Counting down to birthday number three ~ June 16, 1988

David Heiller

There are few words more frightening in the human tongue than the voice of a two-year-old from the bathroom late at night saying, “I need someone to clean up my mess.”

So Cindy and I sat up in unison when we heard Malika call out from the bathroom at 10 o’clock Sunday night: “I need someone to clean up my mess.”

Earlier on that hot day we celebrated
Noah and Malika's birthdays.

We were sitting in the kitchen playing “Rummikub” with Cindy’s mother when the words came. We didn’t expect them, because any upstairs creaking had been muffled by a large fan that hummed by the table. We hadn’t checked on Malika or Noah for half an hour.

The last time, it was black magic marker on her wall, doll, and pillow. The time before that, it was green felt-tipped pen on her legs. As Cindy and I looked at each other, we both wondered, “What color is it this time?”

After a couple minutes of debate, I stood up from the kitchen table to see what Mollie’s mess was this time. When I opened the bathroom door, I thought I was seeing things. Mollie was sitting on the potty, staring wide-eyed at me. She seemed to be wearing a pair of orange nylons. Her legs were orange, solid orange, from her ankles up to mid-thigh. It took just a split second to register—Malika doesn’t have orange nylons. Cindy doesn’t have orange nylons. No one has orange nylons.

Malika was covered with orange paint. “I’m a mess, Dad,” she said. It was the understatement of the year, even for her.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. Malika had left a trail of orange paint from the potty to the rug in front of the sink, where she had stood for some time with a once-green washcloth, trying to get rid of the evidence.

The rug, once beige, was now mostly orange. We followed the trail upstairs into her bedroom, over the once-pink rug, onto the bedspread and her blanket, now both streaked with orange, onto the wall next to her bed. The wall had been marked with green and black strokes, but now the orange drowned them into insignificance. We’re talking Picasso here.

The crime, as we could easily piece together, had started with a bottle of Tempera paint on top of the filing cabinet in her room. She had scaled the dresser, using the handles as footholds. Once the paint was opened, she got more than she bargained for on her pajamas. She tried wiping it off, using the bedspread, then the wall. She thought about the bathroom and a wet washcloth, and succeeded only in painting her legs. Jackie Johnson could not have done a more professional job, nor John Clark. She finally realized it was no use, so climbed on the potty and called for help.

David and Malika. She always had a good time,
 or she'd manufacture it.

It took three adults one full hour to clean up the mess. I was assigned to Malika. She stood sobbing on the kitchen counter, looking like a sad Halloween character. I washed her several times in the sink, while Cindy scrubbed the bathroom and Lorely worked on the upstairs. When I was done with Mollie, we sat her on a chair in the middle of the kitchen.

“I don’t like you,” she said in defiance to the spanking and scolding. “I’m angry at you. I’m angry at Momma. I like Noah.”

“Noah’s upset with you, too,” I countered.

“I’m angry at Noah,” Mollie continued. “I want to go to Bobby Jo’s!” Bobby Jo is her best friend from the day care. Then Mollie hung her head on her chest and sat in silence.

We finally had the mess cleaned up enough so that Mollie could go back upstairs. Her mattress was soaked with paint and water, so she slept on the box spring in a sleeping bag. She didn’t say a word as I laid her down. At five minutes after 11, we sat back down at the table. “That’s what you get for raising such an independent daughter,” Lorely said with a shake of her head and a smile. “Another kid that age would have called for help. Mollie didn’t think she needed help. She thought she’d clean up the mess herself.”

I think that this little girl is 
plotting some fun/mischief.

And it could have been worse, Lorely went on: Yes, the Tempra paint permanently stained an expensive rug and bedspread. But it could have been worse. She might have drunk it instead of spilled it.

I’ll second that opinion. As I looked at Malika standing in the kitchen sink, covered with orange paint and crying, I didn’t know whether to be angry, or to laugh. Maybe I was feeling what Lorely had just expressed.

Anyway, I’ve written about Malika before. In fact, this is my third “Terrible Twos” column on her. It had better be the last, because she will be three years old this Saturday, and that gives Mollie just three days to destroy the world as we know it. Hold your breath.

A new world for Adam ~ July 1, 1993

David Heiller

We wanted to show Adam the world, or at least our world. Adam is my sister’s 11-year-old son. He’s from a suburb of Dallas, Texas. He recently stayed with us for 12 days. My sister wanted him to get out of the city and see a different way of life. We wanted him to get to know our son Noah better, since they’re only a year apart in age.

It was a dangerous proposition in a way. We only get three TV channels—no cable. Noah’s closest friend lives four miles away, not four blocks. Everything that you find in a city is glaringly absent in Birch Creek Township. No parks, no pools, no malls. I was a little worried that Adam might be impatient with our way of life.

Adam

I shouldn’t have worried. He said more thank yous than I could count, even to people like Palmer Dahl who sharpened Adam’s tomahawk. “You paid for it,” Palmer said in a surprised voice. He wasn’t used to a polite kid either, but Adam meant it.

I knew the rest was working out on Adam’s third night. He and Noah and I were taking a sauna, and Adam said out of the blue, “If I was at home, I would have watched about 14 hours of TV today.”

Instead, we had gone to the Northwest Company Fur Post in Pine City. Our family had never been there, but because of Adam, we went. At the post, a voyageur had taken us back in time. The kids watched him throw a tomahawk into a log, and that took care of any urge to watch TV.

When we got home, I gave them an old steel hatchet, and they spent hours throwing it against a slab of white oak. Later in the week, they went to a store and bought their own tomahawks, and Palmer Dahl put a fine edge on them, thank you.

The fur post got them talking about building a wigwam, like the one there. They didn’t do it, because they didn’t have time.

I had worried that they would have too much time, but I forgot how kids can fill time. I also forgot how much our area and rural lifestyle have to offer.

They shot Noah’s bow and arrow. Adam hit a rabbit, but it got away. They biked over to Noah’s friend’s house four miles away.

They spent an afternoon helping clean the calf barn and milking cows at our babysitter’s farm. Adam was amazed at how the cow manure was taken away through a grate in the floor. He described the size of the cows udders, spreading his arms like he was holding a 20 pound northern.

Noah, David, and Adam and
one of their favorite activities.

You won’t find that in Dallas.

Adam helped me weed the garden and didn’t complain. I showed him how to chop and split a log with an ax. He liked that. Why couldn’t he have come in the fall, when I have 12 cords of firewood to make?

We went to a pow-wow in Hinckley. He and Noah bought dancing sticks, and joined the Indian dancers in an intertribal dance. Cindy and I watched them until we finally got in and danced too.

This past Sunday, they spent all afternoon hiking at Banning State Park. Adam described how he climbed up some “kettles” or vertical holes in the sandstone rock. Cindy told me later, “He was definitely at risk a few times,” which translated into, “I’m glad he didn’t fall.” In other words, he was being 11.

When Adam returned, he asked me if we could go canoeing. Normally after a trip like that, on a Sunday night, I would say no. But I wanted Adam to go canoeing, if he wanted to, so after supper we went to Fox Lake and paddled for two hours. We told stories and sang and watched a mother loon holler at us as she kept her eye on the baby swimming by her side.

In the canoe, I told Adam about trips to the boundary waters; how you can drink the water. I wished we could have done that. It was on our agenda.

And that night, I looked up into the clear night sky, which is something we haven’t seen much this summer with all the rain, and I wanted Adam to see some northern lights.

Maybe next year.

The next time some old timer tells you that kids don’t know how to play anymore, tell me and I’ll give them Adam’s address. He’ll set them straight.

We did show Adam a slice of our world. Adam liked it, and that reminded me about how lucky we are to live where we live.

Our house is going to be empty without him. And that will remind me of how lucky I am to have a nephew like Adam.

A quirky vacation of turtles and blackflies ~June 23, 1994

By David Heiller

The black flies struck with fury when we arrived at Kawishiwi Lodge. They swarmed over me as I fished for sunnies in the shallow water in front of our dock. They bit rings around Cindy’s legs, so that she looked like she was wearing red anklets. They chewed a circle of bites around my daughter’s stomach, where her T-shirt ended. My son’s neck had at least 150 bites.

Ah, what a vacation.

None of us knew what a black fly was before last week. We don’t have black flies here. We have gnats. They swarm around your head when you’re playing softball. You swing and cuss at them.

Don’t cuss at them. Thank them for not inviting their big cousins, the black flies.

Black flies are like giant gnats, with machetes. They land and stab. Their bites make big red welts. They itch, and stain your shirt with blood.

They are worse than mosquitoes, because there is no repellant to keep them off. Nothing. We can put a man on the moon but we can’t make a spray to keep off black flies.

This is a picture from 
the newspaper of David 
in his blackfly-proof hat.
 You really can't see the netting, 
but trust me, it kept us sane, 
mostly, on this vacation.

We finally resorted to buying the goofy netting that you see in the photo. At first we felt silly wearing it. But if it’s netting or not fishing, I’ll take looking like a nerd any day.

Not that it helped our fishing much. I had spent so much time telling the kids how good the fishing was at Kawishiwi Lodge that I jinxed us. Noah sensed it right away, and bet me a dollar that we wouldn’t catch a northern over two pounds.

He won, but not without a close call. On Thursday, I fastened a small perch that had swallowed the hook onto my line. Something grabbed it and took off. I set the hook, and felt the biggest fish of my life on the other end. Bigger than that eight pound lake trout. Bigger than that 10 pound carp.

I finally brought it up to the dock and picked up the net with my left hand. I expected to see the northern of my dream.

But with a shock I saw something else: a huge snapping turtle.

It weighed 15 pounds, maybe more. I didn’t get too close with my DeLiar scale. It’s head was the size of my fist, and the jaws on that head took a snap at me.

Noah was awed by what the bear did
in the previous evening.

I wish I could say our vacation had perfect weather and lots of  fish, but it didn’t. Cindy and I wanted our nephew from Texas to catch a big northern so badly. We said we would pay $10 a pound for him to catch one, but we never had to pay. One lousy rock bass and small northern were all he brought in.

But in between the black flies and the snapping turtles, the rain and the diarrhea, we had fun. We paddled dozens of miles. We saw beavers and loons. We explored bays and creeks. We toured the wolf center and talked about the Root Beer Lady.

A bear tried to get into our cabin one night. It busted the screen door, then ran off when I turned on the porch light.

We stayed up late, ate meals at all hours. And there’s something about sleeping in a cabin on a lake in a thunderstorm that’s mighty peaceful and cozy.

A quirky vacation. Aren’t they all?

And man, that snapping turtle. Biggest one I ever caught. My nephew fried it up. It tasted just like chicken. Better than northern any day. Yeah, right Dad.

***~~***~~***~~***~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***

(The next week this letter appeared in the Askov American)

 Editor erred with game fish bait

Editor, Askov American:

In spite of your patronizing of law enforcement officials (see headline Sheriff 1, Train 0; editorial “3 Cheers, for Don”; article titled “Faulkner to seek second term” et al.) I’m afraid you may have run slightly afoul of the law if we can believe your column in the issue of June 23, 1994. You mention attempting to catch a northern by fastening a small perch to your line. I’m sure you must have known, being the piscatorial challenged nimrod you are, that it is illegal to catch or attempt to catch a game fish using “whole or parts of game fish, goldfish or carp for bait”. Since perch is classified as a legal game fish (the daily limit is only 100) I’m afraid you have admitted your guilt in front of the 3,800 people who subscribe to the AMERICAN.

Your only hope is that of the 3,800, none is a certified peace officer.

GLENN H. HEILLER Woodland, MN

EDITOR’S NOTE: My column last week was supposed to say “birch,” not “perch.” It was a typographical error. I fastened a small piece of birch to my line, and a turtle took it. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

David Heiller

Birthdays get old for Mom and Dad ~ June 19, 1986

 David Heiller

Birthdays come but once a year. But if you have two kids six days apart, then throw in a grandmother and a friend or two, birthdays seem unending.

Our son, Noah, celebrated his third birthday June 12. But his friend, Joey, was born two weeks earlier. When Joey had his birthday party and Noah attended, he was included in the celebration.

Noah and Joey on Joey's third birthday.

“Joe’s three now?” he asked on the ride home, his stomach full of cake and ice cream.

“Yes, he’s three,” I answered.

“I’m three too?”

“No, not yet. You’re almost three.”

Then one week before Noah’s birthday, we went to Minneapolis to his grandmother’s house. She held a birthday party for her son, but made it a combo effort since Noah’s was only a week later and our daughter, Malika, was born a week after that. It gets complicated. But Noah filled upon cake and ice cream, sang happy birthday, blew out candles, opened presents, and asked once again: “Am I three now?”

“No, not yet, you’re almost three.”

The suspense was building, and with it mixed emotions about the big three. Noah had the habit of drinking a bottle of water now and then throughout the day, and at bed time. He knew that once he turned three, the bottles would have to go. We had been drilling him on that for about two months.

Noah woke up crying on his birthday—his real one—June 12. He crawled into our bed saying, “It’s not my birthday. I’m two.”

“You don’t want to have your birthday today?” Cindy asked.

“No, it’s not my birthday.”

“You don’t want to give up your bottle?”

“No, it’s not my birthday. I’m not three.”

Noah thought it over. Two hours later, he asked,

“Am I three?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not two anymore?”

“No, you’re three.”

“No more bottles.”

“Right,” Cindy answered, pulling her trump card. “Do you want to throw them away?”

“Yes.”

So Noah threw all his bottles into the waste basket in the kitchen. Cindy transferred them into the garbage bag. Noah went back to retrieve them shortly. He looked shocked to see the empty bag. Then he cried, screamed, and whined for two hours. But he hasn’t asked for them since. We are out about $10 in bottles, but the price is worth it.

Noah's birthday party at our house,
with Joe in attendance.

The authentic birthday party—his third one in the past two weeks—went well, with more cake and ice cream, and more presents. Then friend Joey had to come up on Sunday to help him celebrate, so another cake marked the honor, more ice cream, more presents. This time the cake said “Noah and Mollie.” NO way were we going to have another party on June 18 for our daughter. Then we’d have to include Noah and that would be his fifth party. He would overdose on sweets, and our check book would overdose on presents.

One thing is for sure though: Noah knows he is three. At first he asked, “Where two go?” but not anymore. I’m a little worried though. He came downstairs the other morning and announced, “I’m almost four, daddy.”

Not for another year, thankfully.

Between a rock and a hard place ~ June 27, 1990

David Heiller

The Kettle River showed off for us two Sundays ago, mixing beauty and power like a rose in full bloom and a Juggernaut on a winning streak.

Between County Roads 46 and 52 in northern Pine County, the river sprinkles a set of rapids every quarter mile or so. Not dangerous rapids, not Blueberry Slide or Dragon’s Tooth or those other killers at Banning State Park. Up north 20 miles, the rapids laugh WITH you, not AT you, gurgling and foaming, flexing their muscles a wee bit, letting you bump over hidden rocks just fast enough to make butterflies rise up in stomachs, just fast enough to make the kids duck their heads and close their eyes as the water bubbles by.

Our Aussie Shep., Kenzie, was David's canoe 
partner for several years. After this trip, it was quite
 a while before the kids got into a canoe 
on the Kettle River with their father.

“I’ve got to admit you made a good choice,” Cindy said as we hit a quiet stretch of water. She had asked me what I wanted to do for Father’s Day. This was my answer: borrow a canoe and paddle a few miles down the Kettle. Someday we are going to make a Boundary Waters trip. I keep telling that to my family, and to myself. Maybe that will help it come true. Maybe this was our trial run.

We scraped a few rocks here and there. One time I had to step out and push us along after we hung up on a boulder just under the surface. No one else crowded us. We had a cooler full of snacks, a beach basket full of swimming suits and towels, and of course my old transistor radio to keep tabs on the Twins, who were winning their 15th straight. It was perfect canoeing, mid-70s, sunny, a lush green-blue June day.

We came around a sharp bend, and Cindy pointed out a boulder in the channel on our left. Then she pointed out a jackpine which had tipped over on the right. It lay half-submerged, taking up a third of the 100-foot-wide channel.

The good news is we missed the boulder. But as I swung us sharply around it, the current swept us broadside into the jackpine. Then everything happened so quickly. With the water pushing us into the tree and branches scratching grabbing at us, the canoe tipped on its edge, and water rushed over the left side, sinking us down, pushing us through the limbs, kids screaming, Cindy and I hollering.

The next thing we knew, we were standing waist deep in cold, fast water, Cindy holding onto Mollie with one arm and a tree branch with the other, me holding onto Noah with one arm and my canoe paddle in the other.

(It’s a Vince Musukanis handmade paddle, with four years of memories on its blade. I had instinctively grabbed it, right after Noah.)

We stood for a brief time in mid-stream, not knowing what to say or do. We were safe. That’s all that mattered. I hauled Noah to a rocky beach on the far shore to our left, made a second trip for Malika, then finally helped Cindy, who was barefoot and wearing a denim skirt that acted like a giant anchor.

We all hugged each other. Mollie quit crying. The kids had life jackets on, but they could have been swept downstream too fast for us to catch them in time. We had been lucky.

We took stock of what we’d lost: Cindy’s and Noah’s shoes, Cindy’s paddle, our red cooler, which we had seen bobbing downstream when we tipped, and the beach basket. I guess we didn’t need the swimming suits after all. “This trip is going to cost us a couple hundred dollars,” Cindy said grimly.

“I lost my radio!” I added with a moan. My radio. It’s funny how I’d gotten attached to that old leather-cased transistor. It had been a “gift” from Deane Hillbrand, who was taking it to the dump when I rescued it. That radio had gone with me through the 1987 World Series and a last place in 1990, and hundreds of games in between. And it had gone with me till the bottom of the tenth inning on June 16, 1991 in Cleveland, with a two-run lead and one man on, and the Twins with 14 straight wins. Now it was gone. At least it died in the line of duty.

“I wonder if the Twins won?” Noah asked. We all laughed. Our priorities were straight. It was time to proceed.

I un-snagged the canoe, which was lodged under the jackpine, then managed to tip the water out and tow it back to our point. The picnic basket of swimming stuff had wedged under a seat, so that was saved. It was a good omen too. As we continued on, we found one of Cindy’s shoes, her paddle, and finally the red cooler. The river had claimed three shoes, and a radio forever suspended in extra innings.

The rest of the trip went fine. Not even a close call, just a few more sets of rapids and the same perfect day. By the time we made it to the bridge at County Road 52, we were almost dry.

It’s funny how a mini-disaster can define an adventure, or MAKE an adventure where none had been. It would have been a great trip without capsizing, but that blunder somehow made it more memorable. We laugh about it now. We wonder whether Noah’s shoes are listening to the Twins game. The kids say we saved their lives, which we don’t deny. That may come in handy sometime, never mind that it was us who almost killed them.

Rivers have a way of teaching these gentle lessons, like how to have fun, and how to steer between a rock and a hard place.

A creepy-crawly-slimey tale ~ June 14, 1990

David Heiller

I’ll never forget the day.

Jake, a friend of our son’s, came to visit and with a certain gleam in his eye, dumped a bag full of plastic dead flies on the kitchen floor.

I stared in disbelief. I mean, my jaw dropped. We have approximately 1,493 REAL dead flies on our bedroom window sill upstairs on any given morning, and Jake brings in a pile of fake ones!?!

Noah and Jake with a wooden lizard; 
one of many in a play menagerie

“Why dead plastic flies?” you may ask. I puzzled over that for quite some time too. Until Jake brought along his plastic tarantula.

Hold on. This is no ordinary plastic tarantula. Not like the weak pretenders of my youth. Those were brittle, cheap pieces of Japanese junk.

Jake’s tarantula is supple and subtle. Delicate and deadly. Black, with a hint of orange around the eyes, and white rings on the leg joints and the fangs. The kind of spider that crawls toward sleeping women in late-night jungle movie moonlight. It looks real. Like it could eat those plastic dead flies, and a few live ones, and a few 36-year-old men thrown in for dessert.

You see, Jake’s tarantula isn’t life-size. It’s more the size of Kent Hrbek’s baseball glove.

It also squeaks when you step on it, which I have done a few times in the middle of the night, with me making approximately the same sound as the spider.

Noah fell in love with Jake’s tarantula as only a six-year-old kid can fall in love with a tarantula. Star-crossed spiders. He would borrow it on every occasion. Jake would extort great collateral for it. Huge piles of dinosaurs. A fleet of Tonka toys that would shame some city maintenance crews. Anything for that tarantula.

So we shouldn’t have been surprised. We should have prepared ourselves. Noah celebrated his seventh birthday last Saturday with three friends, including Jake the Snake, and Jake had that Dead Fly gleam in his eye as he handed Noah the package, and Noah ripped it open and got that Dead Fly gleam in his eye and held up his very own giant tarantula.

“Look, Noah, it’s just like mine,” Jake said, reaching into a paper bag and pulling out his famous tarantula. I recognized it right away. And sure enough, Jake had found a first cousin. Noah’s had an orange back, red eyes, and a bit of green on the back. The hairs on the torso were longer, softer. Otherwise they might have come from the same batch of eggs.

Noah loved all manner of creatures, 
real and pretend, modern era and prehistoric. 
Here he is with a pterodactyl that Grandma 
Olson gave him for one of those birthdays. 

They also played with other gifts, including a black snake, coiled and ready to strike, and a set of 24 plastic bugs ranging from a Gigantic Ship Scorpion and Great Diving Beetle to a Death’s Head Hawk Moth and a Sheep Tick. Yes, we now have a plastic tick in our house to go along with the 1,493 REAL ticks that live in our front lawn.

It’s Jake’s fault.

Cindy called it “The Creepy-Crawly-Slimey Birthday.” An understatement.

After the kids had all returned to their homes, Noah discovered that Jake had forgotten his tarantula. He showed both spiders to me Monday night, lying in his bed in the moonlight. He pointed out their differences in a matter of fact voice. Like a scientist. Then he looked at me and smiled. What did he see in my eyes? Certainly not abject fear. No way.

I kissed Noah good night and brought the two tarantulas downstairs, to study them. I set them on my computer and watched them.

Just sat. And studied. And watched. And waited.

Did one of them just move?

Cemetery memories ~ June 11, 1987

David Heiller

I walked up to the house on Saturday with my two kids. The grass was neatly cut, some thoughtful grandson’s handiwork. Peonies bloomed in front of the picture window. The garden patch showed off its neat rows of young vegetables. The pear tree swayed in the warm breeze.

Grandma Heiller

I stepped up to the picture window, half expecting to see the television silhouetting the hunched lady in her rocking chair. I gave a little knock on the window, remembering the first time I had done that in August of 1979. Grandma Heiller had peered through the glass, seeing her grandson for the first time in two years after he returned from overseas. She had stared, then smiled, and reached her right hand up to touch the glass as if it weren’t there, reaching for me.

Standing on the porch, I opened the screen door, and knocked. The inside door still had its etched glass, looking frosty as ever. I knocked harder. No answer. I remembered Grandma couldn’t hear well, especially with the TV on. Noah and Malika stood behind me. I wanted them to meet her, have a cookie, sit on her lap on the living room couch.

No one came to the door. We headed back across the lawn, past the flowers and garden, and I suddenly missed Grandma more than ever since she died three and a half years ago.

The Brownsville cemetery

We visited my uncle’s grave on Sunday. You wouldn’t have known the funeral was just last Saturday, eight days earlier. Sod covered the grave neatly; the edges flush with the rest of the lawn, no mud or trampled grass. Only several bouquets of wilted flowers showed the remains of the funeral.

David's father.

I could picture my aunts and uncles and cousins, standing in a circle over the open grave. I tried to picture my uncle. He was Grandma’s youngest son, and died in his sleep, just 49 years old. I could picture him back at Grandma’s house, leaning in the doorway, relaxed, smiling on his way somewhere. He was always passing through, it seemed. He could never stay long, and never had much to say. Some would call him distant, some shy. I didn’t know him well. Now, standing by his neat grave, I wished I had attended the funeral, to shake the hands of the three young men who are his sons, and to see my uncle as he passed through one last time. Grandma would have wanted me to be there.

We drove from the Village Cemetery to our church cemetery. Grandma’s grave lay toward the front of the maze of stones. Halfway back, we stopped by another grave, with two small markers on the ground. One marked the site of another of Grandma’s sons. This one was distant to me too. I didn’t know him either. I could picture him from the old photographs in my mother’s photo box, as she held his arm on a distant beach, he in his Army uniform, smiling, relaxed, on leave from the war overseas. April 25; 1953, the gravestone read, five months before I was born.

David, Grandma Schnick and Lynette.

Next to my father’s stone lay the marker of my sister, July 18, 1969. I could see her clearly, could see the newspaper, see the story of the Twins lying open on the kitchen table, with the minister and Mom and Grandma sitting around it, shoulders shaking, newspaper blurring.

We get home seldom now. When I visit the cemetery, I recall these things, recall memories that seem fresh, and memories that never really existed in the first place. Grandma’s house is no longer haven. The cemetery is the new meeting place, and the family lies in fragments, like pieces of a puzzle that is growing with every birth, and every death.

A comedy of fishing in four acts ~ June 8, 2000

Act one: “Wake up Noah, it’s time to go fishing.” I half expected my son to roll over and say no thanks. It’s happened before from 16-year-old boys at 5 a.m.

But Noah, always a light sleeper, had rolled out of bed before I was downstairs.

Fishing dreams always abound, 
but do not always materialize.

We had plotted our strategy the night before. I bought minnows and dug worms. I called two fishermen friends to see what was biting, and where.

I pulled the boat out, put on the motor, checked the gas. I had rigged up four rods, one for crappies, one for sunnies, one for bass, and one with a plain hook.

I filled a pack with water bottle, muffins, apples, oranges, and binoculars. What was I for-getting? The kitchen sink, maybe.

Noah barely raised an eyebrow at all this. “I’m just going to cast for bass,” he had said in a voice that wondered what all the fuss was about.

All the fuss?!? This was the first time out with the fishing boat. The first time on a local lake. The first time for a stringer of panfish. The first crack at a five pound largemouth. Hope springs eternal, right?

So on Saturday we headed out early. What a time to be alive, heading for the lake on a gorgeous June morning.

And then...

Act two: I pulled into the boat landing at Echo Lake, and started backing the boat up to the landing. Noah was looking out his window. “Dad, the wheel came off the trailer.”

I stopped and got out. Sure enough, the tire had come clear off the rim, and was lying on the ground like a dead animal. The one thing I forgot to do had cost me big time—check the trailer tires for air pressure.

I scratched my head for a few minutes. I didn’t want to drive the trailer on the rim. I had to take the tire and rim into the gas station and get it fixed.

Did I mention that I don^’t have a spare tire for the trailer?

I took the tire wrench out of the truck and said a little prayer. It went unanswered. The socket was 7/8-inch. The trailer lugs were 3/4-inch.

I parked the trailer in the grass and headed back home 12 miles for my socket wrenches. Noah decided that he’d go back to bed. Maybe he knew what was coming.

Act three: Back at the landing, I discovered that the rim had last been put on by someone’s pet gorilla. The lug nuts were on tight! After putting a pipe extension on the ratchet, I managed to get off four of the lug nuts. But the fifth one wouldn’t budge. I tried every muscle and jiggle and angle and wiggle. No go.

I figured some heat would help, so I drove two miles into town. I stopped at a gas station and persuaded the attendant to loan me a butane torch and some penetrating oil.

Back at the trailer, I put the flame on the lug nut. No go. More heat, more oil. Nothing. My hand slipped and the rim took a bite out of the tip of my thumb. My hands wore gloves of blood and grease.

I resorted to a Vise Grips. I didn’t care if I stripped the nut. I just wanted it off. I wore the nut down to the size of my wife’s wedding ring. But it wouldn’t budge.

So I swallowed my pride and drove the trailer to town on the rim. Luckily it was still early, 9 a.m. Not many people were around to see who the idiot was driving on a rim.

The gas station attendant popped the nut off in about two seconds with a pneumatic tool. He looked at the rim and said it wasn’t bad. He brushed it off with a wire brush, then tried to put the tire back on. He couldn’t get it on. It slipped over the rim like a Hula Hoop on Dutch Jones. It had shrunk, caved in, changed sizes over the winter.

And they didn’t sell trailer tires.

These weren't caught on this trip. 

So it was off to the next gas station. Yes, they had a trailer tire that size, and it only cost $36! I was in luck. The attendant put it on for me. I went back to the first gas station. He put the rim on the trailer for me.

I asked him how much I owed him. He just waved a hand in my direction. “You’ve had enough trouble already, buddy. Forget it.”

Finally, my first break of the day. I thanked him and said, “Guess I should just go home.” It was 10 a.m.

“After all you’ve been through, you might as well go fishing,” he said.

Act four: He had read my mind. I stopped at a convenience store, bought a big cup of coffee, then headed back to Echo. Now things were going my way.

I put the boat in the water and after about 50 pulls on the old Mercury, including one that spilled my beautiful cup of coffee, the engine belched a cloud of exhaust and roared to life.

Now here the story should have a happy ending. I should catch my limit of walleyes and laugh about the day that started wrong but had a such a happy ending.

Forget it. Not a fish did I catch. Not even a lousy perch. Not even a bite.

The first fishing trip of the year was good for one thing: a laugh. If you can’t chuckle about a comedy of errors like that, then it’s time to quit fishing. And that’s not funny!

Important things, like baseball ~ June 2, 1994

by David Heiller

 Taking an eight-year-old to a ball game is a lot like taking an eight-year-old fishing. You don’t catch many fish, but that’s OK because you don’t expect to anyway.

You hope the eight-year-old catches the fish. You hope they enjoy it and take it up as a past time. Anyone who likes to fish can’t be all bad.

That’s the way I feel about baseball. It drives my wife crazy, the biggest scuzz-ball in Pine County is all right with me if he likes baseball.

What if Jeffrey Dahmer liked baseball? Cindy will ask. She likes to throw philosophical curve-balls. Would you like HIM?

I have to stop and think about that one for a few minutes. Well, he can’t be ALL bad.

Malika on her way to the big game with daddy.
Her daddy would be so proud to know that it
 did stick, that his daughter is a Twins fan!

So I took my daughter to a Twins game on Friday night, May 27. She brought a huge appetite. She won’t eat beef stroganoff that Cindy works on for an hour on Sunday. But take her to a Perkin’s Restaurant before a Twins game and she’ll order ground steak with cheese on toast with French fires for $6.95.

At the Metrodome the prices were as crazy as her appetite. A rope of licorice for $1.25, a box of popcorn for $2.25, a glass of pop for $2.25. (Not to mention my beer, which cost $3.50.)

She was disappointed about her pop too: no straw. She asked the vendor, “Sir, do you have any straws?”

“Sorry, no straws,” he answered. What fun is it to drink pop without a straw? What kind of a ball park is this?

Malika asked a ga-zillion questions. “Did that ball that one guy hit ever come down?” she asked as we approached the stadium. I’ve told her enough times about the time Dave Kingman hit a ball in the Metrodome that never came down. It became stuck in the ceiling. The story is etched in her mind.

“No. Maybe we’ll see it tonight,” I answered.

What holds the ceiling up? Why are those guys stretching? Can I have ice cream like that girl? Why are there so many empty seats? Is this the Twins Metrodome?” Ad infinatum.

Baseball is important business.

Sometimes I would forget that I was sitting next to an eight-year-old. I’d make some shrewd baseball comment, like: “Bases loaded. Three and one count. Man he’s going to get a good pitch to hit.”

To which Mollie would answer, “I’m hungry, Dad.”

In the seventh inning, manager Tom Kelly took the starting pitcher, Kevin Tapani out of the game. I shrewdly pointed this out to Mollie. “You mean Scott Erickson isn’t going to be the pitcher any more?” Mollie asked.

“No, Tapani is pitching.”

“Where’s Scott Erickson?”

“He’s on the disabled list.”

“What’s the disabled list?”

AAAAGH!

In the eighth inning, Mollie asked, “What’s the score?” Five to two, I told her.

“Who’s ahead?”

How can you not know who’s ahead? I thought. Then I stopped. That’s when it finally sank in. I was fishing with Mollie. I didn’t need to catch any fish. I wanted Mollie to catch some fish. I wanted her to like fishing. Anyone who likes to fish can’t be all bad.

So it is with baseball. We play catch at home, and my daughter can hit the ball all right too. We go to a game once a year or so. Maybe, if the stars line up just right, she’ll learn to love the game.

She’ll remember the starting lineup of the 1987 Minnesota Twins. She might not remember her husband’s birthday, but by golly she’ll know that Joe Dimaggio hit in 56 straight in 1941. The same year that Ted Williams hit .406. The last player to hit .400. Important things like that.

Like going fishing, and taking your eight-year-old to a ball game.

[Cynthia's note: I used to ask David, "What's the score." He would answer by saying JUST the score... two numbers separated by the word to. So then I would have to ask which number was currently assigned to which team. He always thought I should just KNOW these things. Just a David-ism...]