Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller I sold insurance for a time, in between teaching and newspapering. My district manager taught me a lot of sales tricks, though he called them “ techniques.” That ’ s kind of like calling that place at rest stops where dogs go the “ pet exercise area.” We all know what they really do there. We all ca ll ed on farmers. One of my boss’s tricks was to size up the place as he drove up. He would look at the outbuildings and judge whether the man or woman was the leader of the house. Sturdy barns with a fresh coat of paint, or a well - fenced pasture, told him the man was in charge, and he would address his sales pitch to the man. If the house looked shabby, or the buildings were leaning, but the kitchen looked like it belonged in ladies Home-Journal, he would direct his comments more to the woman. His theory didn’t always work. It was too simplistic. I have to tell myself that when I look at my woodpile and woodshed, or else admit abject slavery to Cindy, something ...

David Heiller Here’s a tale of customer satisfaction. About a month ago I was at Stanton Lumber. I stopped to admire their Schrade knife case. Every good hardware store has a display of jackknives. And Schrade (which rhymes with spade) is as good as they come. I pulled out a Schrade jackknife that I often carry. The knife used to belong to my wife’s father, Gordon Olson. We found it in his belongings after he died in 1993. The knife has been used a lot. You can tell because the main blade is thin and curved from many a sharpening. One of the three blades is broken. David loved his jackknives, and was never without  one.  He is  posing here with his  booty  from   a Christmas laden with jackknives. I like this knife. It’s very good quality. The blade holds an edge, which means it is good steel. It is small. I can keep it in the pocket of my dress pants without it being noticeable. Some of the people at work don’t like the knife. Th...

David Heiller Cindy and I drove home from book club on Monday night, February 9, just like we always do. Cruising along at about 55 miles an hour. Talking a little, listening to the radio. Just after we crossed the Kettle River Bridge on County Road 46, a deer ran in front of the car. One second the road was clear, and the next our headlights were full of a frightened, wild animal. Cindy screamed. I hollered. I swerved to the right. All in a split second. The deer’s head hit the left headlight of the car. Its body smashed into the left front side of the car, and spun away into the night. I fought for control of the car. We were in snow on the shoulder of the road. For a second I thought we’d go in the ditch, but I was able to pull the Taurus back onto the road. I stopped the car. Cindy and I both sat there in a state of shock. But we were OK. No one was hurt. ‘I took the flashlight out of the glove compartment and got out of the car. I checked it over. The headlight...

David Heiller Odds and ends this week I WAS SITTING AT the Partridge Café on Monday with two friends, “Bruce” and “Sandy.” (When you see names in quotation marks, that means the names aren’t real, unless some wise-guy editor wants to fool you.) We were talking about kids, how strange they can be. Their son, “Andrew,” had announced on Sunday that he had to do a class project by Monday. One of the suggestions from the teacher was to make a replica of the Mayflower. “The May fl ower!” Bruce said in disbelief. How can a kid make a replica of the Mayflower? What fun is that? Andrew (and Bruce) had other ideas. They wanted to make a stock. You know the kind of things they used to have in public squares to punish thieves back when the Mayflower sailed here. Your hands go in these two slots and your head goes in a bigger slot in the bottom piece. A top piece is put on, it is fastened together, and everybody laughs at you and throws rotten tomatoes. Now that’s a project a kid can ...

David Heiller I haven’t quite unraveled the mystery of Spring Grove strawberry pop, and maybe that’s the way it should be. Some things you just have to believe in blindly. The new owner of Spring Grove Bottling Works, Dawn Hanson, let me watch her and Roger Morken and Jerry E ll ingson make some pop last Wednesday. It was a fun visit, sort of a step back in time, which seems only fitting in the beautiful city of Spring Grove. I sometimes think that time has stopped in Spring Grove, and I mean that as a compliment, although I know it’s not true and that the city has its foibles like the rest of the world. But watching pop get made at the bottling works really did feel like something fr om the 1950s. The old reliable machinery, a ll clicking and rotating and spinning in perfect order, was like something you’d see in a 1950s newsreel. The three workers steadily kept it all going, washing bottles, checking labels, loading boxes. I couldn’t help but admire it all, that here in...

David Heiller This story could fall into the what-are-the-odds category. Two eagles that were found dead in two different locations were banded on the same day On May 20, 1991. Brenda and Martin Pohlman, who live on a farm in section 26 of Crooked Creek township, found one on October 16. A banded eagle The other was found on November 8 by a trapper near Prairie Island. It is unusual to find a dead eagle to begin with, and more rare to find one that is banded. About 30.000 bald eagles have been handed over the past 50 years, and only about 15 percent of the bands have been recovered. So to find two eagles, 20 days apart, that were banded on the same day. I4 years earlier, well, Brenda and the trapper should have gone out and bought lottery tickets. The story, which I first read about in the La Crosse Tribune intrigued me. I called Brenda Pohlman, and she agreed, “It’s very odd.” She, Marty, and her parents, Maurice and Jenny Waege from Wilton, WI, were cutting fir...

David Heiller Dear Grandma: We were sitting on the bed watching a Charlie Brown Christmas Thursday night. It’s a good show, with good lessons about people and Christmas. Charlie Brown can’t find the true meaning of Christmas. For some strange reason he gets depressed around Christmas time. He thinks he should be happy, but he isn’t. He thinks he doesn’t have any friends. Everyone puts him down. There’s commercialism all around. The kids and I were soaking all this up, saying “Yeah, you’re right” to ourselves. I thought of Mollie, who had taken a verbal beating from a girl on her bus. I thought of the Tickle Me Elmo doll, which some fine folks are selling for up to   $500. People can be ugly. Then Cindy came into the room and asked me to fix the toilet paper dispenser. It had come off the wall, screws and all. A toilet paper dispenser doesn’t just fall off a wall. Someone had to have pulled it off, probably by accident. “Who did it?” I asked. Neith...