Some food for busy thought ~ May 10, 1990

David Heiller

Monday evening at 6 p.m.: I had just finished taking my first break between a busy day and an even crazier night, and some summer sausage and a cold rainbow trout have saved my sanity.
It had been a hectic day. Piles of ads to write, people to call, stories to edit. I wasn’t half done, and started steeling myself for an All-Nighter on Tuesday.

If there’s one thing I hate, it’s working all night. It used to be an adventure, like during the Askov fire. Hot news. Murders. Sex. (My imagination works overtime too during an All-Nighter.) But not anymore. There’s about as much adventure in your normal Askov American as there is at a canasta party.

I knew it would be this way. I had taken a three-day weekend to Brownsville to visit my mother. And now I was paying for it.

David's mother, Fern, and David

Once during the day I even told Cindy that we shouldn’t have gone to Brownsville. “But we went to see your mother, David,” she answered, and I felt like a heel, and the shoe fit.

But I found a cure Monday evening when I sat down with my summer sausage and rainbow trout.

Mom had sent it back with me. She had fried the rainbow on Friday night, fried it brown and buttery and too hot to touch like only mothers can. We ate until we were full. The kids each had a piece without a complaint.

But one last slab remained. It went into the fridge. Then Mom slipped it into a plastic bag for our trip home. I discovered it as we rushed off to work Monday morning.

“Grandma said we should give it to Miss Emma,” Noah said. I held up the fish with a cat-like smile of my own. Miss Emma? THE CAT?!? Mom has a subtle sense of humor. She knew that fish had as much chance of going to the cat as Joe Schmuckhead has of winning the lottery.

So I took a break Monday evening, sat down with the sports page and got my fingers greasy and ate that cold rainbow trout. And for a second I forgot about the pile of work. I thought instead about sitting around the supper table. Mollie singing the Johnny Appleseed grace. Mom pouring us each a cup of tea. Letting the kids be excused, and just sitting there, talking, not watching the clock or thinking about kids’ bedtime or work. Is there anything finer than sitting at the table after supper with your mother?

The summer sausage helped, too. We had driven to New Albin, Iowa, on Saturday evening to buy it, Mom and I in the front seat, Cindy and the kids in back. (Is there anything finer than taking a drive on a spring evening with your mother?)

This summer sausage is homemade, and tastes like it. Just strong enough to let people know you ate homemade summer sausage, without melting their contact lenses. Just dry enough to eat with your fingers, without bread—not too greasy, just enough to stain a brown paper bag.

For a second it tasted like a setting sun over the Mississippi. Or the eagles we counted along the way to New Albin—twice we even stopped and looked at them through binoculars, soaring right at us, sitting on a branch along the back-water. Or the strawberry pop from Spring Grove, the best pop in the world, especially when mixed with eagles and a setting sun and your family and your mother.

You could add some seasoning too. A game of softball with Noah at the school-grounds. Smiling as he laughs and runs on base paths that haven’t changed in 30 years. Pushing Mollie on the huge swings. The wooden seats have been replaced with vinyl, otherwise they are the same too.

Or fishing south of town. Scaring a muskrat off the rocks, watching him swim silently, then slip out of sight. Seeing a great blue heron jack-knife into the sky. Losing four lures on the end-less hidden snags, and not caring. Catching only three tiny pan-fish and not caring.

Yup, that piece of summer sausage and cold rainbow trout made me think twice about my busy day and my upcoming All-Nighter. They made me shake my head when thinking how I regretted going to visit Mom.

They saved my sanity. And my stomach felt pretty good, too.