Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

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 caug...

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 enviro...

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. Ou...

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 i n the world for any musical inst rument. Noah and our daughter, Malika, were playing with puzzles in the living ro...

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 hig...

David Heiller Bob Dutcher sat in his boat. I couldn’t see him. It was still dark, although the stars were starting to disappear. “Hi, Bob,” I called out. I knew he was there, because his truck was sitting by the road, and he said he’d be there at 6 a.m., and Bob isn’t late, at least when it comes to fishing. “Hi, Dave,” Bob’s voice answered. I felt my way down the bank, to where I could make out the boat and Dutcher, and crawled in. “Isn’t this a little early to be fishing?” I asked as Bob rowed us onto Mud Lake. It was 6 a.m. Bob assured me that it was NOT too early to go fishing. It’s never too early for Bob Dutcher, Askov, Minnesota, to start fishing. Why, bass bite all night. So do walleyes. And you never know when you’ll catch a northern. They are early risers, like Bob. We each put a frog on a hook and started casting toward the lily pads off to our left. Bob worked the oars expertly, keeping us just the right distance from the weeds. Day broke fast and clear....

by David Heiller The Transformation began about two months ago. This Transformation has a capital T, but it is anything but holy. Diabolical might be a better description. I was attempting to put a 10-foot piece of roll roofing onto the garden shed, in a pretty stiff breeze. With my carpentry and coordination, that is a two person job. There were two, of us, but one was my daughter, Malika. Being only 14 months old, she didn’t count. Not much scared Malika. I rode that roll roofing like a magic carpet a top the garden shed, trying to keep an eye on Mollie, who was playing on the swing-set. As I put one nail in place, the wind lifted the other end out of place. I turned around to nail it straight, glancing toward the swing-set for the kid. She was gone. That didn’t worry me, since the only real danger at our house is the county road at the end of the driveway, and I had a clear view of that. So I concentrated on the rolling roof. As I nailed it into place, I glanced...

David Heiller Mouse season started at our house on Sunday, October 15. Cindy had found some mouse pebbles in a drawer in the bathroom vanity the day before. Her make-up sponge had been gnawed on pretty well too. Must have been a female mouse. “Time to set the mouse trap,” Cindy told me. I found the trap under the bathroom sink, which is its permanent location. I smeared peanut butter on it, then re-set it. I knew the action would start soon, and I wasn’t disappointed. “Mouse in the trap, “Cindy hollered matter-of-factly when she got up Sunday morning. She called it out like a ship’s bosun might call, “Officer on board.” Some people panic a bit with a mouse in a trap, even if it is dead. Not Cindy, although her voice did have a tone that said, “Please don’t wait too long to get rid of it.” I lifted out the dead mouse by the tail, carried it outside, and flung it toward the back of the outhouse, which by the end of this winter will look like Boot Hill. “We should ke...