Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller If Miss Emma could talk, she might tell you that fall is just around the corner. Other famous female weather watchers like Helen Feldt, Dutch Jones, and Sue Thue can put their noses to the air and sense that fall is close by. Miss Emma was a good hunter, but her only opportunity for bird hunting was from the picture window. Dutch knows it when her bear friends out east of Bruno stop making amorous advances and head for a warm winter bed. Helen knows it when the temperatures in the Cloverton area drop below 40 degrees and threaten tomato crops. Sue knows it when she starts daydreaming about the smell of her wild rice parching west of Sandstone. But Miss Emma knows it’s fall when the mice start to move into the house. Miss Emma, you see, is our cat. Miss Emma, like all cats, is fat, lazy and ar­rogant. But she can catch mice. She doesn’t eat them. Instead, she lays them out for us to see, like trophies. In the late fall, she will sometimes have three mic...

David Heiller The empty feeling settled over me on Monday morning, August 27. I had been waiting for it to come, and when it hadn’t, I felt a bit puzzled and relieved. Bad feelings have a way of sneaking up on people. Malika on her first day of  kindergarten at Willow River. I was lying in bed, trying to pry myself awake, when it finally hit, and I remembered that Mollie wasn’t upstairs. She wasn’t upstairs this morning, and she wouldn’t be upstairs tomorrow morning or the next. We had taken her to Golden Valley the day before, in a car packed with boxes and bins, to her new home, a high school dormitory. We were excited to see her room, to help her unpack, to meet her roommate, to look at the other kids filtering in. They all seemed to be equally excited and scared. I still remember those feelings from 30 years ago when I went away to college. The parents looked the same way. Trying hard to be happy. Telling themselves, This is the right thing to do.  We'...

David Heiller Standing from left are Peggy Whitehead, ad sales; Diane Delzer, proofreader; Sara Poslusney, cute kid; Donna Cronin, ad sales; Lynn Storrar, typesetter and bookkeeping; Chris O’Brien, typesetter; Cindy Jensen, typesetter, circulation manager, and writer; Hazel Serritslev, typesetter, subscriptions, and writer; Kaarin Johnsen, typesetter, bookkeeper, and circulation; Darrell Johnsen, photographer; Ardis Jensen, ad sales, subscriptions, and typesetter; Coral Popowitz, ad sales; Tim Peebles, ad sales and delivery; Sandy Koecher, ad sales; Jay Poslusney, musician and father of cute kid; Carrie Merriman, proofreader and bookkeeper; and Dean Dronen, friendly neighbor, musician, son of Gerald and Gloria. Seated from left are Arla Budd, typesetter and bookkeeping; Cindy and me; and Red Hansen, the all time official Askov American mascot. Arla had the tone of an old school marm. “You can’t go to the meeting, David,” she said. You can’t miss the party!” She had be...

David Heiller Cindy called the morning of my fortieth birthday from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Her dad had died the night before, which drew her away physically but not in spirit. Listen to the radio, she told me. I turned it on just in time to hear the Minnesota Public Radio announcers play a song in my honor: “Laughing River,” by Greg Brown. It was a pleasant coincidence, because a friend had come over the night before to wish me happy birthday, and he had told me about this very song, how much he liked it, how it fit the milestone of getting old. Then the radio played it just for me. It was a good sign for Friday the Thirteenth. (below is a good link to the song) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFhWBR8uBME Collin "playing" David's accordion. Then my kids gave me presents, including a button accordion from Cindy. I had eyed that accordion at a Minneapolis music store for 2½ years. Cindy told the store owner how much I wanted it. The guy remembered me fo...

David Heiller Collin pondered the rock bass the way a bonsai artist ponders a pine tree. He looked at it this way and turned it that way in careful consideration of his next move. It might take minutes. It might take hours. Levi and Collin, fishing at the cabin “Just take the fish off!” his cousin, Levi, finally exclaimed. He was an expert at that of course, because he had taken a crappie off his fishing hook just the day before. It had taken him 20 minutes, and the fish looked like a used tube of toothpaste when he released it. But he had indeed removed the hook, and now that feat was serving him well. “I will!” Collin shot back. The two boys are like brothers, and that means the gloves come off every so often. “You’re two years older than me and I can do it,” Levi jabbed. “Not two years, only a year and a half,” Collin replied. “And you fish a lot more than me. You go 10 times a year, and I only go five.” “But you’re two years older than me.” “Nuh-uh.” “Uh-huh....

David Heiller Our garden has turned into a Dairy Queen, thanks to the sweet peas. It’s a miracle, I tell you, a miracle! Of course it all starts with planting the peas. A perfect job for little Collin hands! They started ripening about two weeks ago. At first we found only half a dozen at a time, small in the pod, and growing much too slow for our impatient tastes. But is there anything more worth waiting for, sweeter, more delicious, than that first, fresh sweet pea? We didn’t think so. Noah would joke after supper, “Let’s go have dessert, Dad,” and Mollie would think we were heading into the Dairy Queen. He would lead us to the garden and the sweet peas, and we would start picking and eating. Mollie at first was disappointed. Sweet peas are NOT ice cream to a five-year-old. Plus she has trouble cracking open the pods. But after we handed her a few, she realized that the dessert joke wasn ’ t far from the truth. The pea patch is a haven of sorts. When I get up in...