A little terror from a big brother ~ October 26, 1988

David Heiller

When was the last time you heard a scary story?

How about the latest presidential poll? (Just kidding, George.)

This newspaper recently ran a contest, soliciting scary stories from readers. We’ve got some good ones, and have printed several of the best on page seven in this edition. I hope you enjoy them.

The Heiller boys, before they started 
telling little brother, David, horror stories

I may be mistaken, but the best horror stories come from the minds of kids. As a member of the generation that grew up before axe-murder movies, I confess: I haven’t seen Friday the Thirteeth Part One yet, let alone Part Seven. And this Freddie guy doesn’t scare me—when I see those stainless steel finger nails, I think what a great job he could do working up our garden next spring. Wouldn’t even have to borrow a tiller. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy would be too tired for people after he finished cutting up the four-and-a-half cords of wood I bought from my neighbor last Saturday.

Yet 20 years ago, Lon Chaney would scare me for days if I sat up to watch him turn into a werewolf on Saturday night. Maybe it was staying up late that one night a week that did it. Maybe it was Earl Hinton. Maybe it was my brothers, who threatened to switch beds after I fell asleep and put me into Danny’s bed, the single bed—alone!—instead of the double bed where I slept with Glenn. (Glenn was nine years older than me, and always made me sleep next to the wall, but I didn’t mind after watching Lon Chaney turn into a werewolf.)

Back then, everybody knew a scary story or two. We took turns telling them at night at the school grounds. I think those stories had today’s butcher movies beat hands down. Danny had one of the best—or worst. I’ll share it here, with a warning—it came from the mind of a 12-year-old boy in 1962. Faint of heart and lovers of cats, stop reading now.

The story featured Danny (of course), and an old man, maybe Freddie’s grandfather. “This guy had only one good arm,” Danny would tell in an eager voice beneath the yellow streetlight at the school grounds. “The other he had lost in an accident. But for his other arm, the one that was missing, he bought a sickle attachment.”

“Where’d he get it, at the hardware store?” some older kid would crack. Danny ignored that, boring in on the younger kids with his quick eyes.

“And he didn’t use it to weed around the garden. He lived in this deserted house in the woods. One night a group of us got lost in the woods, and we came onto this house, see. A single kerosene lantern was all that shined through the windows.

“We crept up to a window, and slowly raised up to peek over the sill and into the room. Then we heard this noise—putt-ssss, putt-ssss, putt-ssss. Danny had this noise mastered from countless tellings, the sound of liquid dripping onto a hot surface. “Putt-ssss, putt-ssss.”

“It was dark in the room, so we leaned closer against the window. We could see something dripping onto the glass of the lantern. It was dripping from the ceiling above the room. Putt-ssss, putt-ssss.

“We didn’t know what to do, so I thought, “Well, I’m going to see what’s upstairs.” So I climbed in through the window, and there was a stairway in the corner, a steep stairway that went almost straight up. I could see a dim light there. So up I went, trying not to make a sound. I got_, to the top, and looked over.

“There, in a corner above the lantern we had seen downstairs, a man sat with his back to me. There was a gunny sack next to the man, and I could hear a strange noise. It was hard to figure at first, but then I recognized it, the sound of cats meowing all together, kind of crying and howling and moaning. Then this guy reached into the bag, and he pulled out a cat with his left hand, and he raised his right hand into the air, but he didn’t have a hand there at all. He had a sickle. And swoosh, that sickle sliced the air, and chopped that cat’s head off, and he raised it to his lips, and drank the blood, and tossed it in the corner. He was sitting in a pool of blood, so much that it was dripping through the floor, onto the lantern below, putt-ssss, putt-ssss.”

By this time, I couldn’t breath. Danny would manage a grin, a sneer that Lon Chaney would have envied. “Then I moved my foot, and the stairs creaked. That old man turned around and spotted me. He raised his right arm in the air, and jumped to his feet, blood dripping from the sickle. I couldn’t move. He charged, and then I turned and ran, we all ran, and we didn’t stop running, we ran for hours it seemed, always looking back, and seeing something behind us, we didn’t know what. We finally made it back to town, and we never saw that house or that old man again.”

About that time, someone would give a whoop. We would all jump and laugh. Mom would call from down the street. The story would be over, that night’s version anyway, forgotten but certain to be told again, passed down with the same chilling effect, until I had heard it enough times to scare the younger kids too.

I don’t think I’d ever repeat that story again today though. Certainly not in a weekly newspaper. Too tame. Better stick to Friday the Thirteenth and Halloween.

There’s nothing finer than music ~ October 13, 1994

David Heiller

My son came home from school two weeks ago with a trombone. I felt like the man who watched his mother-in. law drive off a cliff in his new Cadillac. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

On the one hand, Cindy and I want our children to take up an instrument. It’s good to learn tο read music. It’s a good school activity. He’ll get in with a good bunch of kids. Music is just plain good.

Malika sent me this photo as a homemade
postcard. (A trick she learned from her Daddy.) 
She and David loved to perform 
together both in public and in the kitchen.
They didn't play together nearly enough, though.

But a trombone? By an 11-year-old? In a small house, where lives a man who can hear stairs creak at 50 paces?

We tested it out on Friday night. I was playing the banjo in the kitchen, which is the best room in the world for any musical instrument.

Noah and our daughter, Malika, were playing with puzzles in the living room. They weren’t fighting (for a change), so I risked upsetting that fragile ecosystem by bringing out the banjo.

Now the banjo isn’t exactly the quietest instrument. That’s one reason I can’t get too righteous about the trombone. But when the urge hits me to play music, I play.

And darned if that trombone didn’t sound good. Noah was able to follow the tunes with his trombone, at least to dad’s Dumbo-like ears. Maybe beauty is in the ear of the beholder.

There’s nothing finer than playing music with your family. Here’s hoping for the best for boy and trombone. But even if that match doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the line for Noah and music.

Music is what you make of it. I didn’t play an instrument in high school. I can’t read music. But I love to play and sing. If it brings you joy, that’s all you can ask. If it brings others joy, that’s a bonus.

ONE OF MY FAVORITE musicians is Red Hansen. He plays the piano accordion, and sometimes I play with him. We usually need an excuse to do this, like the Askov Fair Variety Show or an open house at the Askov American (this Friday from 9-noon).

Red and David at the
Askov American office, 1994.

Then we practice. I drive out to his house. Sometime’s he’s sitting in his porch, playing when I arrive. There’s nothing finer than the sound of homemade music drifting off a front porch.

Some of the songs we both know, like Amazing Grace or Grandfather’s Clock. Then Red will play something new. New to me that is. He’ll say, “You know that one, don’t you Dave?”

I’m always tempted to say, “Oh yeah, that one.” I should know it, but I was born 50 years too late. And I don’t dare lie, because then I’ll have to play it.

Red and David's last public appearance was at the Community Theatre in Barnum. Cynthia Johnson was presenting a series of Scandinavian folk tales. David played the button-box for one of them. He and Red played old Danish tunes before the opening curtain. They were a hit!

So I’ll say, “Νο, I don’t” in a sheepish voice, and Red will play, “Believe Me of All Those Endearing Young Charms,” and teach me a new song. There’s nothing finer than learning a new song with Red Hansen.

Sometimes even Red will get stuck on a song. He won’t remember its title, or how it goes. He’ll slap his head and say, “Come on, Hansen.” That makes me feel better. He’s forgotten more songs than I’ll ever know.

AND THERE’S NOTHING finer than a good live musical concert. I’ve been reminded of that twice in the last month and a half. The first time came when Dave Ray and Tony Glover played at Gampers in Moose Lake.

Tony autographed a harmonica book of his that I had bought back in 1975 or so. What a thrill to meet him and hear him play. And listening to Dave Ray play his guitar and sing was spellbinding. He sang and sweated through his shirt and through the night.

Their music took me back to my childhood, when my brother would bring Kohner, Ray, and Glover records home from college. And here they were, 30 years later, still playing to small crowds in a coffeehouse.

Stuart Davis played at Gampers last Sunday. His guitar sparkled too, and his original words twisted and turned in every fresh, original direction you could imagine. He’s a fantastic young musician from Minnesota.

When we clapped and clapped for an encore, he did three more songs. He didn’t want to stop. We didn’t want him to either.

…There’s nothing finer.

Thank you, Mr. Stark ~ October 19, 2005

David Heiller

It was interesting visiting with Bob Stark last week. Or should I say Mr. Stark, That’s how I always thought of him at Caledonia High School.

I went to his house on October 13 and took a picture of him with an award he received from Winona State University.

Mr. Stark (old habits die hard) told me how much he liked my writing. He recalled my mother—she had red hair right?—back when my brother Glenn first signed up for football, probably in 1957. He reminisced about Johnny Winslow. He talked about how much he loves Caledonia, how good the city has been to him. 

Mr. Stark, from the 1971 yearbook
(Thank you for sending 
me this, Jane Palen)

I left with a hearty handshake and a pat on the back. “You take care!” he said. I felt like charging out of the house and onto a football field.

That’s the kind of guy Mr. Stark is, and was.

Allow me three trips down memory lane. I remember at the end of eighth grade, my first year at CHS, I told some friends that I wasn’t going to go out for football the next year. Mr. Stark was the football coach then. He tracked me down. It was in the gymnasium. I can remember where I was standing. He put his arm around my shoulder and asked if it was true, that I wasn’t going out for football in the fall.

I answered somewhat hesitantly. This was the head football coach talking to a measly eighth grader. I said yes, it was true, I wanted to go fishing and hunting instead. He told me that he thought I was a good football player, that I could help the team, be a part of the future. Then he said what I was doing was OK. I think he looked in my eyes and saw that that’s what I wanted to do, That’s what he wanted to see.

A couple years later I was standing in line outside the gymnasium—I remember the very spot—with other football players (I had returned to the fold.) We were all getting a mass physical. It must have been August of 1969. Mr. Stark came up to me again and put his arm around my shoulder and said he was sorry to hear that my sister Lynette had died. I was totally unprepared for the comment. A wave of grief came boiling out of those hidden places. I tried hard and failed to hold back the tears that I thought had dried up a month earlier. Guys around me looked away or down at the floor. It was a powerful moment, very emotional. I felt embarrassed and a little angry at the time. But it was one of those little things that really helped me process my sister’s death. Somehow knowing that good old Mr. Stark knew enough about me to say he was sorry really helped.

Then there was the time when he knocked on Miss Tweeten’s English class door—I remember the exact classroom—and asked to talk to me. There was a father-son banquet in town. Mr. Stark knew I didn’t have a dad. There was a good speaker I would like. Would I be interested in going with him?

I said no. Hey, teenagers do dumb things, and that registers right up there. But in a way it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he asked; he thought about me, he cared. That is a good teacher, and a good person.

So it was good to see Mr. Stark again last week after 34 years. Good to feel that handshake and slap on the back. Caledonia maybe has been good to him, like he said, but he’s been even better for Caledonia, and for all of us.

Remembering Mother Nature’s best friend ~ November 2, 1989

David Heiller

The porch at Bob Eikum’s house in Moose Lake always seemed special to me. It had no lights, no heater, no glass to cover the screens and keep the cold out. Bob and his wife, Boots, had planned it that way. The better to view Mother Nature, to let her come into your life.

Bob Eikum, Mother Nature
and David's friend.

Mother Nature came into that porch a lot, sometimes with a house full of people at an Eikum potluck, sometimes alone. Even at the end, cold and raw in September, she came to settle on Bob as he sat in a wheelchair one last time, soaking it up on his porch.

Nature was Bob Eikum’s life, from the time he grew up in Mankato, while he studied forestry at the University of Minnesota, when he worked as a forester in Alabama and Florida and Tennessee, as a Boy Scout leader, every job he worked, he worked with nature.

When he retired and moved to Moose Lake with Boots in 1978, he worked with nature as a photographer and as what he called an environmental consultant. He could just as well have called himself an environmental protector, but that would have been too grand for Bob. He never talked about his accomplishments. I was surprised one day to see his office wall covered with awards from past jobs. He was too busy working on something new to brag about the past.

Many awards came from conservation groups in Florida, where he had fought with developers in wealthy Volusia County. That’s where the ground opens up every so often and swallows someone’s Ferrari. I remember one time, eating breakfast with Bob at Chef’s Cafe in Moose Lake, how his eyes shined when he saw a picture in the paper of a car sticking out of a Florida sink hole. He thought it was poetic justice. He didn’t have to say, “I told you so,” because he HAD told them so.

Bob found a few different kinds of sink holes in Minnesota too, or maybe they found him. Like in 1980 when people were interested in mining uranium in Carlton County, Bob helped organize FORE, Folks Organized for Responsible Energy, a grass-roots group that turned into the Minnesota Coalition on Uranium. He helped people see the nonsense in uranium mining around here.

Bob could smell nonsense from a good distance, like the plan to subdivide the Log Drive Creek area west of Askov. Bob joined with other people to testify against this would-be atrocity. He researched it, wrote about it in newspaper columns, spoke out about it, made phone calls. He didn’t stop it single-handedly, but he was always there, someone you could call day or night someone who could answer your questions, someone who would defend you, if you were defending nature.

Boots was his partner in these things, though they took different approaches. Bob would attack a problem in a soft-spoken, academic way. Boots showed more fire. I remember one time after a public hearing in Hinckley, we were sitting around a table at Tobies. I asked Boots what she thought of the land developer’s arguments. “I wanted to slap his face,” Boots replied in her Alabama drawl. I smiled and thought, “If the developer could hear her, he would save himself a lot of time and trash his stupid plans on the spot.” How could he win against a one-two punch like Bob and Boots?

Not all his causes were popular. The fight over pine trees in the Moose Lake School parking lot seemed frivolous to a lot of people, but not Bob. Cutting down one tree needlessly, especially a 100-year-old Norway, was pretty serious. And I remember how mad he became when National Wildlife Federation President Jay Hare met with President Ronald Reagan, who Bob thought hurt the environment tremendously. That was like meeting with the enemy. There was little room for compromise in such matters with Bob. I always took heart in his stubbornness, even when I disagreed. He was someone you could count on, a constant in a world of vacillators.

Bob wrote a column for the Askov American called Minnesota Outdoors. I don’t think writing came easy for him, and he sure didn’t write for the money, because we could never afford to pay him a dime. I suspect he did it because it was one more way for him to share nature, to tell about wild flowers, or the North Shore, or edible plants, or recycling. His pictures were marvelous. The newspaper could never capture their color and beauty.

A bitter person might say that Nature played a trick on Bob, because he suffered from poor health, especially in his later years when he should have been enjoying life. Diabetes literally knocked him flat, until he was bound to a wheel chair, until he asked to leave his beloved porch and go into a nursing home.

Yes, maybe Bob should have lived longer than his 68 years. Maybe he should have died on his porch, or on his bog east of Moose Lake under the stars of a cold winter night, like Sigurd Olson. But when you think of what Bob left behind, you realize he lived at least long enough to teach us all a lesson or two, some through his words and pictures, the rest through his best friends, the pines and rocks, the water and earth, his Minnesota Outdoors.

Dealing with an awful mystery ~ October 29, 1998

David Heiller

Lorely walked from her bed to the kitchen table, and sat down. It didn’t take long before Collin was there to give her a big hug.

Grandma O and the doll house she 
assembled for Malika one Christmas. 

Lorely’s face held pure joy mixed with a little bliss. A hug from a six-year-old grandson first thing Sunday morning must feel pretty good for grandma.

Lorely didn’t sit there long, maybe 15 minutes. She was in a lot of pain. She has had cancer for more than three years, and it seems to be getting worse fast.

She can barely walk or catch her breath. She is most comfortable lying in bed. She hardly eats. She’s staying with us so that Cindy, her daughter, can take care of her.

Some of her grandchildren know the score. I realized that when I saw our son, Noah, sitting on the bed next to Lorely a couple weeks ago, telling about his day, asking about his grandfather and the Good Old Days. He wouldn’t normally do that. But he’s doing it now. Our daughter, Malika, has been asking a lot of questions too.

Nancy, Mom and Cindy on a trek to
 Duluth and Enger Tower. 
She's wearing her wig, but feeling alright, 
happy to be on an adventure with us.

Some of the children, like little Collin, have sensed that something isn’t quite right. They know that when Grandma sits in the chair and asks for a hug, there’s no time for hesitation, it’s just time for a big embrace.

Either way, it's heartening to see, because they aren’t afraid of what is happening, and because they will cherish those moments in the future as much as Lorely cherishes them now.

We hustled around the house on Sunday morning, getting ready for church, where Noah was being confirmed.

I asked Cindy if Lorely could go to church. Seeing Noah get confirmed meant a lot to her. She had been looking forward to it for about three weeks, or maybe three years.

Cindy said no, her mother couldn’t possibly sit through a church service. A week ago she could have. Not now.

Collin, Noah, Malika, Claire,
Grandma O and Grace at the cabin.

So we went to church without her. She stayed home alone. That didn’t seem right, but it’s what she wanted.

During the service I thought about Lorely several times. The ministers have prayed for her often in the past year. So have other people. I’ve felt her in the church with us several times, during certain songs. One that I still remember was Beautiful Savior.

I think she was there with us in spirit again last Sunday, there with Noah when he said his vows.

Grandma wanted a picture of her
and Claire, both chrome-domes.

After church, when we got home, I went into Lorely’s room and told her a little about the service. It had gone okay. Noah did a good job. He had stood up straight and didn’t scowl. He spoke clearly, and sang a song with the others without mumbling too much. Those are victories for a teenage boy when it comes to confirmation.

Lorely said she wished she could have been there. She held my hand very tight, and fought back tears.

Cindy and her sister, Nancy, and sister-in-law, Therese, spent a lot of time with Lorely on Sunday. They talked to her, rubbed her back. Women are good at that, better than me at least.

It must have been comforting for Lorely. I can’t imagine what she is going through. But I know I would want that if I were her. Her devotion to her children is paying dividends.

I don’t have much experience with an illness like cancer. It’s a mystery to me. It comes and goes seemingly with a mind of its own.

Doctors might disagree. But doctors have tried enough treatments and prescriptions on Lorely to make me think they don’t have the answers either.

What the future holds for Lorely, and for her circle of loved ones, I can’t say. We’re taking it one day at a time, while hoping for gentleness and strength and a little help from above.

I wrote the above column on Monday, October 26. It has a sad ending. Lorely Olson died early Wednesday morning, October 28, 1998.

So long to a champion ~ October 31, 2002

David Heiller

There are certain moments that I will never forget. It’s funny how they mostly involve death.

Like when Tom Pringle came into the fifth grade classroom on November 22, 1963, and told us that President Kennedy had been shot. Or when Reverend Graupman sat down at our kitchen table on July 18, 1969, and told us that Lynette had drowned.

October 25 will be one of those days, the time when Cindy called and said that Paul Wellstone had died. The gray day outside suddenly got a foothold on my heart.

I turned on the radio. The announcer said that Paul’s wife had died too, and his daughter and everyone on the plane, and the light faltered even more.

Paul Wellstone: Man of the people.

My friend Dean Dronen from Sandstone called a little later. I could tell he needed to talk to someone. So did I. He told me how much he thought of Wellstone, what a friend he was to veterans. Dean is the veterans’ service officer in Pine County. Wellstone could not have received a higher compliment.

That night we had plans to play cards with some friends. But we didn’t play cards. Instead, we sat around and talked about Paul. We watched the news. We shed some tears and laughed too. It felt so good to do that with people who felt like Cindy and me.

It occurred to me later that everyone in that room in our house had met Paul Wellstone, had talked to him. That says as much about Paul Wellstone as anything. He was a man of the people.

How else could you see a picture of him taken by Christine Carlson that’s printed with this column? My bet is that she doesn’t have pictures of too many other U.S. Senators.

The same is true for this newspaper.

This is a photocopy of Christine 
Carlson's photo that we printed in 
the Askov American. 

She writes: This photo of a young 
Paul Wellstone was taken at Gene
and Becky Lourey's house. 
It was a get-together for Joan Growe. 
The date is September of 1984.
 My deepest  sympathy to the family 
and the state of Minnesota.

He stopped at the Askov American when he was running for the U.S. Senate in 1989. I visited with him for half an hour. I had never met him before, and knew little about him, but boy did he impress me.

I was used to dry, condescending politicians, talking heads who looked over your shoulder at the next press stop.

Paul was different. He listened. He looked you in the eye. He believed in what he said.

“Paul Wellstone visited the Askov American on June 29, and left a strong impression that he can beat Sen. Rudy Boschwitz in the U.S. Senate race in 1990,” I wrote the next week.

And Wellstone did just that.

I asked him what he was most proud of in his political career. He paused for quite a while, then said he was proud of getting people to vote, and of focusing on issues that affect people’s lives.

He said he was proud of voicing issues of rural Minnesota to people in cities, and voicing urban concerns in rural Minnesota. “I really like to think of myself as someone who can bring people to­gether,” he said.

Thirteen years and two terms later, he had lived up to those words.

It was no coincidence that the first person to call me after Cindy was a retired military man praising a senator whose last vote in office was in opposition to a war resolution.

By the time you are reading this, the memorial services for Paul and Sheila and Marcia and Tom and Mary and Will and Richard and Michael will be over. We’ll all be moving on to the political side of the tragedy. It will probably get ugly again.

But I’ll never forget last Friday, October 25, nor the man who we lost, a true leader—a champion—who never lost sight of the common man.

A closed-mouthed, largemouth tale ~ October 12, 1989

David Heiller

Every year about this time, Bob Dutcher comes to the American office and says “I’ve got some fish I’d like to show you, Dave.”

Then I grab my camera and follow him outside, where he and a fishing partner hold up chain of fish.

David, on a later, more successful trip.

That’s when I go blubbery and make a fool of myself. I cannot look at a five pound largemouth without weeping.

So last Friday Bob came into the office and said, “I’ve got some fish I’d like to show you, Dave.” Sure enough, he and his friend, Mike Anderson, held up a chain of fish. This time he had TWO five-pound bass on it, along with an assortment of other fish. (You don’t notice other fish when you are in the company of five pound bass.) I can’t describe a five pound bass. If they were people, they would be weight lifters or pro football players. They are almost grotesque; they are so huge and fat.

I held up well as I took the pictures, asked all the right questions, how they caught them, the bait they used. But I didn’t ask WHERE they caught the fish, because I knew what Bob would say, with his fish-eating smile:

“A local lake.”

Back in the office, after I had quit crying, I decided to try my luck at the elusive five-pound bass. The next morning, Noah and I headed out with a bucket of sucker minnows to a local lake. I had decided on Sand Lake, like Harley Sylves­ter had recommended at the bait shop. But at the last minute I changed my mind to Smith Lake.

As we sat in the front seat of the car, Noah as­ked me a question. “If you saw that guy from Askov going fishing right now, would you fol­low him?” He had this crooked smile on his face. I looked at him in shock.

A six-year-old poses a moral question.

I had been thinking just that same thing all morning. And to have a six-year-old pose such an unthinkable, moral question, one that hit at the very root of honesty and fair play.

I answered with a crooked smile of my own in one-half second: “YES!”

At Smith Lake, we parked our car behind a pick-up truck, unloaded our boat, and pushed off. Another boat drifted ahead of us, but I couldn’t see how they were doing. The wind blew us coldly across the lake behind them, along the lily pads. Noah had forgotten his stocking cap and a mitten in the car. He started complaining about the weather almost im­mediately.

Noah caught a small northern, maybe a pound, and threw it back. I pulled in a three pound northern. That was it. No bass, no other strikes.

After two hours, we headed in, shivering both from cruel cold and bulging bladders. There^’s nothing quite as painful as sitting in a boat with a kid who has to go to the bathroom on a cold day, unless you have to go yourself.

As we floated near the boat landing, the other boat on the lake, the one we had been drifting exactly behind, passed us by. There sat Bob Dutcher and Mike Anderson! I waved and yelled at Bob. He stopped. “I staked out your house last night and followed you here!” I said with a laugh. Bob didn’t smile.

“Catch any?” he asked. I held up my measly northern.

“How about you,” I returned. Mike held up a chain of fish. At the top was another five-pound bass! Now Bob smiled.

We returned to Smith Lake that evening, and caught a few more northerns. But the bass? That’s Bob Dutcher’s domain. I’ll keep trying though. At least I know the lake. Smith Lake. Or was it Jones Lake. I can’t seem to remember…

Of mice and flies ~ October 1, 1998

David Heiller

Warning: The following column contain graphic (but not salacious) material. And if that doesn’t get you reading it, nothing will!

Winter must be coming, because our house is filling up with mice and flies. It happens every year at this time.

I can understand the mice. They feel temperature changes, so they head for a warmer home, which happens to be my home.

But flies? Are flies that smart?

I don’t like living with either one. I love my wife and two kids and two dogs and one cat. But mice and flies are not welcome.

Cindy alerted me to this fall’s mouse invasion about a month ago, when she found shredded toilet paper in the bottom of the bathroom vanity, where she stores things like toilet paper.

She figured mice were using it for something other than its intended purpose. She figured they were using it to make a nest. You know what that means. More mice!

A battle plan was needed, so she called on me. I’m Chief Mouse Catcher in our house. I’ve been refining the job ever since we bought our house in 1981.

Last year the mice came in through a hole in the pantry floor. I plugged it with a cork, so they have found a new entrance into the vanity. It’s harder to stop this invasion, because it means pulling the vanity away from the wall and disconnecting the drain and two water lines. I’ll get around to it eventually.

Mouse noses are a small thing...
unless that is all you find. Eeks!

At about the same time that Cindy found evidence of mice bedding, we found a partially devoured mouse on the rug beneath the kitchen table. Cindy pointed it out to me discreetly, because it was lying at the feet of Cindy’s mother, Lorely, who was visiting.

Lorely was inches away from stepping on it. That would not have been pretty. You would have seen this headline:

Woman steps on mouse, kills 
son-in-law in fit of rage and terror

I picked up the mouse part—all that was left was the nose and whiskers—with a paper towel and threw it outside. Finding half a mouse on the floor is kind of like biting into an apple and finding half a worm. It’s not a very pleasant encounter.

Miss Emma, the mouser.

Our cat, Miss Emma, must have caught that mouse and eaten as much as she pleased. Emma used to be a good mouser, but she is 16 years old now, and has lost her appetite for catching mice.

I found an old mouse trap, baited it with peanut butter, and set it in the vanity. The bait disappeared, but the trap didn’t spring, and the toilet paper kept getting shredded. I checked the trap after a week and found that it wasn’t working. I could barely trip it myself.

This turned out to be a good trick on my part, because word spread far and wide about the free peanut butter in the Heiller vanity and I have been catching mice ever since in the new trap. I have to empty it almost daily.

Mice might be smart enough to find their way into a house, but they aren’t smart enough to figure out why all their friends and relatives never come out after they enter.

I was telling Red Hansen about our mouse invasion, and he reported a similar movement at his home. He baits his traps with flour. That made me wonder what other people use for mouse bait. If you would like to share that secret with Askov American readers, send it to me at P.O. Box 275, Askov, MN 55704. I’ll pass the information on to Tammy Olson. She might want to include it in her column, The Practical Pantry.

Flies are the other nuisance we have this time of year. I was working on the computer on Sunday in the office, and noticed  a lot of them on the floor. A lot-lot. There was a whole windrow of flies on the floor. I didn’t know whether to sweep them or bale them. I took the vacuum cleaner after them, and then the broom, and when I was done, there were already a few more on the floor. The air must be full of flies that are coasting to a dead stop.

So many flies, Asian lady beetles,
and throw in a few boxelder
bugs for good measure.

Flies flies flies! They walk groggily on the floor. They lie in the light fixtures. get ground into the bathroom rug. ARRGGHH!

I imagine there are some people reading this column who are repulsed by the thought of a mouse or even a fly in their house. But I bet there are a few readers who are saying, “I guess we aren’t the only ones with this problem.” That’s life in the country.

If roads could talk ~ October 29, 2003

David Heiller

It’s funny how a road can hold so many memories A road is, after all, just a road: But people do have their favorites, and that applies to roads as well as grandkids.

A good walk down the road.

The road to Freeburg—State Highway 249—from Highway 26 is one of those. Cindy and I used to pipe-dream about buying the farm from Florence Sheriff back when we were first married, We still say, “There’s our house,” when we go by.

Going past the Freeburg church is special too, and better yet, stopping to say hello to all those relatives that I never knew. I wish they could talk back,.

I like to look down the road and across Crooked Creek to where Grandma Heiller was born.

And of course Little Miami stands like a pot of gold at the end of a gravel rainbow. How many fine meals have we had there with Mom and Grandma and all the brothers and sisters and cousins and nephews and nieces?

County Road 3 holds many good memories for me too.

I traveled it to high school for five years, and before that to sporting events and concerts to watch my siblings.

Now, after a 30 year hiatus, I’m taking it to work every day:

I doubt that I’ll ever get tired of how beautiful the drive is. Those big farms with their Harvestore silos and contoured fields of alfalfa and corn. That interesting round barn.

You can see the lights of the football field from about five miles away. Seeing those lights when I was a kid going to watch my brother Glenn play was really exciting. Caledonia seemed like New York City to me.

The road used to have several sharp curves that could make the hair stand up on your neck if you took them too fast. They are gone now, thanks to some fantastic improvements. It’s not as exciting to drive, but I’m not complaining.

Rural roads hold lots of possibilities...
even some early spring kite-flying.

The best part of the road is when you are driving to Brownsville and come to the top of the hill. You look down that huge river valley and you swear you can see to Maryland. I never get tired of that sight, no matter what season.

One of my first memories on the road happened in about 1960. We were going to a school concert at the Caledonia Auditorium. My sister Sharon was driving the 1954 blue Chevrolet, and she hit a fox halfway up the hill. We all got out of the car and examined the beautiful animal, which was dead. Glenn, ever the frugal big brother, threw it in the trunk because he knew he could get a bounty for it. We proceeded on, with Glenn behind the wheel, and Sharon a quivering 17-year-old mess in the back seat.

And all those bus rides with good old Dale Besse behind the wheel. He would take us home after sports practices too. Sometimes he would stop and let Bill Quillen off above his house, and Bill would happily get out—he was always happy—and hike down the hill through the dark woods to his Cork Hollow Road. I admired Bill’s courage then, and later, when he went off to Vietnam.

If roads could talk, County Road 3 would have some fine tales, as would the road to Freeburg. I bet your favorite road does too.