Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Last week I asked Hazel Serritslev, who work; at the American, if she needed any green beans. Hazel is 74 years old, so she qualifies for garden give-aways. Hazel said yes, but she was going out of town so she wouldn’t have a chance to use them. No problem. I called Leone Schultz of Finlayson. She is 89, and this is the first year that she hasn’t had a big garden. She said yes, she could use the beans. She stopped in to pick them up on Friday, August 18, and said a sincere thank you. A little broccoli to put-up, eat-up  and give-away. And there will be more! “Can you use some tomatoes?” I asked. She said she could, and this Friday she will stop in again and pick up some tomatoes, if I remember to bring them. Palmer Dahl stopped in on Sunday to drop off a screwdriver that he had re-ground for me. Palmer is 86, so I figured I could pawn off some vegetables on him. But he is a man of simple means, and more blunt than Hazel and Leone. (No of...

David Heiller My mother, my wife, and I took a trip to Sherwood and Mohall, in northwestern North Dakota, last week. Mom wanted to visit her aunt Clara, who is in a nursing home in Mohall. An old Schnick photo from North Dakota. David's grandma, Stella is holding the horse on the far right. Aunt Clara is the youngest one in the front of the photo Cindy and I wanted to see Clara too, but more than that we wanted to see where Mom was born and raised. We wanted to get a feel for the place, and we did. Mom took us to Sherwood first. We drove along Highway 28. She was looking for the house where her mother lived. She had stayed there when she was a girl, and rode the school bus to Sherwood. “There’s nothing here now,” she warned. Mom told us again how Grandpa had come out here from Minnesota and worked the harvests. How he met Grandma. She told us lots of stories about the old days on this trip. Trips back home are good for that. You don’t feel so foolish a sking al...

David Heiller Last Tuesday was Murphy’s birthday. You know Murphy, of Murphy’s Law fame. He celebrates his birthday every few weeks here at American Publishing. Two months ago, he had a grand birthday celebration in our basement. The sky darkened like dusk, and an inch of rain fell in half an hour. Murphy was sitting in the drainpipe to the rear of the building, so that the rain water couldn’t go through. It flowed over the rear door sill, and into the basement, where we have $12,000 worth of paper stored. It pooled up under the presses, formed lakes over the drain. Tuesday was layout day for the paper. It was a long jigsaw puzzle. All done by hand. Unless of course Murphy was around for the day, then all bets were off! I took off my shoes and shirt, and dug into the ground outside, while the rain soaked me. I found a broken tile of clay drain pipe, where Murphy had been dancing. After an hour, the water finally started flowing through, the lake in the basement recede...

David Heiller I found the answer for sheepshead. Cindy and I have been debating that fish for a couple years now. She doesn’t like them, and I do, kind of. Fresh water drum, aka sheepshead Taste: nasty. Texture: mushy Smell: heinous and everlasting. “Why don’t you bring me back some sunnies?” she’ll ask when I come home with a stringer full of freshwater drum. That’s the fancy name for sheepshead. “I wasn’t fishing for sunnies” I’ll say. “What were you fishing for?” “Bass.” “Why don’t you bring me some bass then?” “I didn’t catch any bass, I caught sheepshead.” “And why is that?” “Because that’s what I caught.” That kind of ends it, until the circular conversation returns, as it seems to do. That’s the thing: The river is teeming with sheepshead. Way more than the good old days. My theory is that one of their favorite foods is the zebra mussel. The river is now full of those pesky things, hence the river is full of sheepshead. I could throw them bac...