Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller It was fun to write the articles in this week’s paper about the 1970 wrestling team. I think about that team and season a lot. I was a junior that year, and wrestled quite a bit of varsity at 154. Bob Lange wrestled at 145, and Ron Meiners wrestled at 165 during much of the season. When the district tournament came, Ron cut weight to wrestle 154, and I was out of a job. That was not a problem, because Ron was in another league, and that’s the nature of sports. You’ve got to learn to lose. That might not sound like a good attitude, but it ultimately leads to learning how to win. Bob Lange’s mother, Vi, reminded me of that. I found a folder full of old newspaper clippings about the 1970 team in a dresser drawer a couple weeks ago. One reporter interviewed Mrs. Lange after the state tournament, and she said, “These boys have won and lost and you must win and lose to be a winner.” I couldn’t agree more. The Langes personified wrestling, a sport which has a stran...

David Heiller Rosie was onto something, that was obvious. I could hear her growling and yipping in the “West Wing” of the barn on Saturday afternoon. I tuned it out for about an hour, but finally my curiosity got to me. I put down my hammer and went to investigate. After a bit of searchin g, I located her burrowing into a stack of hay bales, sniffing, and whining. It wasn’t easy to see her, wedged between the hay and the wall. There isn’t much to see to begin with, Rosie being a miniature dachshund and all. I grabbed her by the collar and pulled her up. She turned her growl in my direction. That’s when I heard a snarl in return, somewhere in the pile of bales. I can handle snarls from animals I know. But snarling visitors, whoever they may be, are not welcome in the Heiller barn. So I set Rosie back down. Rosie and the possum This time she tore into the hay like a tornado. The other critter had had enough of Rosie too, and they met in their hidden arena, their howls...

David Heiller I stopped the car at Heiller Valley on Sunday morning, stepped out, and entered the world of swans. Malika took these pictures on November 7, 2013. First the sound hit me. Α swan song. It’s hard to describe, but the first thing that comes to my mind is the scene from the Wizard of Oz when the flying monkeys come swooping  in for Dorothy and Toto. I would wager a fair sum that the sound track from that scene came from a bunch of swans. It sounds like a lot of people laughing and talking, but they aren’t quite human sounds. The sound carries a long way. I can hear it from our new home 1-1/2 miles to the west. I walked across Highway 26 and down the bank to the railroad tracks. The swans that were close to shore did not like that. I didn’t care.  I walked across Highway 26 and down the bank to the railroad tracks. The swans that were close to shore did not like that. I didn’t care. No one else was around, and I wanted a closer look. ...

David Heiller There are times when I wish I could be someone one else, just for five minutes. Such a moment came last Friday, when I was buying a banjo. I sat in the Homestead Pickin’ Parlor in Richfield with a beautiful banjo in my lap: Several people sat nearby listening to me. Not that they had much choice. When a guy i s playing a banjo, about all you can do is listen or walk away. It’s hard to carry on a conversation in the same three-block area, let alone the same room. Might as well listen. That’s what makes the banjo such a popular instrument. But just this once, I thought in the way back of my mind, just this once, for five minutes, let me be a brilliant banjo player. Let me be Earl Scruggs. Or Reed Martin. I won’t bore you with a lot of banjo lore. BUT for three-finger banjo, “Scruggs-style” playing, Earl in his prime was the best. The style is named after him. Many people know his music, especially the theme song to Bonnie and Clyde. David loved playing old...

David Heiller Andy Rote was having the hardest time at the skating rink in Askov last Friday. He would skate about two feet before his own two feet would fly into the air, and he would land on his keester, as Ronald Reagan would call it. But Andy, like most seven-year-olds, didn’t seem to mind the falls. For one thing, he had six layers of clothes on. His mother, Anne, who grinned from the sidelines, had made sure of that. He didn’t mind that his 10-year-old sister, Elaine didn’t fall down once, or that Tara Loew, at age 14, looked like another Katarina Witt as she circled the rink. Andy just kept getting up, and falling down, and getting up again. Noah and Joe skating, Kevin is doing his very best with Mollie. There’s something about skating that brings back memories for a lot of us. Watching Andy skate last Friday, and skating with my family on Saturday and Sunday, brought back some flashes. Someone always received a new pair of skates for Christmas in my family of ei...

David Heiller It was a good snow, the five inches of snow that fell on January 10. It fell when the temperature was about 30 degrees, so it was wet and stuck to everything. Usually this kind of snow falls in March, and it stays for a few hours. Then the sun shines and the wind blows and the snow drops in big globs, and by noon it’s back to normal. But after last week’s snow, the temperature dropped, and wind stayed away, and the snow stuck like frosting onto every twig and branch for four days. It looked like God had reached down with a big can of whipped cream, and got a little carried away. This snow belonged on a Christmas card by Currier and Ives. The snow brought snowmobilers to life. You could tell they had been waiting for it for two months. They zipped by on the trails and along the roads. They filled the parking lot of the Embassy Bar and the cash registers of Sturgeon Lake One Stop. The snow also brought my son and me out to the woods for a 2-1/2 hour hike on Sat...

David Heiller Music was a big part of my life when I was in the Peace Corps in Morocco from 1977 to 1979. Roger and David making music in Morocco. I played the banjo a lot to pass the time. When I’d get together with American friends, we’d always play music. One of my most memorable musical moments in Morocco came at a workshop that the volunteers were having in Tangiers. I don’t know how much work we got done at this workshop. I do know it was a good time to visit with friends, compare war stories, and play music. We were sitting around in a hotel lobby, playing music, when an English gentleman joined us. He brought out his guitar, and the rest of us soon put ours away. He was good. Very good. The kind of performer you’d pay music to see at a college coffeehouse. He played song after song. Wow, it was nice listening to him. We fell under his spell. And he came up with a classic line that night, one I still remember. One of the volunteers asked him, with a dreamy lo...