Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

By David Heiller An Easter miracle occurred last weekend. When we left for a family get-together in Minneapolis Saturday morning, a foot of snow covered the landscape at our home in Birch Creek Township. When we returned Monday afternoon, all the snow had melted. It was like seeing a nephew you hadn’t seen in years, and suddenly he is a foot taller, with a deeper voice and stubble on his face. Malika  and Miss Emma outside  in the small window between "The Snow is GONE! and the mud is here!" But what a sight on Monday. The woodpile gaped like an open wound. I located the pile of slab-wood that didn’t get stacked before our Thanksgiving storm. The bent hood of an old Ford truck emerged, plus sheets of tin for a roofing project. And those rusty band saw blades from an old sawmill were curled where I left them. Waiting. The garden sneered at us, cornstalks and Brussels sprouts leaning this way and that. Weren’t we supposed to clean that last fall, a...

David Heiller With all the cold and snow we’ve had this winter, it’s nice to know that the weather can always be worse, and it HAS been worse. I talked to Red Hansen of Askov a few weeks ago about what was the worst winter he could remem be r. He answered without hesitation that it was the winter of 1949-50. That winter is still listed in the Duluth newspaper as having the most snow ever, 131.6 inches. So far this year, Duluth has received 111.5 inches as of March 4. So with another 20.1 inches, we could break that record, although I hope we don’t . (Editor’s note: We got 135.4 inches that year. The record was broken!) Red made these remarks about the winter of 1949-50. “That winter we had so much snow, it would take a week to get a road cleared, then you’d no sooner get it clea re d off than it would fill back in again, and it would take another week before you could get a plow in there to clear a township road out. “The snow was much deeper, and it moved with the wind...

David Heiller I didn’t have the good fortune of knowing Anny Ahlbom very well. I met her one early spring afternoon in 1982, while working as a magazine and insurance salesman. She asked me right into her home six miles west of Rutledge. We drank coffee and ate apple cake. The 90-year-old lady led me through the house, showing off the paintings and carvings done by her late husband, John. She played the piano and sang and danced with me, a total stranger. She gave me a pair of mittens which she had knit, and a set of woolen wrist bands, then took my mittens with a promise to knit the hole in one of the thumbs. I didn’t have a chance to sell her anything, and by the time I left two hours later, I didn’t want to. When you enter Anny’s old house, the work of John Ahlbom overpowers you. Practically everything is hand done, starting with the rock exterior walls. Walls inside are painted floor to ceiling with murals of forests, horses, lakes. Figurines of men and animals, carved ou...

David Heiller Mom and I were looking through some old photos a couple of month ago. They were from the Schnick farm in about 1920. Most showed scenes and people. There were several pictures of women in white on a picnic on one of the bluffs. Unfortunately, I only have a photocopied  version of this photo.I would  love to have an "actual"  image, if any one from the area  has one that they would be willing to share. Then the photographer, probably Ben Schnick, did a very good thing and turned h is camera toward the Mississippi River and took the picture shown here. It is taken from the bluff just to the north of Shellhorn Road. You can see the railroad track parallel to it. What’s amazing to me is how different the river looks. For one thing the main channel, known as Raft Channel, hugs the Minnesota shore then jogs to the east around a big spit of land in front of where Valeree Green now lives. That whole stretch of river with all its timber and ...