It's been over seven years now, and I sure miss it.
Usually around 9:30 or so, the phone would ring. I would answer the phone and the conversation would go something like this:
"Hello?"
"Might Mr. Mark Edward Heuring be available?"
"Hi, Mom. How are you this morning?"
From there, you never quite knew where the conversation would go. But it would happen, pretty much like clockwork. I would usually get the first call because others were enforcing the double-digit rule; that is, no phone calls before 10 a.m. This was a wise rule of course. For more than a few siblings I know, brains and bodies needed recovery time from the previous night's festivities. It was always difficult to talk to Mom if you were hung over. I remember trying more than a few times and the results were often bordering on the surreal. The only wakeup calls that were less welcome where when the woodpile beckoned on Railroad Street and Dad would go all Doctor Zhivago on us.
Funny thing is, I'd love to take a call from Mom. And I'd even be willing to face the woodpile again. I bet we all would.
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The answering machine messages from Mom were pretty classic, too.
"Margaret? Are you there?" CLICK.
I miss those phone calls too. I miss a whole lot about Mom (and Dad and Dar, too.)
I do not miss the woodpile.
And let's not forget another wake-up that the older Heuring siblings might not have experienced...
Very sweet voice... "Child-ren? Oh Child-ren! Wake Up!!"
This meant we would be cleaning something, quite often the garage. Not a fun job at 7:30 on a Saturday morning in about April.
Very sweet voice my ass!! That voice was pure evil. On those days, I thought Dar was the devil incarnate. She took sick pleasure in that particular wake-up call.
As for the double-digit rule, I invoked that rule on Mom after a particularly crazy night my freshman year at Minnesota. I met the U Card girl. Now, to most people, that is meaningless. But, to anyone who was a student at the U in 1996, there is a good chance they know who I am talking about. This girl was on ads all over campus for souping up your student ID (U Card) as an ATM card and a calling card, and she was hot!! Anyway, I met her, drank like a fish in a misguided attempt to impress her, and went back to the dorms at 3:00 AM after meeting her boyfriend (a theme repeated often here in Minnesota). Mom called me four hours later. That may have been the most painful moment of my life that didn't involve actual injury. To her credit, Mom started calling me in the afternoon from there on out (except when I was in Appleton).
I do not miss the woodpile at all. I saw remnants of the woodpile years after when mowing the lawn. But, I am sure Mark would have no problem with the woodpile, would you Lever Man? Yeah, I didn't chop wood either, but I was also eight years old.
I don't miss mowing that size yard with a push mower either. And, I don't miss cleaning the garage. But, I do miss that house, I miss that yard, which was perfect for football and baseball (they ruined it by subdividing the lot), and I miss Mom, Dad, and Dar too.
Trust me, Mikey, I hauled plenty of that wood, too. I don't know where that Lever Man stuff even comes from. I don't remember doing that job for more than 20 minutes at any time during the course of those woodpile ordeals. But I do remember hauling wood, schlepping wood, stacking wood and doing it all with a well-earned headache that I'd purchased the night previously, generally at Jim's Place.
Another pleasant wake-up sound; Ben Boogaard cursing a blue streak while trying to fix something in the bathroom, circa 1991. "Get in there, you c@#$@@#@! Goddam @@#@#*, c'mon you @&"#*&$@#*. Where's that Michael, anyway?" Why isn't out there cutting the #@@&#*( lawn?"
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