Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

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-la...

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 ...

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 ...

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 optim...

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...

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 befor...

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 pain...

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 n...

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 saving...

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 onl...

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 ...