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

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!