A fine welcome home ~ July 16, 1992

David Heiller

The bees were first to welcome me home from vacation last week. They were buzzing so loudly on Thursday morning that I could hear them from 30 yards away.

The air around one hive was a blizzard of bees. They were swarming; half the hive was following the queen in search of a new home. Jeez, leave for a week and a queen gets upset at you. The nerve! One angry chap even stung me by my left eye, which swelled shut long enough for Cindy to take this photo.

The standing head for David's column looked a little different that week.

An hour later, I returned to the hive. All was quiet again. I walked through the field and spotted a ball of bees hanging from the limb of a willow tree. That’s where the queen had landed to get her bearings. What a sight. There’s nothing as exciting as watching a swarm of bees, 40,000 strong, the size of your thigh, all huddled on top of one another, shimmering, humming, moving as one.

(It’s also exciting to a penny-pinching German because you get a free bee hive. The old hive will “make” a new queen to replace the restless one.)

A "borrowed" photo of someone
doing what David had to do to
get that "free" hive.

I got another hive box with some frames and old honey from a nearby beekeeper, Albert Chada. He figured they couldn’t resist a free lunch, and he was right. I cut the tree limb, shook the bees into their new home, put on the hive cover, and smiled. Yes, it was good to be home. A day later, and I would have missed all this.

It’s funny how such simple things like that can make a person feel “at home.” Like after I filled all the bird feeders, and the first goldfinch landed right outside the window as I washed dishes. What a great sight. Or when the first humming bird zoomed in for fresh nectar. I could watch his tongue turn into a tiny straw, the size of a needle, and suck up the red liquid, while he hung in the air like a puppet on a string.

Or working in the garden all day, pulling a week’s worth of lamb’s quarter and mint and other nameless weeds. They came out easily from the rain-softened, sun-warmed soil. It was a simple joy, working with Cindy, visiting about this and that, then finishing the last bed and walking together to admire our work and the garden’s budding bounty.

Catching garter snakes, picking up rocks, heck, even mowing the lawn, it all felt good because we were home.

You see things in a fresh light when you are gone for a time. Of course, you see some things you’d like to forget. Like the woodpile, an ugly collection of logs, boards, and lumber scraps, that needs to be cut and split and stacked. There’s that hole in the linoleum as you come in the door, and the walls that need painting, and the concrete floor that needs carpeting, and...

You see these things every day, and you get used to them. After an absence, you see them and wince and make a pledge to fix them just as soon as possible. Right.

Forget about them for now. “Coming home” is bigger than that. “Coming home” means many things to many people, but most definitely it means happiness and contentment and satisfaction.

It’s a good enough reason in itself for a fine vacation, which we sure had. But that’s another story.

Watch your language in public ~ July 13, 2005

David Heiller

“Where the @#%* is the car?’’

A young woman growled that question as we made our way through the crowd at Pettibone Park on the Fourth of July. She had a couple kids in tow.

My daughter, Malika, and I hurried past her. “Did you hear that?” Malika asked? “How could she talk like that in front of her kids?”

I shook my head in the darkness. We had just watched some spectacular fireworks, but hearing that little cherry bomb of a verbal one took a little of the fun away.

That lady had said a very serious swear word, at least in my mind. You can probably guess the word. It’s definitely not one you would expect to hear a mother use around her kids, But it seems like that is changing, that people are swearing more in public.

I mentioned that to Malika. She told me about a group of people she had served at her job as a bartender a few days earlier. A group of people who swore like the proverbial longshoremen and they had their kids in tow. She was shocked and a little saddened hear it.

I’ve seen other examples too. Groups of people my age, swearing loudly or making sexual references that I really don’t care to hear.

When I told a co-worker about my observations, she had her own story, about. a person—a young woman, no less—who sprinkled that certain swear word through most of her sentences during a social gathering. .My co-worker even worked up the courage to correct her. That got a laugh and some ridicule in return.

People are cussing way more than they need to.

Okay, on a scale of 1-10, this is not a 10, or even a seven. We have a lot of other concerns these days that make this one seem so trivial that maybe I shouldn’t even write about it.

And most people do swear. I can’t lose a fish without a few choice words following it to the bottom o f the river. They just come boiling out of an unseen source. Or hit your thumb with a hammer and see what happens.

But this is different. It’s in public. It’s like air pollution that no one else should have to breathe. It’s a very ugly habit. Hey, if you want to swear in the privacy of your own home or campfire or fishing boat, be my guest. But if you’ve got kids around, old people, women (oops, I guess women are exempt now), or anybody within earshot, stifle it. Take a little pause. Leave the cherry bomb unlit,

Say something else. Take your English lessons from Mrs. Simon to heart. Get creative.

“Where in the Sam Hill is my car?”

“Where’s that son of a Gunderson car?” “Where the heck is my car?”

Or if you are really mad, “Where is my gol-dang car!” I’ve got a friend who occasionally uses the term gol-dam, and when he uses gol-dam, you know he is very, very upset. That’s the ultimate swear word for him. It’s his Mount Everest. Ifs funny in a way, yet I respect him for it.

I don’t expect many rude cussers to change their ways from reading this column. It probably will just generate a laugh. And as Malika noted, a lot of this behavior is brought on by one too many bottles of Budweiser.

And if you are like me, you will not say anything when it happens. Maybe give a look of disapproval, and that probably won’t do any good.

Still, I hope people can keep it in mind. Use a little restraint when it comes to swearing in public.