Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller I read an interesting book recently called They Called Me Teacher , by Tom Melchior. It contains stories of Minnesota country school teachers and students from 1913 to 1960. Those stories run the gamut of human interaction, but one that has to do with bad teaching sticks in my mind. Corrine Lesteberg Johnson, who attended District 40 East near Murdock in Swift County, from 1931-1938, wrote it. “We all knew that our second-grade teacher had never lived in the country. So we had a feeling that she thought she was better than the rest of us. I started at Christmas time making valentines. We had a long Christmas vacation, six weeks off, so what was there to do during that time but make valentines. I loved that kind of creative stuff. “I used foil from the Christmas cards and the laced doilies that my mother had bought. I made the cards so they were three-dimensional, you could open them up. Oh, I really worked on those cards. On Valentine’s Day I passed out al...

David Heiller Chicago slipped by the train window last Friday. Corn fields turned to suburbs, then tenement houses and warehouses topped with razor wire. Then tall buildings that blotted out the sky. At the Chicago Art Institute. We got off the train and hailed a taxi for the Chicago Art Institute, Cindy, and my sister Kathy and me. The cabbie, a guy about my age, figured me for a tourist right away. I don’t know how he saw that so quickly. Perhaps my mouth hung ajar a bit too widely, trying to take in a city I’ve read about my whole life but never quite managed to visit. “We’ve been planning this trip for 25 years;” I said. “We had to sell our house and newspaper first.” That got a laugh, although I’m not sure why. It was true! Nine dollars later he dropped us off at the steps of a huge building guarded by huge lions on a huge boulevard lined with huge buildings. I guess that sums up Chicago for me. It not only has broad shoulders, it has huge broad shoulders. ...

David Heiller A light drizzle drifted down on Sunday morning like dandruff from the thunderstorm that shook the house the night before. The wind had quit blowing, leaving a calm voice that said, “Go fishing, Dave.” Kind of late. 7:15. Not my usual early time. Bob Dutcher would not approve. He’s a 6 a.m. man, sharp. A fine fish. But I grabbed my bucket of frogs and hopped in the truck, which already held the canoe and gear. A good fisherman is always ready to go. Fifteen minutes later, I was on Mud Lake. I hooked a frog through its lips, threw toward the lily pads, and started paddling slowly down the lake. (I apologize to those people who are squeamish or offended about using frogs for bait.) In a way it didn’t matter if I caught a fish or not. Being on the quiet lake, in the misty morning, that’s what I was looking for. The lake would serve as my church service. My spirit was as smooth as the silky water. It’s a thing of joy, fishing in the morning in the fall on...

by David Heiller The moon shone bright that summer night in 1978. It lit the land with a white glow. Rocks stood out on the hill to the south like a black and white negative, their shadows deep black. The rolling hillside below the rocks had a stubble of grain, already a stubble and it was only May. The Moroccan sun will do that to land. In the moonlight, the stubble lay as smooth as the coat of a Siamese cat. A Moroccan full moon in the coastal city, Ceuta. I stood on the balcony of my apartment, on the third floor of a brick building, marveling as I always marveled, at the full Moroccan moon, so bright you could easily read a book by the light. Across the street, the neighbors had their television on. The screen flickered from scene to scene, though I could not see the picture. The windows were tinted a milky color, so that nosy neighbors or lonely Americans couldn’t peer in on moonlit nights. The sound came through the windows, the only sound in the night at the edge o...