Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller It’s shaping up to be a strange Christmas. There’s no snow! That could change in the next 15 days. But part of me thinks that this will be a brown Christmas. I’m not complaining about the weather. We deserve another winter off. But my brother-in-law, Randy, made a good point on Sunday. We were driving across the brown landscape of suburban Minneapolis on a bleak Sunday afternoon. I was singing the praises of the mild weather we’ve had so far. But it doesn’t feel like Christmas, he said, unless there is snow on the ground. I thought about that, and I hate to admit when my brother-in-law is right, but he is right. It doesn’t feel like Christmas yet, and I think lack of snow is to blame. Partly. Take the Christmas tree outing. Usually when we cut a Christmas tree, we drag it home on a sled. Sometimes we’ve got snowshoes on our feet, the snow is so deep. This year, late last Saturday afternoon, I put on a light jacket, hopped on the tractor with the traile...

David Heiller Several people commented on my column about Bag Balm: Mona Sjoblom, Sharon Zimmer, June Christensen, Edwin Muse, and Fern Heiller, among others. Here is what they said. I won’t put the names with the comments. I like to protect my sources. But you can have fun guessing. One person said she uses bag balm on her feet, but doesn’t have a problem with it staining the sheets, because she doesn’t glop it on as thickly as I do. (You don’t know what you’re missing.) Another person said Bag Balm was good for two other uses: chapped lips and hemorrhoids. Fortunately I can’t verify the latter. Another person called to thank me for writing about Bag Balm. She said she used it for her dry skin caused by diabetes. She buys it in 4-1/2- pound cans (that’s a lot of hemorrhoids), and likes to give it away to her kids. Another person wrote in a letter which is printed on this page: “Then we used it for diaper rash. It was better and healed faster than any of the other thing...

David Heiller Don’t laugh, but this column is about Bag Balm. Bag Balm is a product that is made to eliminate chapped skin on cow teats and udders. Hence, the name. Some people think the name Bag Balm is udderly ri diculous. But I kind of like it. Not fancy, not p re tty, but it fits. According to the can, Bag Balm is made “For chapped teats, superficial scratches, windburn, and sunburn.” The di re ctions on the can say: “Massage thoroughly and allow ointment to remain for full antiseptic and softening effect on the udder.” At the bottom in bold print, it says VETERINARY USE ONLY. You can ignore that line. It’s just a disclaimer in case some teenager tries to inhale it or something. Farmers discovered by accident that the act of massaging a few teats made their hands feel better. In other words, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Hands that were chapped and nicked up, like all farmers hands are softened and healed from the Bag Balm. In my case, what ...

David Heiller There’s a feeling that comes about this time of year when fall settles in and winter is just a week or two away. It’s a feeling that tells people to check their wood supply and tighten up their leaky farmhouses. Grass dries up in the field and leaves crumble underfoot. It’s time to pick up the plastic buckets in the sandbox, and carry them to the shed, along with the Tonka dump trucks and bulldozers. The dogs stay in all night, and would stay in all day too if you didn’t have the common sense to boot them out during the day where they belong. Dogs outside, but not at night in the winter. The cat catches mice every other day, proudly leaving them on the floor, where the wife, if she’s lucky, gingerly walks around them and calls for the husband to throw them outside. If she’s not lucky, you hear the blood-curdling scream that only a woman stepping barefoot on a dead mouse can evoke. You work all through the weekend during the day, but the day ends dark and...

David Heiller “Just don’t get stopped with this trailer, because you might not get home with it.” I looked at my friend, Dave Landwehr. He was lending me his eight-foot trailer to haul a piece of newspaper equipment from Grand Marais. “Yeah, if the police stop you, they might not let you continue. You might end up spending the night.” Dave is an honest guy. He speaks his mind. This was his way of warning me, “You can use my trailer, no problem, but it doesn’t have lights, so if you get stopped, be prepared for the worst.” Cindy and I and our two children headed toward Grand Marais, pulling the tail-light-less trailer Saturday morning. As we passed through Duluth and up the North Shore, I thought about my luck with law enforcement officers this year. First, there was that trip to Nisswa in July. Sunday morning, on a straight stretch of Highway 18, a Crow Wing County deputy pulled us over. “You were going 71,” he said. He looked us over. Noah and Malika looked him over fro...

David Heiller Where does scrap wood come from? I’ve been pondering that profound question recently. I’ve got a barn full of it, and the pile just keeps growing. I know it’s not magic, but sometimes it seems that way. There’s the pile of kindling in the east wing of the barn, the one that has fallen over three times, with a little help from Rosie the dachshund, who is always rooting around for possums and mice. There’s another kindling pile in the barn proper that consists of cardboard boxes full of sawn up boards. No way will Grandma’s old trash burner consume that kindling in my life-time. Next to that second pile are scrap boards that are too long to fit in the trash burner. They are waiting to be sawed up, put in a box, and added to the other pile. There are the boards on the lumber pile in the west wing of the barn. I even built a rack for them. They are sorted by size, dimensional lumber down low, one inch lumber up above. There’s the pile next to...

David Heiller SUNDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1991, 4:30 P.M. The importance of knowing how to lose comes home every so often, especially with children. It hit in our home on Wednesday evening, October 23, in the World Series. My son, Noah, and I had been watching the game together for the first seven innings, just as we had watched all the other games together. Then I had to leave the living, room, as some friends came over to help move me move in a refrigerator  A circumspect Noah. I kept a transistor radio nearby as we struggled with the appliance. I swore as Hrbek struck out to end the eighth inning. I had to say no to Noah when he begged me to throw him the ball between innings, to bring the Twins good luck on defense. Finally, I had to hear the disappointing end   on   the radio, when Atlanta scored the winning run on a very close play at the plate in the bottom of the ninth. I dashed into the living room as soon as I could, and saw the replay at the p...

David Heiller The semi-tr a iler truck driver ahead of me fl ipped on his flashers as we approached the Kettle River Bridge on I-35 last Wednesday, October 23. I was going north, heading home from work. It was raining slightly. The wipers cleaned o ff the windshield every few seconds. Α gray fall day. I slowed down, and wondered, what was going on. Α man stood off to the left, swinging a red flashlight in his hand, waving us to keep moving. He had a grim, impatient look on his face. An accident, I thought. Α little further, a red fl are was burning on the side of the f re eway, to wa rn motorists to slow down. On the right I saw a woman with a blanket over her shoulders getting into the back seat of a car. On the left a car sat in the passing lane. It was terribly smashed. Somebody got hurt, I thought. I couldn’t see a second car, and I wonde re d how this one had been wrecked. It was bad. Then I saw the body of a woman lying on the pavement. She had a blanket over...

David Heiller Every time I go to my hometown of Brownsville, I try to look up an old friend named Howard. Sometimes he is busy and we don’t see him. He is a truck driver, and his hours are always changing. Cindy and I always feel like something is missing on our trip to Brownsville when we don’t see Howard. And when we do see him, it makes our trip that much better. Howard and David (with our dogs Riley and MacKenzie) That’s the way it was last Friday afternoon. The first thing he said to me was how he had been thinking of me lately. He had re-read an old letter, and wondered if I ever found a tractor part for my Oliver 60 tractor. It felt good to know Howard had been thinking about me. We don’t write letters much. But I’ll find myself thinking about old friends like him every so often. It’s important to keep your friends in your thoughts, and good to know that they do the same. Howard told us how he has been laid up from surgery since May. Now he’s attending...

David Heiller My son, Noah, is going deer hunting for the first time this year. I bought him a license. He is 14, and because he is under age 16, he can shoot either a doe or a buck in our woods. I will be going with Noah, but I won’t be hunting or carrying a gun. I didn’t buy a license for myself. Noah Most people don’t know that DNR game warden Curt Rossow of Willow River was the person responsible for letting youths shoot either a buck or doe (in areas where antlerless permits are given). He told me on October 28 that it took his daughter, Heidi, seven years to get an antlerless permit. Now it’s possible to get one right away. Young hunters have a better chance at success, which will more likely keep them hunting. Thanks, Curt! I went deer hunting a few times when I was Noah’s age. I used an old 12-gauge pump shot-gun that we had. It was in bad shape. The stock had electrical tape holding it together. Luckily it didn’t misfire and kill anybody. It had a tendency ...