Two tales of life and death ~ May 10, 2001

by David Heiller

The call of the bittern almost shook the windows in the house last Friday morning. I stepped onto the deck and looked toward the pond. I couldn’t see anything, so I went back inside and grabbed the binoculars.

When the call came again, I was able to zero in on a bird standing on the south side of the pond. He blended in perfectly with the dried grass all around him, two feet tall and very stout.

American bittern.

I’m saying it was a “he” because I think he was calling for a mate. It was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen. The call started in his midsection, as if he was gasping for air. Then he puffed out his feathers and stretched out his neck like he was about to throw up. His chest bulged up like a hot air balloon. Then out came this big, wet, hollow call. Glug-Ga-GLUG, Glug-Ga-GLUG, Glug-Ga-GLUG, Glug-Ga-GLUG. It sounded like Paul Bunyan using a plunger in an echo chamber. The nickname of the bird, “slough pumper,” comes from that unique sound.

The funniest part was that after every call, the bird would look up and slowly rotate his head across the sky like a radar. He must have thought his call was so powerful that a lady slough pumper would come flying right to him.

·        *   *   *   *   *

On Saturday morning, our dog, MacKenzie, started digging frantically underneath the out-house. Cindy and I were working in the garden. We didn’t pay much attention to her until we caught the smell of a skunk and realized what she was after. MacKenzie quickly slunk away. The memory of past skunks must be engraved in her mind.

There are several animals I cannot tolerate near our home and the skunk is at the top of the list. I went in the house and got my son, Noah, who is a sharp-shooter. He loaded up the .22 rifle and came out with me. First I pulled the back of the outhouse and peered underneath. No skunk. Then I opened the door and peered into the two holes. If you have never peered into an. outhouse hole with the thought that a skunk might be looking back at you, then you are lucky. No skunk.

Then I sprayed water underneath it and in the holes. No skunk.

“I’m going to tip it over,” I told Noah. “Get ready to shoot.”

The outhouse is old, and was threatening to tip over on its own, so it didn’t take much of a push to do the job. Out came the skunk! It had been hiding under the floor, in a nice little nest of dried grass. It crawled out looking rather confused, and sat inside the building.

Noah had a perfect shot. He plugged it three times, and it was dead, but not before it gave one last hallelujah of a spray. The stench sent Cindy gagging into the house. She stayed out of the garden for the rest of the day. I carried the skunk into the woods with a shovel.

Spring is always an adventure in the country, with good endings and bad. Mankind plays God in between. I hope the slough pumper finds a mate, and I’m glad the skunk did not.

                                             *                            *                            *

This note arrived at the newspaper the next week:

If I were you I wouldn’t be bragging how you had a poor little skunk killed. You should be ashamed of yourself. There are many ways to get rid of skunks without killing them. Shame on you.

And she signed her name.

A good trip, including that dam portage ~ May 23, 1996

David Heiller

Our canoe trip got underway with a thud last week. The goal was to get from Snowbank Lake to Ima Lake, which is only six miles. But one thing stood in our way from Snowbank to Parent Lake: ice.

The ice was an issue.

It was pack ice, rubbery sheets of it. Some the size of a table, some the size of a football field. Some thick and white, some black and broken, all sloshing together like ice in a glass.

We launched our canoes amidst it, and travelled a total of about 15 feet. We thought we could slip through the ice, but the leads closed up. We tried to blast through the rotten stuff like an Alumacraft icebreaker, but it was too thick for that. A whack with the paddle wouldn’t break it either.

The last thing we wanted was to get wedged in an ice jam. So we had to turn around, take out our packs, and carry the canoes 50 yards through the woods to open water.

As we approached the portage to Parent Lake, we saw that it was surrounded by half a mile more of the same jig-sawed ice. There was no way to get through it.

Oh, beaver dams, only bigger...

Dave, our unofficial leader, had an idea, like he always does. He spied a small creek from Parent to Snowbank on his map. We paddled to it. It was a creek all right, but we weren’t the first to find it. That honor would go to the beavers. They had made dams all along its half mile length.

These were not your Pine County beaver dams. These dams would have made voyageurs drool. Three and four feet tall, curving grace-fully from shore to shore, made of logs and sticks and mud and rocks. They were like Hoover Dams for beaver.

They were really pretty, except that they were in our way.

But Dave being Dave, talked Jim into it. That didn’t take much talking. Jim is always eager for adventures like this. It gives him something to talk about in case he can’t talk about all the fish he caught.

So they dragged their Old Town canoe over the bottom dam, then paddled as far as they could, then dragged it over another dam and paddled again, and dropped it over another dam, and so on, slogging through muck and scraping through trees and puzzling over which channel of water to follow to the next dam.

Paul and I dutifully followed, hoping with each step and each dam that we would not come to a dead end and have to go back the way we came. We didn’t know what was ahead. That’s what makes an adventure like this fun. But you hate to turn back.

Portaging Paul.

To say that Paul was not as enthusiastic as Jim would be an understatement of some magnitude. He fought off brush like it was his personal enemy. One branch swept his glasses off and into the bottom of the canoe. I always gain a new respect for the fine art of cursing when canoeing with Paul.

After about 90 minutes, just as Paul was taking his vocabulary to new heights, we saw the beautiful sight of Parent Lake, and the stream widened, and the beaver dams were behind us. What a great feeling of freedom! We had seen new country. We outsmarted the ice.

The ice didn’t seem so bad once it wasn’t hindering us. We canoed alongside it for the rest of the day. It made a light, tinkling sound as it moved, like a thousand tiny birds all singing at the same time.

This was a new experience for us, watching the ice go out. We were literally the first ones into this part of canoe country in the spring of 1996. We were a few strokes ahead of the open water and a few hours ahead the many other paddlers who would follow, looking for whatever they might find.

What we found was some beautiful new country. Like Ashub Lake. It’s just a little dot on the map, but one of the most beautiful lakes you could imagine. It is a designated trout lake. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has stocked it with brook trout. We didn’t catch any, but we sure caught the charm of the lake. With Disappointment Mountain in the background, the lake made you feel like you were in Glacier National Park, the water was that cold and pure.

We found a tremendous thunder and lightning storm on Friday night, May 17. Actually, it found us… maybe you too. But there’s something about a thunderstorm when you are camping that gives you new respect for Mother Nature.

It hit in the middle of the night. What a wonder to watch from a sleeping bag. Even through the top of the tent it hurt our eyes. It stayed over us like a bowl, roaring and pouring and making us think of our tiny, vulnerable lives.

Except for Paul. He slept through it. He was about as vulnerable as a grizzly bear in hibernation, and sounded like one too with his snoring. He was still trying to recover from the portage up the beaver dams, which he would make reference to every so often, when the right mood hit him.

Curses, foiled again... checking out that reel.

The one thing we didn’t find was fish. Maybe we were too early, or too unlucky. More likely, we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. We tried everything, every day. All our minnows and worms. All our lures. Even my Slug-Go. Nothing. Dave lost a big one when he couldn’t get his drag to work and it pulled his 10 pound test line tight and snapped it. That was as close as we would come to fish for supper.

But you can’t define a canoe trip entirely by the fishing. Jim did find other things to talk about. Like that dam portage.

And it was sure nice to return home. I’m always so happy to see my wife and kids. They seem equally happy. The canoe trip makes me appreciate them as much as the great outdoors. Even more.

Following the beat of the Twins ~ May 4, 1989

by David Heiller

When I was a high school student, my dream was to be a beat writer covering the Minnesota Twins. I covered high school sports in Caledonia to prove that I could be another Dave Mona or Sid Hartman, two of my heroes.

One time when I wrote a baseball column for the “Smoke Signal”, a grocer in town came up to me and shook my hand. “It’s just like something Don Riley from the St. Paul paper would write,” he said with a laugh. Don Riley became my new hero. I’ve never forgotten that compliment.

But after writing sports at the University of Minnesota, I ran into one too many muscle-bound egos, and gave up my dream of beat writer for the Minnesota Twins. I ended up as beat writer for the Askov American.

But last Friday night, the old dream came back for a couple hours when the Twins gave me a press pass to cover the Minnesota-Cleveland game. I usually do this once a year, and come up with a column on how not to interview people like Kent Hrbek or Frank Viola (the ego-factor again).

So this time I wanted to do a story on what it was like to be a beat writer covering the Minnesota Twins. I tried to arrange an interview with Mark Vancil, who covers the team for the Star Tribune, newspaper of the Twin Cities. I left two messages with Mr. Vancil, saying I was a reporter for the Askov American, newspaper of Nor­thern Pine County. He didn’t return either call.

When my brother Glenn (my photographer) and I checked into the press box, I greeted Charlie Crepeau, an old fellow who used to live in Finlayson some 50 years ago. I did a column on Charlie a couple years ago, after Kent Hrbek had snubbed me. Charlie told me that he had cut the column out and put it on his refrigerator. That’s another compliment I’ve never forgotten. To be pinned by a magnet next to first-grade art work is a writer’s greatest honor.

Charlie’s co-worker in the press box, Hardy Smith, looked me over as I picked up the stat sheets for reporters. One of the sheets was a seating chart for the press box. “I don’t think you’ll need that one,” Mr. Smith said. I braced myself, because this is usually the time I get booted out of the press box. (The press passes of Askov American beat reporters usually entitle you to sit in a vacant seat of the stadium, but not the press box.)

“Why don’t you grab a seat over there?” Mr. Smith said, pointing to some empty seats. At first I thought he was pointing outside the press box.

“You mean, over there?” I asked, pointing 20 yards away. No, over there, those empty seats,” he said, pointing to_. some seats in the press box. Then he added with a smile: “Next to Sid Hartman.”

Wow. We had just been invited to sit in the press box, and next to my old hero to boot.

We took our seats, then glanced around, trying not to gawk at the 20 other reporters. Behind us to the left were celebrities like Mark Rosen from WCCO TV, next to Tom Bernard, a commentator from KQRS-FM radio. Right behind us sat a row of veterans, guys in their sixties and seventies who looked like they stepped out of a ^“Shoe” comic strip. On our left was an empty chair with the name ^“Sid Hartman” bolted onto the table. In front, the first row, sat the beat reporters: Tom Powers, Mike Nadel, Steve Aschburner, and many more familiar names to newspaper readers. Right smack ahead of us was Mark Vancil from the Star-Tribune.

I didn’t introduce myself.

We learned a few things about press box etiquette during the game. In the first inning, for example, when Gary Gaetti hit a three-run homer, my brother and I both leaped out of our

chairs and started cheering. We quickly noticed that no one in the press box had risen from their chairs,or was even cheering. A few glanced our way, rolled their eyes. Most just sat there and typed into their lap-top computers. “Gary Gaetti hit a three-run homer in the first inning for a lead,” Mark Vancil wrote.

“I think we’d better be a little more neutral here,” I whispered to Glenn. He checked himself, which wasn’t hard the way the Twins were playing. When Kirby Puckett hit one out in the third, Glenn only half-rose from his seat, and raised his arms up to his ears, shouting a subdued, “Yay!” The rest of the stadium rose to their feet, but the press box gang sat like so many Buddahs. “Those fans really like Kirby Puckett,” Glenn apologized, and for a second I could see that he wanted to be out there with the other 37,600 fans, screaming and clapping.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to cheer about. Gary Gaetti made two errors in one inning, and Mark Vancil changed his sentence to read: “Gary Gaetti hit a three-run homer in the first inning for a lead, then committed two errors in the third to lose it.”

So we watched the Twins lose, and we watched the reporters in the press box too. Some of the reporters talked on the phones which were set on the tables in front of them. Mark Vancil once had two phones going at the same time, one on each ear, just like in the movies. All he needed was a checkered suit and a fedora with a press card sticking out. “You moron!” he shouted once, slamming the right phone down. Maybe he was trying to return my call.

In the seventh inning, Glenn nudged me and said, “Look who’s here.” I looked to my left. No mistaking, it was my old hero, Sid Hartman.

“Would you look at the nose on that guy?” Glenn said in some awe. It’s true, Sid has a nose like a large bird of prey. And he swooped slowly through the press box like an eagle too, smiling at some, sneering at others, and looking right through us.

It was a good night, even if the Twins lost. Sitting in the press box and watching the reporters was almost as fun as watching the game. Maybe that’s why I’m still a beat reporter for the Askov American.

A great day to climb the water tower ~ May 6, 1999

David Heiller

I knew that if I asked, the water tower crew would say yes, and that would mean I would actually have to follow through on my request and climb the darn thing.

It’s a love-hate relationship, me and heights. I’m not acrophobic, but I do get nervous when I’m high. (No wisecracks, please.)

At first I wanted to climb the old Askov tower, and get a shot of the guys working on the new tower. A bird’s eye view.

I asked the foreman, Jerry Burgess, what he thought.

He told me in a thick southern accent that he wouldn’t climb the old tower, no way. I thought he was joking, or testing me in some way. These guys aren’t acrophobic. But he was serious,

This picture of the Askov water tower
is courtesy of Keith J. Semmelink. 
Thank you, Mr. Semmelink!

It’s old, he explained. Some of the rungs on the ladder could be rusted. But I was welcome to climb the new tower, he said. He would even clip my camera bag on a rope and bring it up for me.

Great, I said. So on Wednesday morning, April 28, Jerry gave me a hard hat and took my camera, and I headed up the new tower. The ladder is inside a cage, so it would be hard for a person to fall and get hurt. You’d have to faint, or have a heart attack. But that was a possible scenario with me.

Two men were suspended about 50 feet off the ground in harnesses. They were welding the legs together. Welding is a key skill in the tower erection business. That and a southern accent. All the guys I talked to had drawls.

I stopped to watch them weld the legs of the tower. A man above would lower hand grinders and welding rods to them. I wished I hadn’t given up my camera.

Some big chunks of steel whistled past me from above. Two men were welding the inside of the tank. When they had a piece of scrap steel, they would drop it. I could see why a hard hat was a necessity.

I kept climbing, but I stopped every 10 seconds or so, partly to calm my nerves, but mostly to admire the view. It was fantastic.

When I reached the base of the tower, the two men were sitting on a scaffolding there. They had finished welding the inside, and were cleaning things up.

They didn’t have harnesses on. They said they were supposed to, but it made work awkward, so they didn’t always use them. One of the guys, John Stenger, said I was welcome to join them. I could swing out, reach over, and he’d give me a hand. I declined. Then he said he was only joking anyway. I should have called his bluff! Yeah, right.

I reached the cat walk. A sturdy railing surrounded it. I could relax there. The base was covered with ropes and hoses and tools. A guy named Don Burgess was straightening equipment; getting ready to leave. They were heading out that day to another job.

I asked Don if he liked his job. He said he did. He liked to weld, he said in his Indiana accent, which was a good southern one. He said he could weld as well with his left hand as he could with his right. Which is quite a gift, if you know anything about welding.

The other two men came up from their scaffolding to help Don with clean up. I asked Jo r, about his job. He had been doing it for about 30 years, and he looked to be my age, on the downhill side of 40. He did take about seven years off to be with his family in Poplar Bluff Missouri. The pay is good, he said, but it’s hard to be away from the wife and kids. Yes, he had a southern accent.

I asked the other guy what his name was. He would only say Greg. He had a warrant out for his arrest in Louisiana, because he hadn’t shown up for a divorce hearing with his ex-wife.

I asked Greg if he was ever got nervous being` up so high. “All the tahm,” he replied, and I could tell he was serious.

I asked if he had ever fallen. No, he said. But he had watched his dad fall 140 feet to his death several years ago. His dad had been climbing to the very top of the tower, on a ladder that didn’t have a cage around it, and a cyst on his pancreas had burst. It caused him to lose his grip and fall. The fall killed him, not the cyst; Greg said. It was a sobering story. Their company, Phoenix Manufacturing, had taken care of his mother all right, he said.

John asked me if I wanted to climb to the very top. The view was even better there. I said no. Greg’s story was fresh in my mind.

The view was superb from where I stood anyway. It was a gorgeous spring morning, the sunlight soft and warm, the air as fresh as flowers. It was a good day to work on a tower, or to. take pictures for a newspaper, even for a guy who is a little afraid of heights.