A friend like Howard ~ October 27, 1994

David Heiller

Every time I go to my hometown of Brownsville, I try to look up an old friend named Howard.

Sometimes he is busy and we don’t see him. He is a truck driver, and his hours are always changing.

Cindy and I always feel like something is missing on our trip to Brownsville when we don’t see Howard. And when we do see him, it makes our trip that much better.

Howard and David
(with our dogs Riley and MacKenzie)

That’s the way it was last Friday afternoon. The first thing he said to me was how he had been thinking of me lately. He had re-read an old letter, and wondered if I ever found a tractor part for my Oliver 60 tractor.

It felt good to know Howard had been thinking about me. We don’t write letters much. But I’ll find myself thinking about old friends like him every so often. It’s important to keep your friends in your thoughts, and good to know that they do the same.

Howard told us how he has been laid up from surgery since May. Now he’s attending to things on his two farms, mostly things to improve the land.

He told us how he’s driving his wife and two kids crazy, always being around. But when I kidded Joan about that a little later, while we sat in the kitchen having coffee, it was clear that Joan loved having Howard home.

It’s nice to have coffee with him in the morning, she said, nice when she comes home from work and Howard’s there.

Howard the Humble then said he didn’t have much to talk about when Joan got home. Hey honey, I almost got my hand caught in the power take off. Stuff like that.

That made me laugh. Sometimes when I spend all day in the woods, I’ll come in and talk about a tree I cut up, or what the dogs were doing.

Howard’s right; it isn^’t very interesting. But I’ve got a hunch Joan enjoys it just like Cindy does. It leads to other conversation that helps us keep our life in order.

Howard drove us around his home farm in his truck. Most of his fields slope down to valleys full of hardwood trees. He showed us land that he had cleared and woodpiles that he was working on.

He’s proud of his land, and he’s always improving it. He said he would sell it for the right price, but I wonder about that. Howard is one of those people that is tied to the land in a good way.

It makes him a better person, because that is where he is the happiest. That makes me happy too, because I’ll always have a friend back home as long as Howard is around.

We stopped at two apple trees that he had left in the middle of fields. I had to sample the apples. Howard knew that. So he stopped and let me out. One had red apples, another had yellow ones. They were loaded, and they were good.

He told us how he had taken one apple tree out, the practical farmer side of him had. I can see Howard going into the house that afternoon and saying, Honey, we took out that old apple tree. Then Joan saying, You what?!?

Like I said, those little conversations are good.

So now they have apple trees in their fields, like all good southeastern Minnesota farms have. The trees stand like bright bouquets on the green alfalfa.

Howard and Joan shared their farm dreams with us. We told them about the Peterson farm expansion in Birch Creek Township. Howard asked a lot of questions about it. Joan wanted to see it.

They hope to have a dairy farm some day. Howard had one after college, but lost it to high interest rates and low prices. Then he started driving truck. The money was good, better than milking cows, so he still drives truck and dreams about operating a dairy farm again.

...

For a while he went with a woman who didn’t share his farm dreams. We knew that that one difference was like a Grand Canyon between them. Howard saw it too, and their relationship ended.

I hope everyone is lucky enough to have a friend like Howard.