to visit with my friends.

I spoke “derizha,” which was the name for dialectal Arabic. Some people called it “low Arabic.” Every Arab country has its own version of “low Arabic.” It is a totally different language than high Arabic or classical Arabic, which is the Arabic taught in school or found in books. One day after our Friday noon meal, Fatna and I were sitting and visiting. The radio was on. The broadcast was in classical Arabic, which I could not understand.

I asked Fatna what they were saying. “Mon-arf,” she said with a hint of resignation in her voice. I don’t know.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” I asked in derizha. My voice probably had a startled tone to it, because I was perplexed.

“I can’t understand it,” she went on. “I can’t speak classical Arabic.”

Fatna told me that she never went to school, and was not taught how to read or recite the Koran, which is where most schooling starts for Moroccan children. But it was more than the lack of schooling that bothered me, it was that a society and a system did not care to educate or include people like Fatna. It was a very simple and effective way to subjugate her, keep her in her place. And not just her, obviously, but many others like her. If you can’t even understand the language of knowledge and power, you will remain ignorant and powerless.

Things were changing in Morocco back then, and perhaps Fatna was the vestige of a dying generation. But my hunch is there are still a lot of Fatnas throughout the Morocco countryside, and in many less-progressive Arab countries than that. Yes, Morocco was considered a progressive Arab country, with decent civil rights and many Western influences. Much more so than Iraq, for example.

How long will it take a country like Morocco to become what we consider a democracy, where people like Fatna can participate, understand, read, vote? They’ve been working on it for 1,000 years and they have not succeeded, and they would not succeed if we came in with 150,000 troops and said, “We’ll help you change?’

They have to want to change, and they don’t want to.

It’s very discouraging to me these days because of the war in Iraq. I hear people talk about bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq, and I think of Fatna, and the society that kept her from school, from the mosque, from even understanding the language that half of her country spoke.

It might sound good to say, “Let’s make it better.” But it won’t happen unless it comes from within the people of Iraq, or Morocco, or any other country you choose. I’m convinced of that, and all the White House propaganda in the world won’t convince me otherwise.

The morel of the story ~ May 19, 2004

David Heiller

Steve Serres reminded me of the beauty of mushroom hunting last Saturday.

Morel mushrooms. (not my photo)

He came up that afternoon to walk the woods with me in search of morel mushrooms. I thought it would make a good newspaper fea­ture, but I had my other hat on too, the one that says, “This will be fun.” And it was, in some unexpected ways.

We started by heading across the field toward a dead tree. Dead trees are one sign of morel country, particularly dead elm trees. But they are no guarantee, as Steve pointed out in a stream of morels lore that seemed endless. Many is the time he has come upon a dead elm, bark hanging like a shawl on an old woman—a honey hole for morels—and not a one can be found.

That’s probably part of the beauty of the hunt for Steve, as it is for all sportsmen: you just never know what you’ll find.

And sure enough, the first two perfect spots didn’t have didley. At the third tree, Steve stopped and pointed his stick at a spot on the ground. “There’s one.”

“Where?” I asked.

He moved his stick a little bit. “There.”

“Where?” I asked. He finally touched the morel with the stick, and that’s when I saw it. Talk about protective coloration. The light tan morel was the exact color of the light tan leaves on the ground. But once he pointed it out, I could see it, and that’s where his trained eye had beaten mine.

We found a few more that way. I use the term “we” loosely. Steve spotted them, and I picked them and put them in a plastic bag. Steve uses a paper bag—he claims they keep better that way, and they fetch a better price from mushroom buyers.

As we walked, we talked about morels. He picks them any size, something he learned from his own old-timer who told him a mushroom won’t be any bigger than what it is when you find it. He said he carries a stick for finding mushrooms and for finding rattlesnakes. He’s only found two rattlers in 20 years, which made me wonder if we were due for a third. “I had all I could do to get them to rattle at me,” he said. He likes to hunt the south and west sides of hills early in the year, because they get the sun first, then the north and east side later in the season, which is what we were doing.

I asked Steve if he had good vision. It was 20-10 for a while, he replied nonchalantly, then added with a hint of irritation, “I had to drop to 20-20.” It must be rough.

We talked about much more than mushrooms too, of course. Our kids, the old Heiller farm down in the valley, even the war in Iraq. That’s the great thing about an outing like that. You get good exercise, good conversation, and if you are with someone like Steve Serres, good mushrooms.

He got a little frustrated for a while, like a father who takes a son fishing only to end up with a few small sunnies on the stringer. We weren’t finding many morels. But I assured him that the joy for me was in the hunt, and he could see that.

The joy came also from some fond memories that returned as I scanned the trees and searched the ground. I suddenly had strong memories of doing that very thing on weekends home from college at the Heiller farm. It was in the mid-1970s, which was the peak of the great elm die-off. There were dead elms everywhere around the farm, and it was not hard to find more morels that we could use or even give away. I always thought I’d be a mushroom hunter at that point in my life, but then I went overseas and got married and moved north, and it slipped out of my life. I forgot how much I missed it until Saturday, when I got it back.

And I got it back! As we headed home, Steve stopped and pointed out a perfect tree. We didn’t say anything; no point in putting on the old jinx. Steve got to it first and just stood there, trying not to smile. I started to ask what the matter was, then I realized he was following an earlier plea of mine to let me find at least one mushroom first.

I dropped to my hands and knees, and there was one, and there, and there and there, and look at the size of that one!

I actually started shouting, then I looked up in some embarrassment, like a private in the presence of a grizzled old soldier. But Steve had a grin at that point. “That’s fine with me,” he said. “I know the feeling.”

It was a honey tree, and a perfect way to end a perfect outing.

I asked Steve if he wanted any of my bag full of morels. He declined. “I’m not super crazy about them,” he said.

And that was part of the beauty of it too, The morel of the story. Thanks, Steve!