A good bee season ~ September 28, 2000

David Heiller

Bees are a small part of my life, but one that I like. They only sting when they are mad. They are like people in that way.

I have one hive of bees. That isn’t much, even though a hive can contain 80,000 bees. A few of them stung me on Sunday when I took half of their honey away. I couldn’t blame them.

I was late in taking the honey, as Nick Worobel pointed out on September 21. He was a master beekeeper in his day, first in Ukraine then in rural Bruno. Now he lives in the big city of Sandstone. When I told him I was going to take the honey on Sunday, a wistful look flickered across his face and he smiled.

“Make sure you feed the bees when you are done,” he said, after reminding me that I was about a month late in my job. “Mix half sugar and half water and set it on top of hive. They like that.”

Good old Nick will be giving bee advice on his deathbed, which hopefully will be many years away.

One of David's beekeeping chores. This is a 
spring job getting the hive ready for the bees.

I knew I was late in my job. Other things had taken priority. “Life got in the way,” as they say. So I was happy that Sunday was warm and sunny and I could put on the bee suit and take the honey.

I smoked the hive first, using a smoker that was filled with smoldering twine. Smoke confuses the bees and sends them retreating into the hive, according to the bee book. Of course, the bees have never read the book. Rather than retreat, some of them seemed to charge.

But I had my bee suit on, so their angry buzzing didn’t bother me. I’d be angry too if someone was stealing my summer wages.

I pulled off the cover and lifted out a frame, using a frame grabbing tool. I brushed bees off the frame using a soft brush. Bee keepers have a lot of special tools. I set the frame in a box in a cart, and did the same to another frame, and another, until I had taken two boxes of frames, about 18 in all. The bees had filled four boxes of frames. I left another 18 frames for the bees to eat over the winter. Sorry bees, but that’s what the book says.

Full beekeeping regalia.

I pushed the cart to the sauna, which doubles as my bee processing room. I put the frames in there. A fire crackled in the stove. In a short while the frames were warm. That made the honey softer and easier to extract.

I took two frames and cut the wax off, using a heated knife (another special honey tool). The wax, which was full of honey too, went into a metal bowl. Then I set the frames in an extractor, which looks like a huge tin can with a handle. I turned the handle as fast as I could for about half a minute, which spun the frames inside. Then I opened the extractor, reversed the frames, and did it again. Centrifugal force extracted the honey from the combs and into the can.

I repeated this step until about half the frames had been extracted. Then I put an ice cream bucket under the spigot at the bottom of the extractor and watched honey pour out. There’s nothing as pretty as watching that first batch of honey ooze out of the spigot. It looked like golden crude oil.

The sauna had a lot of bees in it by then, and more were arriving by the minute. Word had spread that their honey supply had moved to the sauna. I didn’t have my bee suit on anymore, and bees were crawling on my arms and face and hair. One was inching up the inside of my pants leg. That one was a bit distracting. But the rest didn’t bother me. A few stung, but that’s nothing to an old garlic eater like me. Most of them were too busy trying to gather up their honey and take it back to the hive. They were done being angry, and had returned to work.

I de-capped and extracted the rest of the frames. I carried the pans and extractor to the hive. There was still some honey on it. The bees will find it and clean it up. Then I’ll wash it and put it away. I’ll follow Nick’s advice and feed the bees some sugar water, and hope they make it through the winter.

I ended up with four buckets of honey, plus another two buckets of cappings. That’s good for me. All of this will be strained through cheese-cloth and put in jars. I’ll give some away, some I will barter, but most of it will go on peanut butter sandwiches and into cups of tea. It should last for a year. Then this fun fall job will be repeated.

Not the greatest way to lose weight ~ September 21, 2000

David Heiller

I like to swallow a clove of garlic every morning. It’s supposed to be good for your heart. It’s supposed to help you lose weight.

I swallowed a clove last Thursday at 6 a.m. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I swallowed it. It hung in the back of my throat, then slipped down my gullet like a boat anchor.

Somewhere part way down—not all the way down—it stopped.

When it came time for breakfast, I couldn’t eat. I tried one bite of bread, and it also went part way down and stopped. I took a drink of water. It went part way down, and stopped.

No problem, I thought. The garlic will work its way south, and I’ll soon be able to eat and drink.

But that didn’t happen. Not at 10 a.m. Not at noon. Not at 2 p.m. That garlic clove was lodged in my throat.

It didn’t hurt. It didn’t bother my voice or my breathing. But I couldn’t eat or drink, and this was not the way I like to lose weight.

At about 2:30 I called Gateway Clinic in Sandstone. I was hoping my doctor might have a quick fix, like Syrup of Ipecac or cod liver oil. Even a good old Heimlich Maneuver.

But his nurse told me what I was dreading. Go to the emergency room in Moose Lake. Come on, for a clove of garlic?

Yυp.

It wasn’t pretty. First the emergency room nurse tried the “easy” approach. She put a tube down my nose and into my throat, and made me drink water at the same time.

The goal was to flush it out. It had worked for someone who had lettuce stuck in her throat, the nurse said. But it didn’t work for me. When my gagging subsided and my nose quit running and I could breathe again, I took a drink of water, and felt the water back up like it does in a clogged drain.

“How big was that clove of garlic?” she asked.

It didn’t seem that big, but by this time Ι wasn’t sure about anything. The size of a tennis ball?

Plan Β wasn’t quite as “easy.” I needed a surgeon. Yes, for a clove of garlic. Dr. Peter Billings explained that he would put a “scope” down my throat. A scope in this case is a tube that has a light and a camera and a pair of pliers at the end. That’s what Dr. Billings told me. I didn’t look at it. I didn’t want to see what I would have to swallow.

The goal was to see what was happening in my throat, and remove the garlic, by force if necessary.

By this time my wife, Cindy, had joined me. She got to watch it all on a monitor. She said it was fascinating. She got a good view of my throat and, eventually, a beautiful clove of garlic lying in my stomach. It was really a nice one, she said. It could have won a blue ribbon at the Askov Fair.

I didn’t see it. Ι was in no mood to watch television.

When I finally stood up at 7 p.m. and took a drink of water, it went down like Niagara Falls. What a great feeling!

Thanks, all you doctors and nurses. Not only did you dislodge The Garlic Clove That Ate Manhattan, you managed to keep a straight face while doing it. That’s good bedside manner.

I’m embarrassed by my mistake. But I learned a painful lesson. I’m sharing it here with the hope that anyone else dumb enough to swallow a clove of garlic—or whatever—will size it up first and use better judgment than me.

Holy cow, it’s Holy Matrimony time ~ November 24, 1988

David Heiller

I started thinking about marriage at an early age. Our seventh grade class was putting on a Thanksgiving play, The Courtship of Miles Standish, at school. I had the role of the minister. Toward the end of the play, the pilgrims made a circle and gave thanks for their blessings. I led the prayer. “Let us bow our heads in Holy Matrimony,” I began.

Ann Conrad, standing next to me, started giggling. She thought that was the greatest joke. I didn’t even know what I had said. It had sounded official, something a pilgrim would say. But he wouldn’t have said it to Ann Conrad.

Now, some 22 years later, the subject of Holy Matrimony has been raised again, and once again, I’m the culprit. It all started as a joke. Mollie was talking about her best friend at the day care. “I really like Bobbi Jo,” she said.

Grandma O watches as a very small Malika puts
the pieces of the puzzle in place.

“She’s a pretty good egg,” I answered in one of my standard lines.

“She’s not an egg, she’s a goy-yo,” Mollie said. “A goy-yo?”I answered.

“Not a goy-yo, a GOY-YO!” Mollie insisted. “Oh, a girl,” I said.

“Yes, a goy-yo,” she repeated.

“So she’s a pretty good friend. Are you going to marry her?” I said it as a joke, but Mollie thought the idea made sense. So much sense that she expanded to Tommy, Bobby Jo’s brother.

“I’m going to marry Tommy,” she announced at the breakfast table on October 13. Noah, Mollie’s older brother, asked why.

“Because I want to,” she answered. Then she paused. “I don’t want to marry Tommy. I want to marry Brooks. Is Brooks a boy?”

Noah answered yes. “But you can’t right now,” he said. “You have to wait till you’re grown up.”

“I want to marry Bobbi,” Mollie said in another change of mind. “Daddy, can I marry Bobbi?”

“No, you can’t marry Bobbi,” I replied.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because she’s a girl,” I said.

“Why can’t I marry a goy-yo?”

“Because it’s against the law,” I said in desperation.

Malika the ballerina princess, and would-be bride.

Laws or no laws, Mollie now goes through new partners several times a day. There’s Brooks, Bobbi Jo, Tommy, Noah (yes, her brother), Tristan, Mathew, and Queen Ida (our dog), among others.

At her rate, she’ll make Liz Taylor look like Mother Theresa.

She has learned an important exception though. “I really like you, Dad,” she said the other day. “But I’m not going to marry you.” That’s a relief.

All this talk had over-flowed to my wife and I. We probably should save our breath, but now we disagree on the proper age for our daughter to get married. Cindy feels she should be at least 30.

“Thirty? Holy mackerel, that’s old,” I protested, failing to remember my own age before I spoke. “Besides, you were 24 when you married me.”

Cindy didn’t answer that, letting me draw my own conclusions about why she wants Mollie to marry later in life.

Malika for her part is only three-and-a-half years old. Maybe this will all pass. Please...

The first day of school has changed ~ September 4, 1997

David Heiller

The first day of school has changed around our house. Not too many years ago, the kids looked forward to returning to school. It was an exciting, nervous time. They wanted to see their old friends. They knew they would meet a few new ones. They were curious about their teachers.

Those early years of the
first-day-of-school photos were really fun.
(Noah is in first grade, Malika in kindergarten.)

When Dave Nyrud would pull up into the driveway with his school bus at 7:10 or so, they would jostle each other in an attempt to get on first.

I couldn’t talk the kids out of getting on the school bus on the first day of school, but it wouldn’t take much talking now.

For about the past three weeks, they have been lamenting the end of summer and the start of school.

I wouldn’t say the kids hate school. That’s too strong a word. But somewhere along the line, they have grown to not like it very much.

School used to be mostly fun. Now it’s mostly work.

That’s not surprising. A teacher’s job is to make the students work, and hopefully learn. A good teacher is someone who can make learning fun too. I tip my hat to them. It’s not an easy job. Too much fun and some stuffed shirt will complain, “You have to take education seriously.”

Yeah, but if you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you’ll never be very good at it, or you’ll be miserable, or both.

Most teachers have my respect. Cindy and I try to pass that attitude on to our kids. It’s important.

Some people bash teachers, and complain about their unions and their wages and their summers off. To them I say, “Go get your teaching license and give it a try.” Most people couldn’t cut it.

1997, the first-day-of-school
photos were not as much fun
 in 1997. But they were good
 sports, mostly.

Noah, who is in eighth grade, is quite articulate on the matter of returning to school. On Monday he called it a “travesty.” He has never used that word in a sentence before, to my knowledge. So school is teaching him something!

Mollie, now a seventh grader, isn’t as outspoken. But she has told me that she isn’t looking forward to school. She is afraid her classmates won’t like her new dress or new shoes. Peer pressure is a big part of her life. Some things never change.

Tuesday morning was chilly. Fall was in the air. So Mollie walked out the door wearing a jacket. Noah told her not to wear it, that she wouldn’t need it and that kids might tease her about it. So she took it off. It was a rare instance of her listening to her older brother.

I can’t say as I blame the kids for not being excited about school. Put yourself in their shoes. They’ve just had three months off. When was the last time you had three months off? Would you want to be going back to work after that? That’s what the kids are feeling.

So are teachers. But they are professionals and adults. They are making a good living. They can buck up and do their jobs.

The kids are still learning how to do that. Handling the emotions of returning to school is a big step in that direction.,

On the way to church on Sunday, Noah said for the umpteenth time that he was “bummed” that school was starting. Then he allowed that we must be sad too.

I hated to tell him that that was not quite accurate. But being an honest and sensitive dad, I pumped my fist in the air and said, “All right!”

Hey, a little gloating never hurt anyone. It gives the kids something to look forward to.

Yes, there are a few people who are happy about the return of the school year.

God bless the garden ~ September 6, 2001

David Heiller

Cindy has a calendar on her desk that has interesting sayings on it for every day of the year, except for the weekends, when two days are combined together.

Sometimes she hands me a saying on a busy day, when the phone is ringing and the com­puter is crashing, and I just glance at it before sending it flying into the waste basket.

I could probably benefit from those notes, but I don’t take the time to let them soak in.

But when she handed me the one reprinted at right, I stopped and read it and actually saved it, which must be the ultimate compliment to people who create daily calendars.

It sums up what I feel a lot these days. There isn’t a day that goes by this time of year when something from the garden doesn’t end up on the table.

If you have a garden, I bet you feel the same way.

Even the little ones are pleased with the bounty!

Cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, onions, pep­pers, cucumbers, carrots, and beets are all tak­ing their turns on our dinner plates. Often they are served with meat that is “home-grown” too, such as venison or fish.

It’s a satisfying feeling, like the Good Book says, eating things that wouldn’t be here if not for you. It has been a great year for the garden. Plus if you don^’t grow something, or if a crop fails, there are people willing to give extra produce away. Two different families gave us green beans when they found out we didn’t plant any. (And my corn crop didn’t turn out, hint-hint.)

The one vegetable that I didn’t mention above deserves a paragraph all its own: tomatoes! They are the monarchs of the garden, voluptu­ous and wholesome all at the same time. We think—almost fantasize—about them all year, especially when we buy a pale imitation in the grocery store in February. We can’t wait for the taste of fresh tomatoes. That time is now.

There isn’t a better or simpler meal than a toasted bagel topped with cheese and home-grown tomatoes. I would choose it over the fan­ciest meal in a 10-star restaurant. It’s one of those things that money can’t buy.

They are thick on the vines. They are taking over counter space, and filling the freezer and canning shelves. Yet are the one vegetable that we don’t get tired of.

Hanging out with the beets.

Zucchinis, we get tired of. Tomatoes are like that favorite uncle that you hate to see leave at family get-togethers. They make all the work and mess of gardening worthwhile. They are the gardener’s ultimate reward.

It’s funny, tomatoes are so abundant now that you can barely give them away. But come Janu­ary, we are going to be longing for them, just like we will pine for a heat wave.