Odds and ends and sage advice ~ January 28, 1993

David Heiller

Odds and ends this week

I WAS SITTING AT the Partridge Café on Monday with two friends, “Bruce” and “Sandy.” (When you see names in quotation marks, that means the names aren’t real, unless some wise-guy editor wants to fool you.) We were talking about kids, how strange they can be.

Their son, “Andrew,” had announced on Sunday that he had to do a class project by Monday. One of the suggestions from the teacher was to make a replica of the Mayflower. “The Mayflower!” Bruce said in disbelief. How can a kid make a replica of the Mayflower? What fun is that?

Andrew (and Bruce) had other ideas. They wanted to make a stock. You know the kind of things they used to have in public squares to punish thieves back when the Mayflower sailed here. Your hands go in these two slots and your head goes in a bigger slot in the bottom piece. A top piece is put on, it is fastened together, and everybody laughs at you and throws rotten tomatoes.

Now that’s a project a kid can get into. Dads can too. So Bruce, who is a carpenter of some renown, took out every tool he owns and worked for five hours and came up with the nicest stock this side of the middle ages. It worked great, he said with the enthusiasm of a 10-year-old. You put these pins in place and you will definitely not get out of this stock.

Andrew wanted a padlock for it, but Bruce drew the line at that.

I would like to have seen the teacher’s face when Andrew brought his stock to class. I bet some devious thoughts crossed her mind, like “What a great way to punish little Joey!” We could use one around our house at times.

I bet Andrew gets an A. But what do you do with a custom-built stock in this age of enlightenment?

“We were thinking of putting it in our bedroom as a conversation piece,” Sandy said with a twinkle in her eye.

I WAS TALKING TO A LADY, who I will call “Lynn,” the other day. She is resolved, along with her husband, to lose some weight and get in better shape. She and her husband went to bed at 9 o’clock on Sunday night, and set the alarm clock for 5 a.m. They were going to get up and exercise together.

Well, 5 a.m. rolled around and instead of jumping out of bed like Richard Simmons, guess what happened? Lynn shut off the darned alarm clock and rolled over for another hour of precious sleep.

I was talking to Cindy about it that evening. Here are two parents who work pretty much full time, with countless other things to take up their time, not the least of which are three children, and they are going to get up at 5 a.m. and exercise?

Yeah right, Dad.

That’s life in the 90s, I thought cynically. We’re so pressed for time we have to set our alarms for 5 a.m. to lose a few pounds. Fat chance.

But it’s more than a sign of the times. It’s one of those ideas that sound better at 9 p.m. than it does at 5 a.m. I used to have notions like that with my next door neighbor in high school. Every night I would vow that I would say “Hi” to her as we waited for the bus, strike up a conversation, and charm her socks off. But every morning she would give me a hard stare and I would stand next to her in burning silence. Some things never change.

MY SON NOAH WEARS two pouches around his neck. He made them from a leather kit that he received for Christmas.

In one pouch he has put some sage. He says: “If I kill something or I find something dead or used to be dead, I sprinkle a tiny bit of sage, saying I worship it.”

Noah’s other pouch is bigger. In it he keeps shark teeth, a leopard rock, and a spear head. “It’s like a medicine bag,” he said. ‘You have it for luck. And if you’re down in the dumps, you can take something out and hold it. It’s like a spirit.”

I’ve never seen anything that “used to be dead,” and I don’t know what a leopard rock is. But I didn’t argue with him. These are Indian customs that he has read about. They may seem silly to our “civilized” minds. But think about it. What if every hunter carried a little sage with him? Wouldn’t this reverence for life be better for everyone? And what if the next time you were down in the dumps, you could open your leather pouch and hold onto your leopard rock and feel better?

I guess that’s not so odd after all. In fact, it’s pretty sage advice.

The unforgettable Bath Night ~ January 10, 1985

by David Heiller

What comes to mind when you think of Saturday night as a child? For many people, it’s bath night. Or maybe that should be capitalized. Bath Night, an American institution.

David (left) and his older brothers, 
presumably AFTER Bath Night
the previous eve.

As a child Bath Night for our family had a certain ritual. I had seven brothers and sisters. The girls got the upstairs bathroom usually, while my two brothers and I splashed downstairs. Glenn, nine years older, would usually bathe first, because he had places to go and people (usually of the opposite gender) to meet.

Danny and I followed. Three years my senior, Danny was expert at taking baths. He convinced me that no soap was necessary. There were little germs in the water, and these germs drove tiny bulldozers that scraped dirt away. Mom ended that theory, possibly after finding no ring in the tub one too many times.

After the bath, it was into pajamas and onto the living room floor in front of the TV. At 8:30 Palladin—Have Gun, Will Travel. Next: Gunsmoke, everybody’s favorite. How many squeaky kids watched Matt Dillon square off against the man in the black hat every Saturday night at nine? Matt always fired a second late, but his aim hit its mark. An important lesson for us clean kids.

A hamam in Chaouen, Morocco.
(Daughter Malika took this lovely photo on her stay in Morocco.)

Perhaps my most memorable Bath Night came in 1978, when I lived in Morocco, teaching with the Peace Corps. Moroccans know how to do up Bath Night right. They all converge on the “hamam” or public bathhouse. There, they strip down to shorts, grab a couple of buckets and scrub themselves clean while catching upon the latest news with their neighbors.

I usually went to the hamam early in the morning. Fewer people, less hassle. But one blustery night in January, I grabbed a towel and went to the local bath house. I paid my 50 cents in the front room, put my clothes in a basket under a bench, and walked into the hot room.

All eyes turned on me, a six-foot-one, white American bulk in a sea of brown bodies. The room was packed, men and boys, dads and sons, washing their hair, scrubbing their legs, sitting, talking, enjoying their Bath Night, and enjoying watching me.

I looked for a place to sit down, then spotted a vacant chamber off to one side. I asked a man who I recognized if the room was taken. He glanced in surprise, then said “La, sir illa bghiti.” Go ahead, if you want to.

As I sat in the room, a small man entered, shook my hand, introduced himself.

“La bes. N-atai-ek kulshi?” Hello, You want the works?

It then flashed that I had entered the domain of the hamam’s masseuse. Before I could say anything, he poured water on me, and started washing my hair. He scrubbed my back, my front, my legs. He used a pumice stone and a pad that made Brillo seem like baby lotion. As a topper, he threw on a few wrestling holds on me and stretched me out. My muscles cracked and popped. I never felt so good.

As I left the room, the Moroccans made way for me like Moses in the Red Sea. Their faces showed a new respect for the Americani. A few of my students shook my hand. They’d never seen anything like that in their hamam, and I would guess, haven’t since.

That was my most memorable Bath Night. I’ll never forget it, and I don’t regret it. But I think I’ll stick to Gunsmoke.

Spring Grove Pop: a delicious mystery ~ January 14, 2004

David Heiller

I haven’t quite unraveled the mystery of Spring Grove strawberry pop, and maybe that’s the way it should be. Some things you just have to believe in blindly.

The new owner of Spring Grove Bottling Works, Dawn Hanson, let me watch her and Roger Morken and Jerry Ellingson make some pop last Wednesday.

It was a fun visit, sort of a step back in time, which seems only fitting in the beautiful city of Spring Grove. I sometimes think that time has stopped in Spring Grove, and I mean that as a compliment, although I know it’s not true and that the city has its foibles like the rest of the world.

But watching pop get made at the bottling works really did feel like something from the 1950s. The old reliable machinery, all clicking and rotating and spinning in perfect order, was like something you’d see in a 1950s newsreel. The three workers steadily kept it all going, washing bottles, checking labels, loading boxes.

I couldn’t help but admire it all, that here in 2004, in a city of 1,304 Norwegians, is a bottling plant that has eight different flavors of pop. I tip my hat to Dawn and her husband, Bob, for keeping the tradition going, and to Roger Morken, his son Eric, and the others before them for doing the same.

Spring Grove soda and its many varieties. David and most of the rest of the Heillers only had a taste for one kind: Strawberry.

I don’t mean to sound sentimental, but it’s a big accomplishment, and that goes for anyone that can maintain a small business in this day and age.

Now about that aforementioned mystery: I sometimes ask myself what makes Spring Grove strawberry pop so special. Yes, there are seven other Spring Grove pop flavors. For the record, they are black cherry, orange, root beer, grape, creamy orange, lemon sour and cream soda. I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever drunk one of them. Every time Ι try to buy a different flavor, my hand gets drawn by an unseen force to the strawberry.

It probably goes way back to the days of those funny bottles with the skinny neck and the Spring Grove logo embossed in red and white on the outside. Take a day at the beach, and hot sun, and swimming in the river and not having a care in the world and hanging out with friends. Then throw an ice-cold Spring Grove strawberry pop on top, and you’ve got some serious bonding.

It’s not just me. My siblings have the same thoughts. So do their kids and my kids. When you go visit Grandma, you drink strawberry pop, and you take some home with you too.

And the pop itself. Wow. Take a guzzle and hold on. It might even come shooting out your nose with the force of a blown fire hydrant. There is more fizz in strawberry pop than your average glass of nitroglycerin. Roger Morken told me they put 60 pounds of pressure in it, but I think he turns the gauge up a bit when nobody is look­ing.

It packs a punch, and can lead to some eruptions that send mothers cringing and friends smiling in admiration of what sounds like a cross between a thunderstorm and the roar of a charging lion.

The flavor of strawberry pop? Ah, fresh strawberries, mixed with a liberal dose of pure cane sugar; it’s like blue skies and county fairs and a game of softball all rolled into one. Like Ι said, try to bottle up your childhood, and you’ve got Spring Grove strawberry pop.

OK, I’ll stop there. Enough mere words. Let the mystery be.

I think I’ll go get a bottle of pop, Spring Grove strawberry if you please.

An odd eagle coincidence ~ January 11, 2006

David Heiller

This story could fall into the what-are-the-odds category.

Two eagles that were found dead in two different locations were banded on the same day On May 20, 1991.

Brenda and Martin Pohlman, who live on a farm in section 26 of Crooked Creek township, found one on October 16.

A banded eagle

The other was found on November 8 by a trapper near Prairie Island.

It is unusual to find a dead eagle to begin with, and more rare to find one that is banded. About 30.000 bald eagles have been handed over the past 50 years, and only about 15 percent of the bands have been recovered. So to find two eagles, 20 days apart, that were banded on the same day. I4 years earlier, well, Brenda and the trapper should have gone out and bought lottery tickets.

The story, which I first read about in the La Crosse Tribune intrigued me. I called Brenda Pohlman, and she agreed, “It’s very odd.”

She, Marty, and her parents, Maurice and Jenny Waege from Wilton, WI, were cutting firewood that Tuesday afternoon. Marty spotted the bird from his tractor seat. Brenda identified it as an eagle from its talons and beak. The bird was in bad shape, and Brenda couldn’t see its white head. “We don’t know how long it was lying out there before we took it to town,” Brenda said.

She called the Minnesota DNR office in Caledonia, and they referred her to Tony Batya, a operations specialist with the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge in Winona.

Batya said to bring it to the Caledonia DNR office. Brenda had left the carcass in the woods because she knew she wasn’t supposed to touch it. “It’s actually a federal offense to touch it whether dead or alive or take any feathers,” she said.

It turns out that the birds were banded by Dave Evans of Duluth, who was working for the Wisconsin DNR. One eaglet was in a nest 96 feet high in an ash tree near Alma, WI. The other was in a nest 83 feet high between Cochrane and Fountain City, WI.

Brenda doesn’t know what killed her eagle. She said it could have been lead poisoning. The birds have been known to die from ingesting lead sinkers in fish that they eat

Eagles mature in five years, and live 20-25 years in the wild, so the 14 year-old birds could have had quite a bit of life left.

Malika captured this photo in Houston County

One thing is for sure: Eagles are way more common now than when I was a kid, We can thank DDT for their awful decline. Back in the 1960s, an eagle flying over the Brownsville hill was enough to get the entire neighborhood including all the Levendoski kids, out on the sidewalk craning their necks and shielding then eyes for the occasion.

Now they are a fairly frequent sight, although no less welcome. Consider this; in 1972, there was only one known bald eagle nest in the 260 mile-long Refuge. Now there are 167.

There is also an eagle nest on the Pohlmar property. Brenda is guessing it was used by the eagle she found. It will be interesting to see what happens at the nest this spring, she said.

The Pohlmans see eagles flying around all the time, Brenda added. Lately she’s seen one adult and three juveniles.

It’s very enjoyable to watch them in the nest. She’s seen them pull fish out of nearby Crook Creek too, and eating dead raccoons.