Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

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 dictionar...

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...

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 t...

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 ...

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 coupl...

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 ...

David Heiller The re 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 bump...

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 h is 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 ...