Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller He was brutally honest. He wasn’t trying to make friends. Good teachers are like that, and Dwight Diller is a good teacher. I would like to pass on a few of the things I learned from him last weekend. Not so much about the banjo, although that’s what he was trying to teach 15 of us in St. Paul. His words, seen from a different angle, could apply to many aspects of life. Dwight plays a clawhammer style of banjo that he learned growing up in West Virginia. I don’t want to condense his story too much, lest I misrepresent him. But it was pretty obvious that he draws strength from this very specific music from his home, and like most of us, Dwight’s home is where his heart is. Not Virginia, or Kentucky, or North Carolina. He doesn’t play that music, even if you or I couldn’t tell the difference. It’s not that he dislikes it. He’s not a musical racist. He has played it in the past. He is famil­iar with it. But he won’t play it anymore, He sticks to songs from ...

David Heiller I’ve got a friend from back home. I’ll call him Carl here. I’ve known him since eighth grade, when we shook hands over the line of scrimmage at football practice. We became best friends in high school, and w e kept that friendship through college, through the Peace Corps, and through my married life these past 17 years. He was best man at my wedding. Carl struggled through one long relationship that didn’t work out. Then he met a woman that seemed right. They were happy together. They got married seven years ago, adopted a child, and bought two farms. When Cindy and I would go to Brownsville to visit my mother, we would try to see them. They seemed like a happy family. You never know from a distance. I called my friend last week to see if we could get together over Easter. We were going to Brownsville to see my mother. The first words my friend spoke when he answered the phone stopped me short. “I’ve got some bad news, Dave. Mary and I are getting a divor...

David Heiller My friend Deane discovered a mother black bear and her three cubs three weeks ago. He had been walking along his creek on Sunday afternoon, March 22, and came within one stride of stepping on a big black hole in the snow. He stopped and peered in for a closer look. He could make out a mother bear and what looked like three cubs. I visited the bear family the next Saturday, along with our two kids and some other friends. We tromped through knee-deep snow, and had to leap over a narrow stretch of fast water. The extra work added to the adventure of seeing a bear den. Her den was just a little depression in the grass under a fallen tree. There wasn’t much protection, once the snow melted. One cub, about the size of a terrier, had crawled on top of her and was bleating like a lamb. We could hear other muf fl ed cries, somewhere under the mother, which is maybe why they were crying. It was bear talk for “Move, Mom, you’re killing me!” We stood and watched from ...