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!

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.