Another side of Mrs. Spinner ~ June 29, 1995

David Heiller

Last week my mother sent me an obituary of Doris Margaret Spinner of New Albin, Iowa who died on June 8, 1995, at age 81.

She was known as Mrs. Spinner by most of the kids in Brownsville, where I grew up. She taught grades five and six there for 20 years.

Malika, Brooke (Jeanne's daughter), and Noah
playing school in one the Brownsville classrooms,
turned local history room. 

My sister, Jeanne, remembered Mrs. Spinner well. “To me she was a wonderful teacher,” Jeanne said on June 23 from her home in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

“She explained things real well. She put a lot of her own wisdom into her teaching. She had a lot of patience. You could tell she was a mother and a teacher. She would mention her own children and experiences. She had that caring side.

“We never had a substitute. In those days she was always there. I just felt she was a warm, caring person.”

“She didn’t have any favorites. She was fair. She just had all the qualities you have in a good teacher. She might have been strict, but she was positive.”

Noah and Malika are playing on the swing set outside 
of the Brownsville school house.

Jeanne said things were different when she went to school than they are today. I agree. For example, I was the only kid in my class who didn’t have a father. Everyone else had a mom and dad. There were no broken homes, no divorces, and no students with special needs. That’s not the case today. I think teaching is harder now.

Jeanne wished she had written to Mrs. Spin­ner before she died, to tell her what a good teacher she was. I think a lot of folks feel that way. Teachers need to know that they have a positive effect on people’s lives, even if they don’t always hear a thank you.

Mrs. Spinner was one of my favorite teachers too. She had a split classroom, grades five and six, with about 36 students altogether, but she was always in control.

My mom had a poem about four of the teachers at Brownsville, Mrs. Sauer, Mrs. Boettcher, Mrs. Colleran, and Mrs. Spinner. She would watch them drive past the house on their way to school. Her poem went:

Mrs. Sweet went up the street,

Mrs. Boettcher couldn’t catch her,

Mrs. Colleran stood there hollering,

But Mrs. Spinner was the winner.

She was a winner of a teacher.

I still remember one incident that showed a side of her that we hadn’t seen before. I was in sixth grade, so it must have been 1964 or 1965. I even remember where I was sitting.

This was probably taken one
of the years David was in
Mrs. Spinner's classroom.

One morning there was a knock on the door. Mrs. Spinner opened the door, and there stood a young man in a Marine uniform. He didn’t say a word. Mrs. Spinner’s face changed from anger to shock to joy in about two seconds.

Then she gave him a big hug, and a big kiss.

It was her son, Robert, who was in the Marine Corps. He was stationed in Okinawa, and was part of the blockade of the Gulf of Tonkin. Mrs. Spinner had been worried about him, and that worry transformed itself into joy before our very eyes.

I called Robert, who now lives in Topeka, Kansas, on June 23 to see if he remembered this incident. He did.

“I knocked on the door and mother turned around and looked at me like, ‘Mister, what are you doing in my classroom.’ She thought I was a policeman, I believe, bothering her school.”

He doesn’t remember the kiss, but I do. The thought of Mrs. Spinner kissing someone, even her son, had never crossed our minds. Her emo­tional greeting of Bob gave us all a new respect for her. It sent a tingle up my spine then, and it still does.

Bob, 50, told me a few more things that I didn’t know about Mrs. Spinner. She was mar­ried at age 16, so didn’t finish high school until 27 years later, after her six children were mostly grown. Then she went back to New Albin High School, and graduated in 1959, the same year as her son, James.

This was before the days of alternate schools, so she studied mostly at home and met with her teachers once a week. She didn’t want to embarrass her children.

“She knew all the teachers. She was probably older than most of the teachers anyway,” Bob said.

I told Bob I didn’t know this about his mother. “She had two lives,” he responded, her home life and her teaching life. They came together when Bob knocked on the door that day.

Mrs. Spinner is gone now. The school she taught in for 20 years has been torn down and replaced by a community center. Life goes on. But you never forget a teacher like Mrs. Spinner.

Beware the perils of P.I. ~ July 11, 2002

David Heiller

“David, be careful with that poison ivy!” Mom scolded. “Use a hoe.” Mom had asked me to remove a patch of poison ivy from her backyard on July 4. So I donned a pair of rubber gloves and started pulling it up.

Fern's backyard was famously and beautifully WILD.
Poison Ivy was an issue.

“You don’t use a hoe on poison ivy,” I scoffed, ignoring her rare exclamation point.

Mom had reason to worry about P.I. She had battled a rash on her arms a couple months ago. It could have been used in a textbook on bad cases of poison ivy. She had a huge, boiling, oozing red rash.

I worked carefully, grabbing the plants by the roots, pulling them up, and piling them in the yard. Some of the branches had berries. The woody stalks were half an inch in diameter.

They reminded me of a camp-out I had made with some friends when I was a teenager. We were fishing for bullheads in the Reno Bottoms, seven miles south of Brownsville. We went out to gather wood, careful to avoid the poison ivy and its three glossy leaves. That’s hard to do at night in the Reno Bottoms, where P.I. rules.

One kid brought back a bunch of small sticks and threw them in the fire. The next day he was in the hospital with a severe case of P.I. We figured out later that the sticks he had gathered were poison ivy branches. Not only did he get a bad rash on his body, but sitting in the smoke had transferred it to his mouth and throat. He could barely breathe. It was scary.

I scooped up the pile of poison ivy in Mom’s backyard and carefully put it in a plastic bag. Then I took off my gloves and washed my hands and legs—I was wearing shorts. Mom made me throw the gloves away, and I had to put the towel and washcloth in the bath tub so that no one else would use them. I changed clothes too. I felt like I had just cleaned up a toxic spill and I teased Mom about her precautions.

Malika and Noah with Fern and her sunflower which 
resulted from a sunflower seed that the birds and 
squirrels missed in her back yard.

But she got the last laugh the next day, although she didn’t actually laugh, at least out loud. My hands and arms were fine, but my legs bubbled up with that familiar rash.

I hadn’t had a good case of P.I. since my childhood. I had forgotten the misery it brings.

It started out innocently. A few little pimples here. A cluster there. I put on some clear ointment that we had in the bathroom and thought it would be fine.

Then the main crop appeared whole fields of P.I. on my calves and thighs.

I went to the store and bought a bottle of calamine lotion. I took a small sponge paintbrush and painted the familiar pink lotion over my legs. It felt so good, because the itching disappeared. Once again I was transported back in time, when kids wore that pink lotion like war paint.

Calamine lotion stops the itching for a while. But soon it returns. There is nothing more maddening than having a poison ivy itch and not being able to scratch it. I think a very effective prisoner-of-war torture would be to rub poison ivy on a person and not let them itch it. I wouldn’t advocate using it, except for on Osama bin Laden.

I am refraining from scratching my P.I. itch, for the most part. It’s hard to totally abstain, because scratching a poison ivy itch is one of those sensations that really, really feels good. It’s a strange sensation. Scratching it feels good, then it starts to burn and hurt and itch, so you have to scratch it again to make that go away, and it feels good for about 10 glorious seconds, then it burns and starts to itch again, and so on.

And then it spreads, and the spirit of the P.I. plant is happy. It has done its duty.

So heed your mother’s advice. Use a hoe on that poison ivy patch. Or else go borrow a suit of protective clothing from your local nuclear power plant before you try to remove those rotten plants.

The mountains were our reward ~ July 16, 1998

David Heiller

“Come on, Dad, I know you can do it. I know you’re up to the challenge.”

My son, Noah, spoke those words to me. I had to smile. He sounded like a football coach. But at age 15, he has become my superior in more than a few things, one of them being mountain climbing.

That’s what we were about to do last week in Rocky Mountain National Park. All day we had talked about climbing Flattop Mountain, elevation 12,324 feet.

Most of the time it seemed like too daunting of a task. We had carried big backpacks up steep trails. The thin air had us gasping for breath. Even bending down to tie my shoes made me wheeze like I had emphysema.

Noah

We had walked over snow fields so bright that they hurt our eyes, even with sunglasses on.

Sleet and rain pelted us. We put on rain gear, then the weather warmed up and the rain suits turned into sauna suits, so we took them off again.

Flattop Mountain didn’t seem possible then.

We made camp at a site called Sourdough, elevation 10,600 feet. After drinking lots of water, I took a little cat nap. Then I let Noah talk me up the mountain.

We walked over snow at first. Then we followed a boulder field, stepping on rocks ranging from the size of a football to the size of a car. A glacier had dropped them there about 15,000 years ago.

We left the boulders and walked on tundra grass. It was speckled with bright little flowers. We stayed on this as much as possible. It was easier walking.

At Rocky Mountain National Park.

The grass amazed me. How long had it taken Mother Nature to build up this mountain lawn over the rubble and rock? A long, long time, probably since right after the last glacier retreated.

We passed some stunted trees that marked the edge of the timberline. Then it was just grass and granite and us.

We stopped a lot, every 20 or 30 feet. Partly we didn’t have any choice, because of the thin air and steep slope.

But the walk wasn’t the only thing that took our breath away. Every time we turned around the view was more spectacular. Lakes emerged like blue gem stones. The forest flowed away to the east, an ocean of green.

Mountains peered down at us, challenging us to reach their snowy heights.

We could see the green tent in our campsite. My wife, Cindy, and daughter, Mollie, were down there somewhere. Each time we stopped, the tent got smaller, the size of a dime, the size of a pea, the size of a pinhead, then gone altogether.

It was tough going. A few times, Noah wondered if we hadn’t gone far enough. Then it was my turn to offer encouraging words. We relied on each other on that hike. I wouldn’t have done it alone. Neither would Noah. We needed each other to share the sheer heights and the sheer beauty.

As we approached the top, we started seeing marmots, which are like big ground hogs, or, as Noah suggested, like small wolverines. He has always had a grim fascination with wolverines.

We passed within 10 feet of some of the marmots. They were everywhere. We must have seen 30. Why were they so tame? Maybe they had been fed by fellow hikers. Noah suggested that maybe they had fed ON fellow hikers.

“They should rename this Marmot Mountain,” I said.

Finally we reached the top. What a view!!! Yes, Peggy Jones, it was worthy of three exclamation points.

We walked to the edge of a sheer drop off. It was right on the Continental Divide. On one side of us, the snow melted and flowed into the gulf of Mexico. On the other side, it went into the Pacific Ocean. We felt on top of the world.

Balancing on the Great Divide, David and Noah.

I put my camera on a rock, set the timer, then ran to my son. We smiled for a picture, balanced on the top of a great mountain on the Great Divide.

The sun was setting. The valleys had lost their luster. The air felt colder. We hustled down the mountain. A weary feeling hit me all of a sudden. My legs felt rubbery. But that was just my body. My mind felt nothing but pride, for me and for my son.

When we reached the bottom, I shook Noah’s hand. I couldn’t believe how big it was. It was the hand of a man. I guess I hadn’t shaken it for a while.

When I was a young man, I did a fair amount of backpacking. I usually went by myself, because I didn’t like to be slowed down by other people.

I remember once in Yosemite National Park, having a day dream about owning a weekly newspaper and having a family and a house in the country.

That dream has come true. So has its reflection of returning to the mountains with my family. We did that during four days at Rocky Mountain National Park from July 3-6.

It was a joy to see our kids get along as well as they did. Teenage brothers and sisters sharing a tent could have been a disaster, but it wasn’t.

Taking the kids 
backpacking was a GOOD call.

We all carried our own heavy packs, pulled our own weight. I was as proud of Cindy and Mollie as I was of Noah and myself. Our climb up the mountain was just one example of the challenging beauty of the trip.

We struggled on some days. It was rough going. The nights were cool, the ground hard. We got wet from rain. Our camping gear was old and worn and begged and borrowed. But those things can make a camping trip all the sweeter. Things that come easy don’t mean as much.

And the mule deer and elk, the rushing streams, the millions of trees, the mountains, the snow, even the man-eating marmots, made it worthwhile, made it rewarding, made it possible.

Cindy and I would like to thank the staff of the Askov American, Hazel Serritslev, Cindy Jensen, Donna Cronin, and Tammy Olson, for putting out the paper in our absence, and allowing us to have such a fine adventure.

Everybody won on this fishing trip ~ July 20, 2000

David Heiller

“Time to get up, Collin.”

I sat next to my nephew at 6 a.m. last Friday morning, expecting a battle.

But Collin popped out of bed like a piece of toast. He was wide awake before his feet hit the floor.

Collin and his lunker

Fishing will do that to a boy age seven.

It hadn’t been quite so easy for the 46-year-old. I spent 15 minutes getting out of bed and opening my eyes (in that order), then getting dressed and climbing up to the loft to wake Collin.

“Look at the loons,” Collin said when we stepped out of the cabin. Seven loons were paddling side by side across the middle of the lake. They looked like they were practicing for the Aquatennial Parade.

We got in the boat and headed for our hot spot, which is usually luke-warm at best. Collin asked if he could steer the boat. But it was too early for that. My eyes weren’t open all the way yet. “Later,” I promised.

I eased the 14-foot boat through a narrow channel and into a smaller lake. We drifted with the current, and started casting our jigs.

Collin caught the first keeper, a crappie about a pound in size. I put it on the stringer. Collin watched in admiration. He doesn’t like to touch fish. Then he caught a small bass. I took it off the hook for him.

I didn’t have to lecture Collin about how he had to learn to take off fish if he wanted to be a real fisherman. For one thing, my son, age 17, had ridden him pretty hard about it all week. (This is the same son who wouldn’t wake up when Collin had jumped out of bed.)

Collin and David, fishing buddies, swimming buddies, just good buddies.

And Collin knew he had to learn to take fish off. But knowing and doing are two different things. That’s what learning is all about. He had made his first small step the day before, when he borrowed my handkerchief to take off a sunfish for the first time. It was a good use for a hanky.

We left the spot after an hour and headed for another place that Collin had “heard about.” Already he is spreading gossip about where the fish are biting. That’s the sign of a true fisherman! It was a half mile away, which Collin also figured into the equation, because it gave him a chance to steer the boat. He knew I would say yes this time.

I was finally awake, and the lake was glass, so I scooted over and he took the throttle of the seven horse Mercury, and we made our way, although not in a straight line, to the next little lake.

Collin had lost his red jig, which he felt bad about, because it had caught a few fish and he thought it was lucky. “Do you have a white lure with red eyes?” Collin asked. “Uncle Mike lost a big walleye with a lure like that.”

“Yeah, it’s called a Red-Eye,” I said, taking one out and showing it to him. That was the one. I hooked it onto his leader. We started casting.

“There’s no fish in this lake,” Collin said, and not more than three seconds later, he had a strike.

Collin’s rod bent over. He reeled in steadily, with only a word of age-old advice from me: Keep your rod tip up. Is there anything finer than watching a kid reel in a nice fish?

He brought it to the side of the boat, and I lifted it in. It was a largemouth bass, about 14 inches long.

That was a lunker for the lake we were on. “Can we keep it?” he asked.

“Let’s take it back and show everybody,” I stalled.

We fished a little longer. On almost every cast, Collin said, “There’s no fish in this lake.” But that trick usually only works once.

Collin steered us back to the cabin, then jumped out of the boat with the fish almost as quickly as he had jumped out of bed. He showed his mom and dad and sister and cousin and aunt. He let everyone know how he had out-fished Uncle David. That didn’t bother me. It was a win-win situation, in today’s parlance.

We took the bass back to the lake. I had broken the news that this bass wasn’t quite big enough for a respectable fisherman to keep. I pulled out the stringer, and laid the fish in the water. I held it by the tail and pulled it back and forth, until its gills were working hard. Then we watched it swim off beneath the dock. That’s a good feeling, watching a fish swim away, to be caught another day:

I cleaned the crappie. Collin watched. It’s another fishing skill he will soon master. We ate it for breakfast. It tasted great!

There’s a little Heaven at The Cabin ~ July 23, 1998

David Heiller 

Cindy and I and our kids when to a cabin last weekend to see her mother and sister and brother and his family.

We've been going to The Cabin so long that it really is a proper noun, like Heaven. A lot of good things have happened there.

Sometimes I write about them in a specific way, like taking the small-fry fishing.

But the broader picture of The Cabin can't be sketched out in a cute anecdote. It's about many things.

Noah, mid leap, at The Cabin

It's a place to relax, to take a nap without feeling guilty, to play a rigorous game of bocce ball in the morning and a tough game of cards at night.

It’s a place to eat fantastic salads made by Cindy, and fantastic shish-kabobs grilled by her brother, Randy.

It’s a neutral place where family battles and personality clashes are put aside, for the most part.

It’s a place to fish and to teach kids how to fish. That always awakens the kid inside me. I’ve taught my two kids how to fish there, and although they don’t fish much now, the seed has been planted and it probably will re-emerge and grow some day.

I’ve helped a nephew and niece learn to fish there too. No matter how hard it is to talk to kids, to “relate” to them in modern lingo, if you can take them fishing, you will connect.

You won’t get any fishing done yourself. Don’t even try. You’ll take off tiny sunfish and bait tiny hooks held by tiny hands, and you’ll hear the craziest questions, like “Why isn’t that dead fish swimming?” And it will be wonderful.

A second niece of mine, age three, had me show her how to cast her little rod on Sunday. She didn’t do well. She’s a little too young, and I didn’t push her. These things must be done delicately.

But she will learn how to fish, because there’s always next year at The Cabin.

Collin

Next to fishing is swimming. Some people are lucky and live on a lake or river. The rest of us have to be content with visiting places like The Cabin. This one sits on top of a steep hill. It takes a long walk down 46 concrete steps to get to the lake. But it’s worth the walk to go swimming.

Is there anything finer than jumping into a cool lake on a hot day? It feels especially good after a hot bike ride, or a nap that has left you groggy.

You don’t have to swim laps in the lake. You don’t have to have a purpose on the water. Remember, no guilt is allowed at The Cabin. Just sit in the water like a jellyfish. Take an occasional swim to the diving dock, to show the rest of the folks that you haven’t turned into a human jellyfish. Throw your arms over an inner tube and float around with your wife and get some serious small talk done.

And watch the kids play. That’s another joy of The Cabin. If you ever feel jaundiced about children, if you ever want to say “Kids today don’t know how to have fun anymore,” take them to The Lake at The Cabin. Yes, we really should capitalize The Lake too.

They can play all day. It always brings back a lot of good memories, watching children play in water. I think of the countless hours. I did the same on the Mississippi River when I was growing up. Literally every day in the summer. Wow, it was fun.

Grandma and the Grands at the cabin, 1996.

Now it’s almost as fun to watch them. Funny how things change. I think that is true for my mother-in-law, Lorely. She couldn’t go swimming, but she sure spent a lot of time sitting in a comfortable chair on shore and watching her grandkids play. Sometimes she pretended to be reading a book, but I know better.

Our family is lucky to spend a weekend a year at The Cabin. It belongs to my sister-in-law’s parents. They have a big family. They really get their money’s worth from it. The Cabin is booked almost every week of the year. I’m sure our family’s experiences there could be modified and repeated by many other families. I know we really appreciate it and value it.

I could go on and on about The Cabin. But you get the picture. Hopefully you have access to one of your own.

My sister-in-law’s brother, Mike, put it well on Sunday. He had been swimming on that perfect afternoon, watching the little ones, soaking up the warm sun.

He walked up the concrete steps to where I sat, playing the banjo. (Did I mention that The Cabin is the perfect place to play the banjo?)

I don’t remember his exact words. Reporters don’t take notes at The Cabin. But he said that if Satan rolls back the big iron doors and lets us out from Hell a million years from now, and gives us one day, one time, one moment, this is where we’ll come.

I couldn’t agree more.

Raiders of the Lost Underwear ~ July 14, 1994

David Heiller

Mollie’s room wasn’t pretty. Three friends had just left from a sleep-over. Clothes and books and toys lay everywhere. Everywhere except where they should be.

It was time, I decided, to Clean The Room.

If the room is too messy for Monopoly, that is
not a problem, just go to the living room.

Clean The Room time is capitalized because it is like an adventure movie. You never know what you’ll find: the Ark of the Covenant, a few mummies.

There’s no one place to start when you clean a room like Mollie’s. You could almost grab a grain shovel and start digging. We began at The Bookshelf, one of many main characters in this movie. It was sagging with books and barrettes and other odds and ends that people set there late at night when they are too tired to put them where they belong.

We made a pile of Noah’s books, a pile Mollie wanted to keep, a pile she wanted to give to cousin Grace, even a pile for Mrs. Ribich, her teacher from last year (yes, we found two school books). These piles were then taken to their new destinations.

Then it was The Cupboards. Their doors haven’t been opened in several months, thanks to the doll houses and chairs piled against them. In the cupboard there were bins and buckets that were supposed to hold all the things on the floor. A bin for cooking utensils and pretend food like plastic eggs (fried and scrambled!). A basket of agates.

There was the Barbie bucket, full of voluptuous dolls, and a basket for her Kirsten doll. Mollie picked a bare-chested Barbie off the floor. “Remember when Nate played with this one?” she said with a laugh. It had teeth marks on its most prominent parts, where a dog had gnawed. Or maybe Nate had done that.

There were writing utensils, two baskets’ worth. Mollie can never find a pencil. Now I know why. They are all in her cupboard. There must have been 50 pencils, 30 markers, and 500 crayons. She could start an office supply store.

Grandma and The Doll House.
You can't see all the little tiny pieces, 
ah yes, but you will FEEL them if you step on them.

There was the bin for doll house pieces. Little vases and flowers, beds and dressers, rugs and picture frames, even a little toilet. All under two inches tall, and all very dangerous. Try stepping on one in the middle of the night.

Finally we had a bin for everything, including the odds and ends basket. If it doesn’t go in any of the others, toss it in that one. That’s when the cleaning got fun. Everything on the floor had a destination. All the hiding places were discovered. A cardboard Avon box, a shoebox, the basket of stuffed animals. All were emptied and sorted of their old undies and stinky socks and tiny toilets.

It took about an hour and a half to do all this, and yes, it was fun. Fun finding a place for everything. Fun talking to my daughter, and hearing her say how much she appreciated my help. Like the next morning, when she was playing with her re-discovered dolls. “Thanks to you I’ve found most of my things, except for some of Kirsten’s dresses,” she said. “I can look for them later.”

It was fun seeing the floor of her room again, and not worrying about tip-toeing through it like a mine field. Fun vacuuming up all those sesame seeds that leaked out of the frog that Grandma Heiller made.

Unfortunately the vacuum cleaner didn’t work, which I didn’t discover until I was half done vacuuming. That explained why all those sesame seeds were still there.

I’ll clean it later. Like Mollie said, there’s always a “later” when you clean a room.

Masked-marauders invade state park! ~ June 21, 1990

David Heiller

News reports I would like to see...

HINCKLEY (AP)—An unknown number of masked robbers broke into the personal belongings of two families at a campground east of Hinckley last week.

The unidentified assailants damaged property at St. Croix State Park, made personal threats, and carted off a quantity of food on Wednesday, June 13, before the campers could stop them.

Joey and Nora Shields and Noah and Malika Heiller: before the invasion.

The campers then withstood several more attacks by the group during a long and sleepless night.

No one was hurt, although two seven-year-old boys were visibly shaken when they had to abandon their pup tent to sleep with one set of parents.

Camper Cindy Heiller also had one attacker come at her for a short distance after she attempted to chase it away in the late afternoon.

The incident came after the Shields and Heiller families returned from a bicycle trip in the park. While the men were playing baseball with their children, three invaders approached the women and a 15-month-old baby.

They laughed at first. Then Cindy tried to chase one away, running at it half-bent, shaking her arms and yelling in a gutteral voice.

The invader bent over, shook its head, and ran right back TOWARD Cindy, who quickly lost her bravado and retreated to a picnic table.

The invader then started climbing into the trunk of a car to investigate its contents. The men returned at that time, and armed themselves with rocks to protect their family and property.

Both were heard to remark that they wished they were NRA members, or at least had brought along a small caliber pistol to take justice into their own hands.

Cindy also reported that the robbers destroyed a large Tupperware container full of chocolate chip bars which she had baked for the trip. She said they had passed up two bags of tortilla chips and marshmallows to get to the bars, which they also sampled and ate.

“At least they liked the bars,” her husband, David, said. Cindy had no comment to that remark.

The rest of the evening passed without incident. As darkness fell, the families tucked their two sons into an old pup tent for their first night of camping without adults by their side. David checked the latch on their cooler. It was shut tight. The campfire died down, and the nine people settled into their tents and sleeping bags.

The silence was broken when Carolyn Shields called out from her tent across the campsite, “Dave, is that you?”

Dave, who was reading by candlelight in the Heiller tent, wondered what she was talking about. “Yes, this is me,” he said.

Kevin Shield’s voice then broke the silence in a stream of yells that can’t be repeated here. A tent zipped open, pots crashed and sticks and rocks flew. Kevin ran from his tent in his underwear. His flashlight spotted one invader sauntering off with a roll of braunschweiger over his shoulder. Another one had a package of Hershey bars already opened and half-eaten. The thieves had removed these items from Heillers’ cooler. The braunschweiger and most of the Hershey bars were recovered.

After Kevin yelled and chased after them, they both dropped their goods, perhaps startled as much by Kevin’s attire as his words. But they made no attempt to run away. One continued eating a Hershey bar. Kevin’s flashlight revealed at least three invaders at the edge of the campsites.

“They sounded so methodical,” Carolyn said. “I thought it was Dave grabbing a midnight snack.”

Shields and Heiller packed everything edible into their cars and returned to their tents. But that didn’t bring peace and quiet. The invaders came again. Garbage can lids banged. Kevin started swearing and yelling again. The raccoons started snarling and fighting between themselves, apparently over a half-eaten candy bar. The kids started crying. David Heiller started laughing.

David had to rescue the two oldest boys from their pup tent, while the Shields’ middle daughter returned to Mommy and Daddy’s side.

After another 10 minutes, things quieted down in the campsite. Then, from the next campsite 20 yards away, a tent unzipped, gar­bage can lids clanged, and a stream of obscenities similar to Kevin’s could be heard in the night.

The next morning, the bleary-eyed campers discovered that no one was missing, and most of their food and property was intact. They even managed a smile.

They described the thieves as about two feet tall, with small hands capable of picking locks; wearing masks and scraggly fur coats, and having bushy tails with dark rings on them.

An investigation is pending.

We’re going to miss the sauna ~ July 3, 2003

David Heiller

The Sauna Equilibrium Ratio is high these days.

It’s not a statistic that you hear from Collin Ventrella during the 10 o’clock news, but it’s a good barometer at our house.

Here’s how it works:

You take a sauna until you are too hot to stand it anymore. Then you go outside until you are too cold to stand it anymore. That is your Sauna Equilibrium Ratio.

What was the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio 
on this day? I still miss my sauna.

For example, if you take a 45 minute sauna, then stand outside for five minutes, the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio is 45:5 (or 9:1).

In mid-winter, with the temperature below zero and a west wind, the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio is 45:0.

Some evenings, when the temperature is mild and the bugs have gone to bed, you can have an infinite Sauna Equilibrium Ratio. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures if you live in the country. I still vividly remember one evening earlier this year. I had just taken a sauna, and was lying on the picnic table, totally drained in both mind and body, which is what a good sauna can do.

Off in the distance I heard a whippoorwill calling, Whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will, repeating his name in a greeting, on and on. That brought a smile. We have lived at our friendly home in the country for 22 years, yet I had never heard a whippoorwill calling before that, and I haven’t heard it since. It was a great reward for checking out the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio.

Having a nice pond helps the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio too. If I get too hot in the sauna, and can barely breathe and my legs start to wobble, I stumble to the pond and dive in. Then the weakness and heat disappear in a heartbeat. The pond is cold and clear. One side of me dreads the dive. But once in it, I am amazed at how refreshing it feels. Without the sauna, swimming in the pond would be as inviting as Lake Superior. But with the sauna, the pond, feels just fine—for at least 30 seconds.

Another fine way to end a sauna is to sit in a lightly falling rain. It’s very soothing.

Even those bitter winter nights are rewarding—they make me realize how vulnerable the human body is, and how much I value a nice, warm house.

One time I wrote about the sauna many years ago, then heard that a neighbor was making fun of me, like there was something not quite right with this sauna stuff. That made me think, “What’s wrong with that person?” She could have benefited from the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio.

Cindy and I are going to be leaving our beautiful home soon. There are many things that I will miss. The sauna will be close to the top of the list.