Two-dog nights and days ~ December 14, 1989

David Heiller

Sunday night, Dec. 10, 7:30 p.m. Binti, our 10½-year-old dog, is having a nightmare. She’s lying by the Christmas tree, whining and yipping and quite soundly asleep.

Queen Ida lifts her head up from the rug in the kitchen where she is sleeping, and looks at me. It’s the same blank stare I must be giving her. “What the heck is Binti dreaming about?”

Maybe it’s those Christmas cookies that they were fighting over earlier in the evening. Cindy had the kitchen table covered with them, sugar cookies shaped like pine trees and Santas, moons and stars, lions, and bells, all frosted white with glitter stuck on top. Every time Queen Ida came too close to the table, Binti would snap and growl, making us all jump. Binti knew she couldn’t have any of the cookies, but she was making darn sure that Queen Ida had none either.

The muffin syndrome in action:
Queen Ida is pretending to eat while Binti
looks on coldly.

That’s the Muffin Syndrome in my dictionary, named after my mother-in-law’s late poodle. When Binti was a puppy, we would bring her on our visits there. Muffin would rest her chin on her dog dish, not eating a bite, just growling at her rival. Binti learned the lesson well. Too well.

People learn it too. Our kids especially. If Noah has a book on his bookshelf and Mollie wants to borrow it, he’ll often say no. “Don’t be a Muffin,” I’ll tell him, and he knows exactly what I mean.

8:00 p.m. Binti’s nightmare is over now. She just rose up and looked at me. Must have been a rough one. Maybe about the cold weather. No wagging tail. I call to her, eight feet away, but she doesn’t move. “You’re a good girl,” I say. Α few years ago her tail would have rapped the floor loudly at this. She loved to be complimented. Still does. Only now she is almost totally deaf. You have to shout your praises to her like a sports announcer.

Old age has spoiled Binti. She sleeps in the house most nights now. I used to let her stay in only if it was zero or colder outside. But Cindy challenged that this winter. She wanted her in every night, and during the day too when it was really cold. She soon had the kids on her side

Noah visiting with Binti

One morning as we were going to work, Noah asked me, “Why do you hate Binti?” The question stopped me in my shoes. Hate Binti? Α dog we’ve had for 10 years, since puppyhood? Α dog who was to us then what our children are to us now? Hate her?

“I don’t hate her,” I answered. “She’s a dog, Noah, not a person. Dogs don’t belong in the house. That’s why she has a house of her own.”

“Can she sleep in at night at least?” Cindy asked, looking for the compromise, as usual.

I caved in on that, and Binti sleeps in at night now, even when it’s above zero.

In the morning we’ll find her on the recliner next to the woodstove. It’s a wicked place to sit, reaching Finlayson-sauna temperatures when the stove is roaring. That’s just right for Binti. She can’t get too close to the woodstove. Sometimes she sleeps with her head under the stove. Sometimes her black fur gets singed and stinks up the living room. We call her the Heat Sponge. North Pine Electric could market her as a heat storage unit if she had puppies.

Yesterday morning I woke up in early morning darkness. Listen: Cindy was breathing on my right, and Noah cuddled on my other side. I could hear Mollie in her room, sighing in her sleep, with an occasional grinding of teeth. Then I heard another deep breath, in and out. It sounded like α huge man, barrel chested and weary as weary can be. At first it startled me, until I realized it was Binti on the floor. She had struggled up the 13 steps to join us. No nightmares even.

Malika supervising Binti drinking out of a dishpan.

I called her name in the darkness. I wanted to hear her tail thump against the hardwood floor. But no thumping, just that heavy breathing.

Tuesday morning, Dec. 11, 7:30 a.m. The thermometer says 20 degrees below zero. We’re headed for a high of about 10 below. Cindy asks again if Binti can stay in. “How about if I plug in the light in her dog house?” I answer. Pastor Sjoblom from our church gave this new house to me, complete with a light fixture inside. I’m not sure if it’s intended to keep the dog warm or help her read Scripture.

Binti and Queen Ida bend over their dog dishes to eat breakfast. A tree in the woods cracks with cold. Sounds like a Kent Hrbek shot to the upper deck in right field. Then Binti heads around the corner of the house for her clean, well-lighted place of rest. Soon Ida will join her. It’s a two-dog day, weather-wise.

Inside my car heading to Askov, the radio announces that Will Steger has reached the South Pole, and will celebrate by staying there for a couple days.

He’s celebrating at the South Pole. Back here he’d probably be sunbathing. That’s what Einstein really meant with his theory of relativity. I bet his dogs are warm too, and having peaceful dreams.

What will we do without the chamber pot? ~ August 14, 1986

David Heiller

When I got home from work last Friday, I stopped dead in my tracks as I stepped on the porch. My eyes beheld a strange, white object, with holes and levers, a handle, a pour spout, drain spout, and round seat. It stood three feet off the ground, and was made of heavy white plastic, like a five-gallon bucket.

Just then, my mother-in-law came out of the house. “Hello, David,” she said with more confidence than she normally uses when greeting me at our house. In fact, her voice had a tone of victory in it, not unlike my wife’s voice when she points out a mistake I made in the checkbook.

“Hello,” I answered in a voice that echoed my deflating spirit. I kicked at the white object, lifted it off the porch to feel its heft. “Where’d you get it?”

“From the neighbors, the Pudases,” she answered in that same, aggravatingly cheerful voice. “They had it in their cabin, and they don’t use it anymore, so they gave it to me for only $15.”

Grandma relaxed better when she wasn't thinking 
about chamber pots or outhouses.

“Hmph,” I said, walking into the house.

I trudged upstairs, thoughts of my fun weekend with my mother-in-law sinking with each step. I thought back to the last time she visited, in October. She had been relegated to the downstairs sofa bed, the one recommended by chiropractors because it gives them so much more business. That was about the time the field mice were looking for winter quarters, downstairs, near the couch. Lorely had discovered them while using the chamber pot in the dim morning light. Our cat caught one later and laid it proudly on the hearth for her to marvel.

Having only an outhouse, I thought at the time, does have its advantages. Not only do mice hang around chamber pots at vulnerable times, they like to visit outhouses. That same weekend, my mother-in-law was seated precariously on one seat of our two-seater, when a mouse ran up the wall next to her leg. She didn’t tell me about that till later, after she knew it was too late for me to write about it in the newspaper. It’s never too late for that.

The old two-seater. Bane of Lorely's visits.

So when I heard of my mother-in-law’s annual pilgrimage to our house last weekend, I thought another fun time would ensue. There would be plenty of food, pop, ice cream, steaks, birthday presents. She had promised to do some wallpapering. We would watch TV, play cards, argue, have a laugh. And, I thought, there would be the chamber pot, and the outhouse, and maybe I would even live-trap some field mice to perk things up a bit at night. Plenty of material for a good newspaper column.

So when saw the white heavy plastic contraption on the porch last Friday, the fun went away like morning fog melted by that cheerful voice.

“What are you going to do with that thing?” I asked when I got back downstairs.

My mother-in-law’s voice turned defensive. “It’s going to stay here, and it’s going to get used every time I visit.” That “every time I visit” got me worried. Maybe those mice, that chamber pot and outhouse bit, wasn’t so funny after all.
But what could I say. The Port-a-Potty had arrived. And life at our house with my mother-in-law will never be the same again.

The magic pen ~ August 30, 1990

David Heiller

If I look a little older this week, you can blame it on my pen. Cindy and the kids gave me the pen on Father’s Day this year. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the pen has magical qualities. You can’t tell by looking at it. It’s thin and dark and heavy, a pretty plain fel­low by Parker standards.

But when you write with it, you realize this is no ordinary Bic. It writes fast and smooth, with just the right balance. You feel important when you write with it. Like a rich businessman sign­ing a million dollar check.

You feel like you know what you’re writing about, even if you don’t, which can be mighty helpful to a newspaper editor.

That’s where part of the magic lies, which I’ll mention later. But the first magical part comes with its attachment to me. Usually when I receive an expensive small gift like a pen or a knife, I lose it. Not on purpose of course, but it seems to happen.

This pen has already had a couple close calls. The first time, I left it on the counter of the Partridge Cafe on Thursday evening, August 9. It lay there like a $20 bill for 18 hours. How many people wrote checks with it, signed up for the hamburger stand with it, feeling its perfect balance and trim build? But when I came look­ing for it at noon the next day, there it still lay, like it was waiting for me.

It also vanished mysteriously two weekends ago from the junk drawer, where I keep it when I come home from work. Cindy hadn’t used it, nor had I or the kids. I even called my mother-in-law in Minneapolis, thinking she might have accidently taken it. How could it just disappear?

David with his pockets, loaded with pens and
 notebooks and slips of paper. He never 
missed an opportunity to write down a quote, 
even if it wasn't for the paper. 
He loved a good pen and he loved the leather 
pocket protector I bought him one birthday. 
The pens all eventually went missing.
The pocket protector was filled with pens and 
slips of paper and was with him when he passed.

After it disappeared, I started to age rather quickly too, like in the story, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Then Cindy remembered that a neighbor, Syl­via Larson, had stopped by to pay for an ad. I called Mrs. Larson to see if she might accidently have put the pen in the bottom of her purse. She said she would look. I didn’t hear from her for several days, and had given it up for lost. Cindy vowed that she would never buy me another expensive pen.

But Mrs. Larson drove up on Saturday. Sure enough, she had found the pen in the bottom of her purse. The pen almost jumped from her hand into mine, like the handshake of an old friend.

The other magical quality, like I mentioned earlier, is the confidence it instills in the user. It has the ability to weed out mistakes and sloppy reporting.

While it cowered in the bottom of Mrs. Lar­son’s purse, I covered an Askov School Board meeting, using some chewed up, leaky pen that had gone through the washing machine.

When the paper came out, several mistakes were found:

n   Aria Budd discovered that Joan Anderson had become Joan Hansen in the first paragraph.

n   Askov Superintendent Michael Hruby dis­covered that the fiscal agent for East Central Community Education Cooperative had chan­ged from Sandstone to Askov school district.

n   Finlayson Superintendent Stan Sjodahl dis­covered that a school bus ruling to the state Commissioner of Education had changed against District 570.

It’s not the first time I’ve made a mistake in an article, not by a long shot. But three in one article?

It had to be the pen.

I hate errors in a newspaper. Everyone at the paper does. But sometimes those goof-ups just shouldn’t happen. Like mistaking Joan Hansen for Joan Anderson. I know the difference. Arla Budd, our typesetter, knows the difference. Hazel Serritslev, our proofreader, knows the dif­ference. But the wrong Joan slipped past us all.

Blame it on a lousy pen.

One thing is happily clear: Now that I’ve found my good pen, you can rest assured that there will be no more missteaks hear.

Life is for the birds ~ July 6, 2005

David Heiller

A bird flew out of a round cedar on the north side of the house about a month ago. That made me curious, so I pulled back some branches on the shrub and saw a tiny nest with four blue eggs.

The cedar is only about three feet high. That seemed like an odd place for a bird to build a nest. But it was well hidden by the branches of the tree.

The photo, of the nest and the hungry
chick, copied from the paper.

The nest became a wonderful little science project. I showed it to my grand-niece when she came for a visit from Texas, but I was just as fascinated. One day I discovered a baby bird had hatched. I expected the other three to quickly follow, but that didn’t happen, just one of the four made it. Life is cheap when you are a bird.

It was amazing how fast that one bird grew. It went from a little blob the size of my fingernail to a thing that seemed to be all mouth, to a fledged out bird, all in about two weeks!

My daughter and I checked the nest on June 26, and the little bird hopped onto the ground. It didn’t seem quite ready to fly, so we put it back in to the nest. When I checked it three days later, leaving the nest and its three little eggs. I’m going to give it to some kids I know. (It is good to have kids to give stuff like this to.)

And finally I was able to identify the parent bird as a chipping sparrow. I took out a bird book and read that they prefer just such spots. They like to use hair in their nests too, and this nest had plenty of hair. Most of it looked like it came from our dog Riley, who leaves big patches of his yellow winter coat on the ground in the spring.

Birds add a lot to our lives. We have two hummingbird feeders, and sometimes have seven or eight birds will zoom in for their sweet supper. It kind of .scary when we sit on the deck, but no one has been hit yet.

Orioles take the grape jelly we give them. Finches, chickadees, and sparrows devour the sunflower seeds. Woodpeckers drop in on occasion.

The garage and barn are full of-swallows. At least three bluebird houses are occupied. Pigeons roost in the top of the silo, cooing down its 60-foot length, (It’s an eerie sound.) There’s a robin’s nest under the deck.

Noah patiently feeding chickadees, by hand.

We wake up at 5:30 to the chirping of birds, and if we are lucky, a whippoorwill will lull us to sleep at night.

I really don’t know much about birds, but I know this much: they add a lot of value to my life, and I’m sure I speak for many others when say that.

I’ll also tip my hat to people like Fred Lesher, who I wrote about a couple weeks ago. He’s one if those dreaded “bird watchers.” We need people like him to keep tabs on birds that aren’t as commonplace as those I’ve mentioned here.

Fred believes we live in a bird heaven here in Houston County, and from my limited experience, I have to agree. Birds are everywhere.

One thing that I found interesting, and upsetting, at the river refuge meeting that I attended on June 23 was the disdain that the people in my group had for “bird watchers.”

It came up least three times. We can’t be protecting the river for bird watchers (spoken with scorn). This wouldn’t be a good area for bird watchers (sarcastic tone), because it is too close to a hunting area. That kind of thing.

It seems to me there should be room for bird watchers and bird hunters to live side by side without put-downs. The two groups are close cousins in many ways. They both know and respect the animal, its habitat, range, calls, and personalities.

When in doubt, don’t throw it out ~ July 24, 2003

David Heiller

“You’re not throwing that Plexiglas away are you?” Cindy asked on Sunday evening.

The thick piece of plastic had come from a hockey rink, where it had served as protection for fans from flying pucks. This one about 16 inches by 26 inches, give or take a few cracks and holes

It had sat unused in the garage for about 10 years, and now it was leaning against the garbage can, waiting for a trip to the landfill.

We moved our stuff, pick-up load at a time down to Brownsville.

But hold on there, Cindy was saying. That could come in handy, couldn’t it? You never know when you can use a piece of Plexiglas from a hockey rink.

The scary part was that I had been thinking the same thing. So with a mixture of guilt and relief, I carried it back to the garage.

It illustrates what is going on in our lives these days as we pack up 22 years of belongings. My old Test of Time standard is itself being severely tested. It states that if I haven’t used something in a couple years, out it goes.

The old "garage" was never really a garage...
 but it held a lot of "stuff".

Dilemmas are bombarding us. Do I need a box of old purses and bags? Geez, they could come in handy at some point. They are perfectly good. They could hold something.

What about that box of hats? I had a full head of hair the last time I wore most of them. But wait, that one is kind of debonair. I wore it to work once, and only a few people snickered. And that other one, I got while I was in the Peace Corps. I bonded with that hat!

Here’s a box of dishes that were put in the garage when we moved here from Stewartville in 1981. We had them before we were married. I remember those dishes. They’re kind of pretty, and they are still in fine shape. Keep them!

That Army duffel bag was my dad’s in World War II. Now it is stuffed with a bean bag chair. Noah used it as a blocking dummy in his football years. It’s a family heirloom.

That spare blender? You never know when the one in the house will break.

Those boxes of papers, letters, Christmas cards, photos, and college term papers? Some treasures are no doubt buried in their midst. I’d hate to accidentally lose something valuable.

Then there’s that cordwood saw. I promised I’d sell it to Tim. I hadn’t used it for so long, and we are moving, so why haul it 250 miles? He was going to come over on Monday evening to get it.

We built a pole shed. We actually kept cars,
truck and tractor there. It, too, had to be emptied.

I fired it up on Sunday night, to cut up a pile of old boards. It took only half a dozen pulls for it to kick into action, after a couple years of dormancy. Good old 12 horse power engine: As the circular blade sliced through board after board, I thought, “I can’t sell this!”

I broke the news to Cindy, and the scary part was, she agreed. Quid pro quo.

I have thrown a lot of things away, and taken some other things to Bruno Thrift Store. But it seems like my old saying of “When in doubt, throw it out” is under revision in these uncharted waters of moving.

Our garage and home up north are slowly being emptied, and the garage and barn down south are steadily filling up, with boxes of stuff that may very well remain in their cardboard coffins for another 22 years.

Here’s an answer for the Twins ~ July 27, 2005

David Heiller

A stop at Bissen’s Tavern the other day made my old brain click into action.

David never considered himself
 the star. And he never 
considered not playing.

The Minnesota Twins had just lost another one-run game, and the answer, at least a partial one, sat right there in front of me.

Gale Kletzke.

If you grew up in Brownsville in the 1950s and 60s, you are starting to tremble right now.

Gale was a softball force then, and I have no doubt he could still put wobble legs on a Major League pitcher.

He batted let handed, which gave him an advantage on the Brownsville School softball field. For one thing, he could knock the ball into the maple trees that grew there. More often though, he just knocked them onto Main Street and past Erma Bissen’s pump. Gale would lumber around the bases, head down. No showboating in those days.

Once in a while he would get that Kletzke look, a glint in the eye, a bit of a smile that tigers have when they eat raw meat. Then the Colleran house was fair game. Kids sitting along the first base line would scramble behind the backstop, and Mrs. Colleran would come onto her front porch in the vain hope that Gale would change his mind. Then a missile would streak through the air and into her bushes or living room.

OK Gardy, remember that name. Kletzke. Just the sound of it should he enough to score a few runs.

But that’s not all. I have three more suggestions.

Pete Scanlan: Pete was all muscle. A slugger like his cousin, Gale. He looked like the proverbial brick outhouse, And he was fearless on the base-paths. I remember one time, Pete hit the ball in the infield, and there was a close play at first. My brother, Danny, was playing there, and he made the mistake of not stepping out of Pete’s way. Boom! Danny flew through the air and landed on his back. He sat up, and for a tense second we didn’t know what would happen. Softball games could get pretty competitive, and no one had ever been dumb enough to get in Pete’s way before. Then Danny fell backward, arms out-stretched, Like he was dead. It was funny, and a rare smile crept onto Pete’s face. It was a lesson I’ve always remembered: a little humor can go a long way.

• Larry Boesen: Gardy, this guy is probably eight feet tall by now. He was a foot bigger than everyone in his eighth grade class back in 1963. He had a little hitch in his step, and he looked like Walter Brennan when he ran the base-paths. But once he got a head of steam, he was like a freight train.

• Shirley Ideker: I hate to say this, because Shirley played for the German Ridge school, and they were our archrivals. But she was good! Big, muscular, solid. In other words, an Ideker. She threw like a boy and not like other girls, whose arms seemed to come out of their their shoulder sockets when they tried to throw a ball.

Go Twins

What I most remember about Shirley was how she played first base. That is the key position in softball, because so many throws go there. Shirley never missed a throw. If you hit the ball in the infield against the German Ridge team back then, you were out, Thwack! I can still hear the sound of the ball hitting her glove. A very discouraging sound.      

And Shirley never aged. Every spring, we would look to see if Shirley was still on the team, and Shirley would be there. I think she got special permission throughout high school and college to return to Brownsville for those softball games.

So there you have it, Gardy. Boesen in center, Scanlan at third, Kletzke at DH, and Shirley Ideker at first. Problem solved. Go Twins!

Two milestones that touched the heart ~ July 17, 1997

David Heiller

There are certain events that make you realize how precious your children are. You experience these milestones gradually, one at a time, which is good, because it helps your heart heal before it gets pounded again.

I saw a couple last weekend, one from a distance and one up close and personal.

The first came on Saturday, when Heidi Rossow and Josh Eschenbach were married. I hate to use the words “good kids” to describe Josh and Heidi. It doesn’t do them justice. Maybe words like hard working, responsible, friendly, fun-loving, and compassionate would fit better. And they aren’t kids either.

But you know what I mean. They’re good kids. And I say that knowing full well that when I praise someone in the paper, they usually turn out to be axe murderers. Not this time. No way.

Bet on it.

Cindy shanghaied my handkerchief early in the service. She always cries at weddings. I never had, not even at my own.

(That’s a joke!)

But on Saturday, I felt goose bumps as I watched Heidi’s father, Curt, walk her down the aisle. Wow, he looked proud. Yet he looked as fragile as a wine glass. He was losing his oldest daughter—a good kid, no less—and he knew it. What a mix of emotions he must have experienced. I could feel them from the third pew.

Later in the ceremony, which was a perfect one, the bride and groom went to their parents and greeted them. Josh gave his mother, Glenda, a big hug. A lot of things passed between them in that instant. More than words can express. It was like Josh was saying, “Thanks for getting me this far, Mom. I can take it from here.”

And Glenda’s hug in return said, “I know you can.”

I had to ask for my hanky back.

The older my own kids get, the more I feel the bonds between parent and child tugged and torn and patched and hopefully strengthened.

Ten years ago, Heidi and Josh were sitting in church next to their parents, watching some guy in a white tuxedo grin from ear to ear as a beautiful woman walked into his life forever.

Ten years from now, maybe I’ll be walking down a church aisle with a glassy-eyed smile. Maybe Cindy will be giving the hug of hugs.

Malika went to camp that year and for a bunch of
years after. This is her in 2000, having fun with crayfish.

The next day, on Sunday, we took our daughter, Malika, to Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center for summer camp. It is her first summer camp. She picked Wolf Ridge out last winter, after getting a summer camp stipend from her aunt as a Christmas gift.

We had heard about this summer camp many times. It teaches environmental education, although I hate to use the words “teach” and “summer camp” in the same paragraph, lest we see a mass exodus from Wolf Ridge.

I’ve got a hunch it’s the kind of teaching where you don’t know you are being taught until a few weeks or years later.

Mostly it will be fun. There’s a rock climbing wall, and a ropes course, and an overnight trip in the Montreal-style voyageur’s canoe.

“It’s 34 feet long, Dad, and you can sit three abreast,” she told me. She had read the brochure carefully.

Mollie was a bit worried. The camp didn’t have horses, and campers stayed in dormitories, not run-down cabins.

She wasn’t worried about going there alone.

She went to camp alone that first year,
 but of course friends were made quickly!

That impressed me. I had always gone to camp with friends. No way would I have gone alone to a camp at age 12.

I remember being nervous and excited, two feelings that sum up life’s great jumping off spots, like summer camp and marriage.

Malika packed a bag and suitcase full of clothes and flashlights and boots and maybe the proverbial kitchen sink. It was heavy!

We arrived at Wolf Ridge early. We visited the office, and hiked the trails. Mollie got tired of that, and waited for us at the car. She was already anxious for us to leave.

I don’t remember my mom getting teary-eyed when I left for camp. Maybe she was too busy breathing a sigh of relief. But she must have stopped for a few seconds to say to herself,

“Wow, he’s getting big. What’s next?”

That’s what we felt as we threw Mollie’s gear on her bunk bed and shook hands with her counselors and gave our hugs goodbye. Chances are she forgot us before we got to the car. That would be a good sign. She’ll see us again this Saturday, and tell us about the friends she made and the new Hanson songs she learned, and a hundred other details, and maybe our hearts will be ready for the next big event.

Old photo shows a much different river ~ July 20, 2005

David Heiller

Mom and I were looking through some old photos a couple of month ago. They were from the Schnick farm in about 1920. Most showed scenes and people. There were several pictures of women in white on a picnic on one of the bluffs.

Unfortunately, I only have a photocopied
 version of this photo.I would love to have an "actual"
 image, if any one from the area 
has one that they would be willing to share.

Then the photographer, probably Ben Schnick, did a very good thing and turned his camera toward the Mississippi River and took the picture shown here.

It is taken from the bluff just to the north of Shellhorn Road. You can see the railroad track parallel to it.

What’s amazing to me is how different the river looks. For one thing the main channel, known as Raft Channel, hugs the Minnesota shore then jogs to the east around a big spit of land in front of where Valeree Green now lives.

That whole stretch of river with all its timber and islands and sloughs is now pretty much an open expanse of water thanks to Lock and Dam number eight at Genoa, Wisconsin.

That dam and 28 others were built as part of the Nine-Foot Channel Project. Most were built in the 1930s. The Genoa dam was built from 1934-1937. When the photo was taken, the Main Channel was kept at a depth  of six feet as Congress authorized in 1907. This act authorized 2,000 additional wing dams, dredging, and dams at locks at Keokuk and LeClaire, Iowa.

This was taken in 2006. David looking at the 
Mississippi. It is unfortunate that I can not
 remember exactly which hike we took this on, but i 
do know that it is in the same
 general vicinity of the original.

When the locks and dams were constructed, the water rose and the lower ends of each pool were inundated. The beautiful bottomland shown in this photo disappeared. I remember my Uncle Donny telling me that the Genoa dam took away a good chunk of Heiller farmland, which is barely visible in the upper right hand part of this photo. He wasn’t real happy about that. It wasn’t great farmland, being susceptible to flooding, but it timber and hayfields and pasture.

I bet people like Donny were upset with the project for recreational and aesthetic reasons too. When I see photos like this, I want to hop in the canoe and go fish and explore. The river was more like a wilderness then. Imagine the Reno Bottoms extending all the way up and down the river. That’s what it was like.

Calvin R. Fremling gives an excellent account of this (and much more) in his book, Immortal River. “Prior to the inundation in the 1934-1940 period, the river bottoms were primarily wooded islands separated by deep, running sloughs.

Hundreds of small lakes and ponds were scattered through the wooded bottoms. Bay meadows and small farming operations, mainly haying and grazing occupied some areas on larger islands,” he writes at the start of a chapter called “The Glory Years.”

Some good things, beside improved commerce, did come out of the damming of the river, Fremling says. One thing I like is that it converted ownership from private to public. “In an era when ‘no trespassing’ signs were becoming increasingly prevalent, it made the lands available, in perpetuity, for public use,” Fremling notes. Anyone who uses the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge can be thankful for that.

The Nine-Foot Channel Project also controlled flooding, and enhanced the opportunities for recreational boating. It increased more fish-food organisms and more fish because the river’s surface had increased exposure to the sun’s energy.

This is just some of the great information in Fremling’s excellent book. It’s like a Bible of river history, geology, and science. I couldn’t recommend a book more highly.

But I’ll still reminisce about a river I never knew, one my great-uncle Ben captured so many years ago. I know, time marches on, progress is good, people are starving in China, blah blah, blah. But we should remember that we lost a tremendous resource right in our front yard when the river was dammed.