Just Red ~ March 2, 2006

David Heiller

Red.

You don’t need any more than that to know who I mean. No first name, no last name, no Arol, no Hansen, just Red.

David and Red at the Askov American.

Our friendship formed over the last 20 years of Red’s life, which ended on February 21. I had known about him from a distance, admired his involvement in the community and his love for all things Danish.

Then music slowly brought us into a closeness that doesn’t happen often. Red had music in his blood. He was a happy Dane and it came pouring out in his piano accordion. He knew hun­dreds of songs, and he played them with grace and power and creativity, sometimes changing keys, throwing in little tricks that marked the songs as his own and nobody else’s.

I’m not good at hiding my enthusiasm, and he saw that, and allowed me into his musical world with my banjo. We took our show to Pine County’s finest venues: the commercial club banquet, the Danish Sisterhood dinner, the nursing homes in Sandstone and Moose Lake.

Red playing with David at the community theater in Barnum.

Red’s music connected with people of all ages. I’ll never forget the night we played before a Barnum Community Theater audience in 2001. We ended with Hils Fra Os Der Hjeme, or Greet From Us at Home. It’s a powerful song, one that evokes the emotions which the title hints at: home, family, loved ones. Α man came down from the audience after the show, sought out Red and shook his hand. His eyes pooled with tears. It was his grandmother’s favorite song, and he hadn’t thought of it for years. And there it was, a gift from Red.

It wasn’t all about music, of course. Music is a vehicle that takes you places or keeps you going. We would practice and talk. Red would spin stories about the past. The winter when he couldn’t get home and the stove went out and he had to call Hertha from the post office and tell her how to dismantle and clean the carburetor. Hertha did it, and was proud of the fact, and Red was too.

Red and Hedda (Hertha)

The time of the ice storm, when a cap on the top of his chimney froze and the roof was glare ice, and he got the rifle out and shot the top off the chimney. Never mind that he had put that contraption on top of the chimney in the first place. Hertha had a few choice words about that.

How he would stand in his enchanted yard, where time always stood still for me, and call in owls until they would land in the tree above him and look around until they realized that it was just Red. Hertha liked to comment, “He’ll talk to owls but he won’t talk to me.” It was funny, but it didn’t stop Red.

Often we would go into his shop so he could show me his latest projects, some of which were my doing. I liked to bring him things to fix, as much to see him in action as to get the things fixed. Red could fix anything. A broken electric can opener would be gutted and rewired into working order. That fan that didn’t work, why it just needed a drop of oil, thin oil mind you, not the heavy stuff, right there. Spin the blade; watch it go now. The banjo neck needs a tiny hole drilled? Put it up on the drill press and let’s see what we can do.

His shop said a lot about Red. It was pure chaos, with a tiny path that led through tools and gadgets and fishing poles and hammers and punches and firewood. Yet Red knew where everything was. He could put his hands on a flashlight that he had bought when he was 12 years old.

And it held dozens of gag items that Red’s imagination concocted. Some-times he would give me one, both “to get rid of it and to see my humorous appreciation. I’ve got his “mugrump” bird made of wood in my barn now. The head of the bird on one side says “mug,” the tail says “rump.” Goofy yet funny, and made with care and love. That was Red.

David and Red at the Hansen home.

He kept one foot firmly in the past too, but in a good way. His history lessons would come alive. Adventures on the Kettle River, fishing for a big northern, tying a hook onto a mouse and floating it on a board over the right spot, then pulling it off the board to pull in the lunker. I never did know if that story was true, but that was hall the fun. Growing up in Askov, above the hardware store, no money, joining the German Band when he was barely a teenager, getting firm warnings from his father to stay out of trouble, and learning that his dad passed the same message on to the older members of the band. Whole conversations would re-emerge from 50 years ago, some-times with a thick Danish brogue that was a joy to hear.

I could go on and on, as we all can when we lose a loved one. But I’ll stop. The rest will bubble inside me and all the others that Red touched. We’ll all keep the rich memory of Red and his music alive forever.