Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Dear Grandma, The big week is here. The tree is up in its new spot in the new house. It’s small, only about five feet tall, so I put it on top of two bee boxes, and Cindy put a tree skirt around it. It looks great, like it belongs there, and it has three presents under it. We went out and bought a tree this year, the first time for as long as we can remember. No fir trees on our property down here. The first Christmas in the new home. Christmas different this year, Grandma. The kids are gone now. When they were little, it seemed like they brought Christmas with them. The concerts and school artwork and Sunday School pageants, even our trip to the woods to cut the tree were all a big part of the Christmas feeling. I miss their excited talk about the presents under the tree. They would shake and rattle them, with an occasional word of warning from Cindy or me. “Careful with that one, Noah.” “I wouldn’t squeeze that one if I were you, Gol.” They would c...

David Heiller Gremlins Come Out at Christmas, the newspaper headline read. Santa’s Elves Discovered in Birch Creek Farmhouse? DENHAM, [A.Ρ.] A set of strange occurrences have set the scientific world abuzz in this rural Minnesota community. The David and Cindy Heiller household has been the site of several baffling mysteries that may be related to Old St. Nick himself. Christmas tree ornaments have been found lying underneath the white spruce that they cut two weeks ago. The ornaments were hung several feet of the floor by the homeowners themselves. Several defy Newton’s Law to rest on the floor at the end of every day. Look! A clue! Tiny stars which Cindy Heiller stuck above a cut-out of a horse and sleigh on the kitchen window have been moved down into a crooked line above the sleigh. “They’re just sticky things you put on windows,” the baffled Cindy tried to explain. “They don’t move by themselves.” The family’s nativity scene, with its ceram...

David Heiller Dear Grandma: Christmas is here already, so I’ll give you my annual update and send it with Gabriel. We are burning a lot of propane, Grandma. It’s been a cold January, and we are still in December. Snow too! A real winter, after three of the pretend variety. We have a lot of birds at the feeders. We even had a starling the other day, a big galoot that had Noah asking, “Should I get the .22, Dad?” He still remembers how you hated starlings. Either that or it’s in his genes. Noah was a bit older than this in 2000,  but the idea is the same. I put the kibosh on that. If I spread the table with food, then all the guests should be welcome. You would take exceptions with the starlings, if memory serves me right. Mollie is going to sing at Church on Christmas Eve. That will make the service even more special, and it’s always special, the candlelight service, going way back to Brownsville with you by my side. It feels like Christmas, and that can be bot...

David Heiller Christmas is more than a day to most people. It is a season. It officially starts the day after Thanksgiving, though you wouldn’t guess it from the hucksters. Every year the shopping malls stretch their Santa Sales back and back, enough to make a Scrooge out of the happiest camper. Then Thanksgiving comes and the Christmas decorations look a little softer. A Christmas carol pops into your head. It starts after the Thanksgiving feast, in the front yard, the family gathered for a football game in the snow. Glenn tries a 1962 block on me, rolling into the back of my knees from behind as I snap the ball. It works the first time, and Danny is sacked by the fierce pass rush of Duke, Glenn’s black lab. When Glenn tries it again, I sit on his head for five seconds. Glenn must think it’s five minutes, as he flails in the snow under my mashed potatoes and gravy. That will teach him to clip me. Three Heiller's, Glenn, Fern, and Danny on the day of the Thanksg...

David Heiller We got a foot of snow last week, And while it made the fields look sleek, It drifted deep across our yard And digging out was mighty hard. David's beloved outhouse.  It was all we had for many, many years. I dug a path to the garage And to the sauna I dislodged About a half a ton of snow. Then to the woodpile I did go. But there’s one trail that still not done, That used to rank as Number One, And now I feel like a lazy louse: I didn’t shovel out the old outhouse. We got an indoor job last June. I swore I wouldn’t use it soon. “It’s for the wife and kids,” I said. While manly pride filled up my head. But these days when my tea kicks in, I stay inside with guilty grin, And from a big newspaper stack I read the sports page front to back. My words of pride are sounding hollow. And if you ask, I’ll have to swallow Hard and answer straight: The outhouse now don’t seem so great. Oh, that old north win...

David Heiller The alarm clock rang at 5:30 a.m on Saturday, November 8. I was waiting for it to ring. I hadn’t slept much. First day of deer hunting will do that, even if you aren’t going hunting. I got out of bed, dressed, went upstairs, and woke up my son, Noah, 14, who was going deer hunting for the first time. I lit a fire in the wood stove. We ate cold cereal. Noah put on the warm clothes that he had laid out the night before in the kitchen: long johns, snow pants, T-neck, jacket, blaze orange sweatshirt, stocking cap, choppers. It was 33 degrees outside. You can never be too warm when you are hunting. We headed out to the deer stand at 6:15. I had made the stand a few days earlier, nailing a platform between an oak tree and a basswood at the edge of the woods. It was about 12 feet high. We saw a lot of deer tracks near the stand. Noah climbed up. I headed back to the house. It wasn’t big enough for both of us. He came in at 9:30. He hadn’t seen anything from the ...

David Heiller I’ve been sitting on an outhouse column, so to speak, for several months. That’s because I had seen a want ad in a local paper back then that read: FOR SALE: Outhouse. $150.00. I figured that anyone who is selling his out house must have a story to tell the Askov American. First some background: We have an outhouse at our place. I guess it’s MY outhouse, since I’m the only one who uses it. Cindy hasn’t used it much since last summer, when a garter snake dropped on her. A David-style panorama of our homestead in Sturgeon Lake. (Complete with tape to hold it together) The outhouse is the little white building to the right. We used it exclusively for ten years. At the time of this column, it was David's domain.  Eventually, even he stopped using it when it was cold. Occasionally Mollie will hitch a ride on my back and join me there. It’s a two-holer. But she does this less out of physical need than curiosity, or if she has something urgent...

David Heiller It finally dawned on me on Monday, and a chill went up my cliche-filled spine. This dog is too darn smart. I’m referring to our Australian Shepherd, McKenzie. We got her a month ago from Kathy Horvath. MacKenzie Kathy is the biggest animal lover this side of Cassanova. She takes in homeless animals. McKenzie had been given to her because she kept running away from her home in Duluth (McKenzie did, not Kathy). The dog had learned how to open the door, and couldn’t resist the sound of children playing down the street. Kathy and a group called Aussie Rescue in turn gave her to us. It was pretty much love at first sight, even for me. I didn’t want another dog. We already had one, a six-year-old flugel - hound named Ida. But the other three family members begged pretty shamelessly. “Let’s just try it, and if she doesn’t work out, we can take her back,” Cindy said. Yeah right. McKenzie is hard not to like. She catches Frisbees with spectacular leaps. When w...