Lobbying for lightning bugs ~ July 27, 1989

David Heiller

The search for lightning bugs started slowly with a lobbying effort by Michael, my 11-year-old nephew who spent a couple nights with us this week.

When I got home from work at 6:30 Monday evening, he asked, “Do you think there’s many lightning bugs out now, Uncle David?” He calls me “Uncle David” the way Huey, Louie, and Dewey say “Uncle Donald,” and with the same glint in his eye.

Michael is in the center of this extended family photo. 
His dad is giving him bunny ears.
(The rest of the gang gathered for this picture are: top to bottom, left to right, sorta kinda:
 Danny, Michael, Sarah, Brooke, Cindy, Noah, Ruby, Malika, Jeanne and David.)

“Sure,” I said knowingly, falling back on my knowledge of the subject from the days when I was Michael’s size.

“It sure will be fun catching them, won’t it?” he continued.

“Yeah, it will,” I answered, not realizing that he had just set the hook.

Like a good lobbyist, Michael dropped the subject. After supper, we went for a walk down the road, found a few agates, threw rocks at telephone poles. Michael found a striped green catepillar, and informed us that it would soon turn into a monarch butterfly. He broke a leaf off, and put it in a screened box that my bees come in.
    “I like to fill that box up with lightning bugs and use it for a lamp to save electricity,” I told Mike. He looked at me like he believed it.

After the walk, Michael, Noah, and I went into the field behind the house to explore some more We checked out the blue bird houses, and found two boxes occupied. In one, the young bluebirds had a streak of bright blue across their wing feathers. Michael peered in, and reached to touch one, but I stopped him. I had to lift Noah up to see them.

We walked toward the woods, moving ahead of Noah in the tall grass. I whispered to Mike, “Let’s hide.” He smiled, and we inched faster ahead, then ducked down behind some brush.

“Dad, where are you?” Noah called. His voice told me he knew this was a game. “Don’t talk,” Michael whispered.

Noah and Uncle Danny.

“OK Dad, I guess I’ll go back now,” he called. Mike and I crouched lower, breathing through our mouths. I looked at Michael. My brother, Danny, had played this game on me when I was Noah’s size. I could see a twinkle in Michael’s eyes that reminded me of Danny, his father.

Noah repeated that he was leaving. We waited. He waited. Finally, he gave his Loon Call, which sounds more like a kid falling off the Swiss Alps. I couldn’t resist. I answered with my Loon Call, which sounds more like my wife laughing when she talks on the telephone. We all stood up, and our walk continued.

“When will the lightning bugs be out?” Michael started asking, as we checked out the deer stand. He repeated the question as we peeked into the last of the blue bird houses, and back at the house as they put on their pajamas.

“Go to your room and look out the window. When you see the lightning bugs, you can come down,” I finally told them at 9:30. Noah is usually in bed by 7:30.

Soon they came pounding down the stairs, roaring past me as I sat at my computer at the kitchen table, trying to think of a column for this week. “Aren’t you coming?” Michael asked as the screen door slammed.

Well, it had been a while. So I had grabbed an empty mayonnaise jar and followed them out

Michael already had something glowing in his hand. “It flew up and landed on my face by the clothes line,” he said. “Look at it.” He showed me the blinking bug, then put it in the jar.

The search continued. But it was not a good lightning bug night. Their day had come two weeks earlier, and now only a few old lunkers flew high above, or far off in the field. We circled the house twice, but one bug was it.

“Time to come in,” I said, and said again. Michael put the jar on the porch. “Wait, if you leave the jar here, they’ll see it and come in,” he said. Noah looked at his cousin in rapture. Made sense to him, like it had made sense to me when Danny used to say that there were tiny bulldozers in water so we didn’t have to use soap when we took baths together on Saturday night. Same principle, 30 years later.

I finally got them inside, and poked some holes in the lid of the jar, and they went upstairs to examine their lonely firefly. Ten minutes later they were asleep.

It’s been a long time since I’ve gone on a firefly hunt. Too long? I guess a little late night lobbying never hurt anyone.

Remembering a good man ~ July 28, 2004

David Heiller

I have a couple images of my uncle Donny that will stay with me forever.

Donny and his wife, Lillian. 

One is quite old. My brother Danny and I were sitting on top of a hay rack stacked five high, watching Donny pull us on his trusty Ford tractor across the field and toward the barn. There was one spot where the road went perilously close to the ditch. My brother and I got ready to jump off on the safe side if Donny got too close and the wagon tipped. But that didn’t happen, and Donny seemed oblivious to our concerns, jostling around on the tractor far below us, although knowing Donny, he was smiling the whole time.

A little later we took a water break, and Donny passed me the jug with the news that it was filled with 7-Up. Wow, 7-Up on the farm, now that was living! I took a big swig and discovered to Donny’s delight that it was just plain water, and warm at that. I had to laugh with him though, he was that kind of guy. He always had a trick up his sleeve, or an observation that would crack me up.

That kind of summed Donny up for me. He was a hard worker who plugged away on a tough farm nestled into the hills south of Brownsville. He had a hard life, and a lot of physical ailments. His farm was as unprofitable as it was beautiful. But he never lost his sense of humor; he never let the farm defeat him.

The other image came just a few years ago. I had been hunting on his “new” farm in Mayville Township. He and Lillian had moved there in 1967. He told me once that his milk checks had gone up right away as a result of the better land, better feed and forage. And he didn’t struggle with those scary hay rides along ditches and down hills.

Donny’s old farm is a paradise that all citizens of Minnesota own now. But his next one is also about as glorious a parcel of land you will ever see. The woods are full of huge trees that Donny refused to have logged, even though loggers asked him about it every day, or so he said.

It was a late fall afternoon about five years ago, and winter was in the air a bit. I found Donny in the yard, taking a break from his end-less chores. Donny was a worker, and even then at age 73 he was probably in better shape than his 45-year-old nephew.

I can’t remember what we started talking about, but the conversation turned toward how long he would live on the farm. He said that he and Lillian had talked about moving to town. I said that made sense in a lot of ways. Donny listened politely–he wasn’t one to interrupt–then he told me why he would never leave the farm. I can’t remember his exact words, something like he had all he needed at the farm, and he wouldn’t be any happier just because he was in the big city of Caledonia.

His words made so much sense, and were spoken with such conviction, that I never even thought of raising that dumb question again.

Many people are connected to the land in a vague sort of way that they can’t put their finger on. They get strength from it, but they can leave it and return to it and that is enough.

It was more than that for Donny. He was tied to it in a way that only farmers who have spent their whole life on a farm can be tied. Not in a burdensome way either, but one that is in their blood, that comes from all those struggles and victories.

What Donny spoke to me that afternoon conveyed the fact that if he ever left the farm, it would kill him, perhaps not physically, not right away, but it would change who he was to the point that he would not be Donny Heiller anymore. He knew that about himself.

So when Donny died last week, “with his boots on,” as his obituary says, it was a sad day indeed, and a tragic one. But Donny dying on his farm was exactly what he would have wanted.

That fact will stick with me for the rest of my life, along with all the other things that made him such a fine man.

Campfire magic ~ July 3, 1996

David Heiller

We asked a couple friends over on a recent Friday night for a campfire. We didn’t have any big reason to see our friends. No card game was planned. There was no birthday party, no potluck supper. Just the campfire.

We visited, and roasted marshmallows, and made s’mores, and broke out the banjo and guitar and sang songs.

All around the campfire.

It was a beautiful June evening, cool though to keep the mosquitoes away. Lightning bugs twinkled in the field. The sky was full of stars.

But the campfire was the real star of the show. It glowed with warmth, and heated our souls as well as our bodies.

We sat in a circle around it on chairs lovingly made by the late Gene Lourey, which made it even nicer. Every so often someone would add a piece of wood. Then the fire would flare up and light our faces in pumpkin orange.

Noah starts a fire.

Talk came easy. Long pauses didn’t bother anybody. The campfire filled them in.

One of our guests was a teenage boy who had just come back from a camping trip. Some girls had come over to their campfire one night, he said. They looked pretty good, he said. But the next day they didn’t seem as attractive, to put it more mildly than he did.

I don’t mean to sound sexist, but campfires will do that. Campfires can soften the hardest features and the hardest hearts. They can turn stoic Swedes into the cuddliest curmudgeons you ever saw.

Campfire smoke carries romance and joy and contentment. There’s nothing finer than to put on a sweater on a cold winter morning and smell the smoke from a summer campfire in it. It’s something that helps keep you going until the next spring and the next campfire.

Campfire smoke has a mind of its own, though. It sometimes singles out a certain person at the campfire and torments him or her.

That happened last Saturday. We lit a fire and a friend and his daughter came over. The smoke chose to torment the innocent daughter. Not the crusty old dad. Not Cindy or me. The daughter. She moved to the right. It followed her. She moved to the left. It followed her.

It was pretty funny. For us. At least it kept the bugs away.

The Midsummer fire at the Askov City Park on June 22 had a lot of magic too. It was a bonfire, not a campfire, but the spell of the fire was there nonetheless.

People stood around it, they sang around it, and finally they held hands and formed three big circles and danced around it. Some of the songs were old Danish tunes that go way back. Some were newer rounds. It was beautiful.

Dancing around a fire.

Incredibly, I heard that a few people had grumbled about the fire. They thought it was too pagan. Maybe that was just a rumor. Maybe sour grapes.

Midsummer fires are traditionally associated with a witch burning. Personally, I’ve never seen a witch at a campfire. Fires usually keep them away.

I did see a lot of smiles and good fellowship and joy and love at the Askov Midsummer fire, just as I did at our humble campfire.

I could go on and on but you get the point. Campfires are just plain good. Light one up, unless you live in Askov. Then you’d better give the city clerk a call first. Arla would like that. She’s a fire dancer from way back.