Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller My b rother-in-law, Randy, and I were playing catch with a Frisbee on Christmas Day. Actually, we were playing catch with our dog, MacKenzie. One of us would throw the Frisbee, and, Mac would race after it. Sometimes the Frisbee would float slowly over the snow, and the dog would leap and catch it. The Frisbee was a gift to Mac from my sister-in-law, Nancy, who has a big heart with pets. MacKenzie’s acrobatic catches were fun to watch. They were her way of saying thanks, her gift back to us. The turkey was on the grill, and the house was filled with the smell of dressing and sweet potatoes. The sun shined brightly on a 40-degree day, the second warmest Christmas on record, I learned later. All of a sudden, the trees outside the house were filled with birds, chickadees, nuthatches, goldfinches, and grosbeaks. It was noon, and they descended on our feeders like it was time for their Christmas dinner. We always have some birds around our feeder, but this was ...

David Heiller Sunday, Dec. 17, 1989 Dear Grandma: We had our Christmas program at Sunday School today. I thought you might like to hear about it. You would have enjoyed it. Miss Malika and her Christmas dress. First the good news. Mollie and Noah said their parts without a hitch. Noah said, “Grant us now a glad new year” just as plain as could be. Mollie said: “But a lowly manger was his place to sleep.” The bow on her belt even stayed tied, and she only waved to me once. The other kids were something too. Like Matt Peterson when he said, “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities.” Matt said that last word correctly. He did NOT say “inquinities”. Matt was worried about that. When he practiced it around the Peterson home, he would say “inquinities.” Matt is the kind of kid who could come up with a pretty funny definition for “inquinities.” But not in front of a full church. His big sister, Connie, had the toughest part of the pagean...

David Heiller A friend called from Texas last Thursday, December, 8. She complained about the weather. It was 90 degrees, and everybody was suffering from the heat. “Gee, that’s too bad,” I said. I didn’t mean it, and she knew that from my tone. “What’s the weather like there?” she asked. I looked out the window. It was snowing hard. The wind was blowing too. “Pretty nice,” I said. I meant that. Things will even out for her. There will be days when it is 35 below zero here, and it will be 70 degrees there. She will get the last laugh. But I wouldn’t trade our winter for Texas even if I was retired or independently wealthy or both. We drove home through a nasty blizzard on November 29 this year. Twelve and a half hours from Chicago to Sturgeon Lake, through rain and sleet and ice and finally, close to home, a blizzard. It was hard, and dangerous, and a few people thought we were foolhardy. I don’t think so. That’s winter here. Sometimes you take chances with it. In...

David Heiller Cindy called me to the window on Saturday morning. “Look at the deer,” she said. A couple of does were making their way down the hill, taking their time, nibbling here and there. Snow sifted lightly over them, over the deck and woods, adding another coat to the start of this very fine winter. Very fine winter? If you question that sentence, head to Arizona. If not, then Saturday had it all. Not just the deer in the woods, but the birds milling around the feeder. Even they seemed happy. And people did too. Across the road, Duane Thomford was checking in on his old stomping grounds. He has a bachelor pad on wheels out in the field next to some unharvested corn. It’s not a bachelor pad in reality, since Marilyn is very much alive and well. But it’s not a place that Marilyn or most other women I know would fall in love with. It’s basically a shed on wheels, with a bunk bed and an old trash-burner for furnishings. But there are windows on all four sides, great ...

David Heiller It hit me in the early morning hours last Sunday that it was time. I had tossed and turned for a couple days over it, waking at about 4 a.m. and then not really falling asleep again. Momentous decisions are like that, and this was a monster. It was time to cut the Christmas tree. Poor George Bailey  eventually found his cheer. I hadn’t been ready before Sunday morning. The spirit of Christmas was taking its own sweet time to arrive for me, as usual. I had grumped around the day before, as we dug out the decorations.   Why do we have to go to all this fuss? What’s the big deal? George Bailey would have been proud. Cutting the tree helped change that. We always cut our own tree from the woods near our house. It’s not the same as going to a tree farm. Those trees are different. They are full and shapely. They could pose in the center-fold of TreeFarm Quarterly. Most important, they don’t lose their needles. Our trees are regular tre...

David Heiller The scale in the corner of our friends’ house stood there like the dashboard of a 1958 Studebaker, big and solid with a face that wouldn’t give away a good poker hand. I stepped on it Sunday night, and the needle rose like the speedometer of a hot rod Lincoln to 220. I stepped off, then on again. 220. The Beast “Is this a good scale?” I asked Kevin, trying to keep a calm voice. “Yeah, if anything, it’s a little light,” he said. Gee thanks, Kevin. I’ve been avoiding scales lately, like a sinner avoids a church. It’s Christmas, and if Christmas means anything, it means gaining weight. I had dropped 10 pounds off my 220 pound body over the past three months. In fact, the scale even hit 206 a few times. That may not seem like much to John Domogalla, who can drop 100 pounds just by not eating after six p.m. But to me, it was a major mid-life victory. And now, stepping on The Scale That Doctors Recommend, I see 220 again. ...

Dear Grandma: Here it is, Christmas once again. Seems like just a year ago that I wrote a letter to you. Hey, I guess it was a year. I know I shouldn’t put on my rose colored glasses and remember you and the Christmas of old. But I can’t help it for just a few minutes. How can I forget those chocolate cookies? Cindy still makes them, from a recipe card with your familiar writing. Or the way we sat in church on Christmas Eve and sang Silent Night. You had to caution me to be careful when I lit my candle. I probably rolled my eyes. Then at some point, as we ripped through our presents, you would tell about getting a big orange when you were a girl in Nebraska, and how good that orange smelled and tasted. I thought it was boring then, but I still remember it now. I could go on, but that will carry me through for a while. It’s not a bad thing to remember the old days at Christmas time, as   long   as you don’t dwell there.   Α   friend of mine, ...

David Heiller “Would you mind helping me in the woods?” I asked my son on Sunday morning. “Yeah, I suppose,” he answered enthusiastically. He knew it was a rhetorical question. He sat in the back of the trailer as Ι drove the Oliver 66 to the firewood that I had piled along the trail. The first pile was some big chunks of ash. “Let’s split them first,” I said. “They’ll dry bett er. We tackled that job with a double-bitted ax and a Monster Maul that I bought about 20 years ago. The Monster Maul came with a lifetime guarantee, which impressed me at the time. I remember telling Cindy, after seeing the ad in the Mother Earth News , “Hey, how can we go wrong? If it ever breaks, we can get a new one for free.” And it is indestructible. That was the good news. The bad news is that you have to be a pro football player on steroids to swing it for more than two minutes at a time. It is heavy. Noah and I discovered that as we tried to split the ash. We did it, but our arms f...