S/A ROBERT HEESCHEN

BLEW HIS COVER

HE DIDN'T ASK FOR MUCH. jUST TO LIVE OUT HIS REMAINING LIFE IN ANONYMITY

A mild-mannered former rough-and-tumbler, special agent badge and credential carrier of the US Army counter-intelligence corps in Shy-town - 1958-62 - S/A Heeschen had hoped to coast out into the hereafter, void of old-days danger. But it was not to be.

In merely trying to give context to yesterday's joke provider - "Yesterday's Joke Provider" indeed - we told too much, and now we've put him at risk. He will never be able, most likely, to serve his country in that way again, thanks to the sewer raccoon news.

Why didn't we just go with the innocuous factoid that he is currently a volunteer in a railroad museum (in St. Paul)? And let it go with that? Yeah. Trains. That's the ticket.

Bob has been a super-conductor all his life, and a friend. He once made us a YIBAWE! leaded-glass emblem for the window here that now looks out upon a relatively undangerous world. Thanks to patriot soldiers and later craftsmen like him.

When we met in those dim and distant long-ago days, he was the young guy from Davenport Iowa who would stop the government car (green Chevy, unmarked) and pause and doff his hat, hold it to his heart, when any funeral procession would pass by. A respecter of life, any life, any unknown life, and now we've at this very late date gone and put him at risk with those very people who would do wrong to the country of red, white and blue. The unfit. (For positions of trust and confidence with the United States government, that is.)

While we bask in a sanctuary, the relative witness protection of the sewer raccoon news, S/A Heeschen (a guy who never meant any people harm - less'n they were sawdust-filled dummies needing bayoneting; hell, our plain-clothed commanding officer could never even get his name right - called him a name that could be taken now as terrorist: he-SHEEN') currently walks Garrison Keillorland a marked man.

Sorry, Bobby! Coulda-shoulda...............Unlike us, we know you'll do the right thing.