Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller We got a new car recently, and I am thrilled with it. I had been driving a 1996 Taurus, which had 267,400 miles and a multitude of sins. Alan Wunmecka now has it in his scrap heap. I suppose ours like this when  it was new, but not by the  time it became David's. The new car is a 1993 Taurus with 150,000 miles. It has a good radio and cruise control. The muffler is a little loud, and the check engine light flickers to life every so often, but no problem. Some people might not be as thrilled as I am with my new car, but it’s a big improvement, and that’s the key t o my happiness. It got me to thinking about how improvements work or don’t work. Look around in your life—there are improvements everywhere. Start with your car; bet it’s a lot nicer than that 1954 Chevy your family drove when you were a kid. And we haven’t seen anything compared to what’s coming, with navigation systems that tell you how ...

David Heiller When our son interviewed Alan Page on April 27, it brought an old hero of mine back to life, only this time it was real life. Alan Page football card.  Noah has one that he graciously signed. Like many 40-somethings, I followed the Vikings through their glory years of the late 1960s and 1970s. It was a team filled with many gritty players, but the real star was Alan Page. He played defensive tackle. He wasn’t the biggest player or the strongest. He definitely wasn’t the flashiest. But he was the quickest, the cleanest, the most determined. When you needed the big defensive play, Alan Page came through. In my young mind, Alan Page was quite simply the best football player ever, the heart and soul of a big, strong, honest football team. Bob Hertz, Willow River, remembered one game on Thanksgiving against Detroit. Page was called for roughing the passer. It was a bad call, and you could tell Page was angry. A player today would storm around and get ca...

David Heiller THE EDSEL, Ford’s greatest fiasco, was introduced to the American public on September 4, 1957, as the first of 110,000 rolled off the assembly lines in Detroit that year and 1958. Edsel The Edsel, named after a Ford son, soon became the laughing stock of the country. They were big cars, with a lot of electronic gadgetry, and perhaps ahead of their time. But most people agree that the reason they didn’t catch on is that they just plain looked funny. It was the round grill on the front end that created the belly laughs, commentator Harry Reasoner said on the radio this week. No car had ever had a round grill before. It made the car look like an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon, Reasoner said. Ford, I think has the last laugh, though. Just try to buy an Edsel from someone who has one of those originals. They are collector’s items, worth far more than their original purchase price. Cars are really an important part of our lives. Whether you are one of those peo...

David Heiller Last Saturday I went out to my one bee hive to take their honey. I started the year out with three hives, but two of them died in a cold spell in late April. That was a sign of things to come. Before I went to the honey bees last week, I made a side trip to a nest of yellow jackets. I discovered them when I was moving an old brush pile about a month ago. They came bub­bling out of the ground so fast I literally ran away. Bees are a lot of work, especially in a bad year. But with my bee suit on and a spade in hand, I dug them up on Saturday morning without a sting. I found their eggs and squished them between my fingers, and found the queen and squished her too, and I hate to admit it but it felt good. We play God all the time. It’s just more noticeable with bees and wasps. It must be man’s baser nature that if it’s a threat to people, it has a lesser value. Those yellow jackets pollinate flowers and vegetables and apple trees just like the honey bees. They...

David Heiller It must be about 1963 that my Houston County Fair memories begin. They are all jumbled together now, and I’m not sure how accurate they are. But a few things stand out that I’d like to share, in the hope that they strike a chord with you. New blue jeans went hand-in-hand with the fair. The smell of new denim has ever since reminded me of the fair. Of course they were about four inches too long, a concession Mom made to the growth spurt that was sure to come before the jeans wore out. I tried to roll the legs of the new jeans into a respectable cuff, but they never looked right. They were all wrinkled and bulky. It wasn’t cool, man, and already at age 10 I knew what cool was. Mom would work her magic on them and quickly get the perfect cuffs. Cool cuffs. Wearing those blue jeans was kind of like wearing two stove pipes. The legs were stiff! We bought our tickets for the fair rides in advance at Bissen’s Tavern. They were a bargain, something like 12 for $2. M...

David Heiller “I’m going on vacation next week,” I told people last week. “Where are you going?” they asked. I braced myself. “Texas.” “Texas! Why in the world would anyone go to Texas in August?” Mary Ellen and Emily, one half of the reason for an August trip to Texas. “You see, I have a sister there, and my wife is a teacher, so it’s now or never,” I answered with a nervous laugh. “Oh,” they responded with an uneasy look, and edged away. I discovered that people do not go to Texas in August. People who have been to Texas know that. It would be like people from Minnesota going to the Canadian wilderness in January to get away from the cold. Even my sister, who I love dearly (remember, I’m going to Texas in August to see her), seemed a bit surprised to hear we were coming to visit. “What should we bring to wear,” I remember asking her. There was Texas-sized cousin fun for this trek. “Don’t worry about any cold weather clothes,” she answered simply. “A cold...

By David Heiller The night was cool. A heavy mist, just short of a fog, hung in the air. Buildings seemed covered in a light, light gauze. The cobblestone street shined, slippery, reflecting light from shop windows, doorways. David in Sidi Kacem, Morocco in the Peace Corps The place was Morocco, the city of Fez, the year 1979. Four Americans walked up the steep street of cobblestone, streets so narrow an American car would barely pass through. But there were no American cars here, not even during the bustling days when horses and drivers would crash through, shouting “red bellick, red bellick!”—“look out, look out!” Now, on this misty spring night, even the bustling crowds were gone, sitting in their homes, talking, or watching the single channel on Moroccan TV, eating hirara, the soup made from leftovers on Sunday night. The four Americans had rendezvoused in Fez for some fellowship. Each lived in different parts of the country, in smaller cities. They taught ...

David Heiller Our family spent a few days in Kentucky two weeks ago. It was an interesting experience. It’s hard to come to any conclusions about a state after only four days, so call these impressions very preliminary. Roger, Maria, David, Cindy and Noah walking in Kentucky. A land of tobacco. A lot of people smoke in Kentucky. I saw more smokers in four days than I have in the last year, and that is not an exaggeration. In Somerset, where we stayed, there was a drive-through store for discount cigarettes. I can only imagine using that. A tinny voice mumbles through a speaker, “May I take your order, please?” The man says, “Yeah, I’d like a carton of Winston, a pack of Red Man Chaw, and two Swisher Sweets for dessert.” “Honey,” his wife says in a reminding tone. “Oh yeah, a pack of Virginia Slims for the missus.” “Daddy!” comes a voice from the back seat. “All right,” the old man sighs. Then he says into the microphone, “And a tin of Copenhagen, mint flavore...

David Heiller I knew there would be trouble when I saw my breath last Friday evening, June 19. I was hauling woodchips to the garden, working up a sweat and whoosh, I saw my breath. Just once, but I saw it. And I hadn’t been eating onions. “I’m seeing things,” I thought. So at bedtime, 10:15, I checked the thermometer just to be sure I WAS seeing things. I WASN’T seeing things. It read 37 degrees. I groaned and went to the garage for the “garden linens.” Old sheets, bedspreads, blankets, tarps, tablecloths. Not fit for human use, but just fine for chilly tomatoes, peppers, and celery. After I ran out of blankets, I covered the pumpkins, squash, and melons with every bucket and pan I could find. The rest could fend for themselves. The ground was white with frost the next morning. I scraped a thin layer of frost from the car windshield with my fingernail. 30 degrees on June 20. If that wasn’t enough, the temperature dipped to 30 the next night, June 21. Sad frost-bitten t...