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October 9, 1982      Studebaker Theater, Chicago, IL

    see all shows from: 1982 | Studebaker Theater | Chicago | IL

Participants

Jethro BurnsButch Thompson Trio Garrison KeillorLittle Brother Montgomery Kate MacKenzie Peter Ostroushko Les PodewellStoney Lonesome. Studs Terkel Jim Trimbach


Songs, tunes, and poems

Old fashioned love ( Kate MacKenzie , Stoney Lonesome  )
Go back home ( Kate MacKenzie , Stoney Lonesome  )
Walking after midnight ( Kate MacKenzie , Stoney Lonesome  )
Is it true what they say about Dixie? (Butch Thompson Trio  )
Frederick polka (Butch Thompson Trio  )
New baby (Butch Thompson Trio  )
The lady is a tramp ( Jethro Burns )
Jethro's tune ( Jethro Burns )
Shine ( Jethro Burns )
Georgia (Little Brother Montgomery  )
St Louis Blues (Little Brother Montgomery  )
Why must the show go on? ( Garrison Keillor , Kate MacKenzie )
Hey good lookin' ( Peter Ostroushko )


Sketches, Sponsors, People, Places

Ajua! Hot Sauce
Bertha's Kitty Boutique
Chatterbox Cafe
Grandma Soderburg
Hocksteder, Eunice
Hocksteder, Rollie
Krebsbach, Carl
Powdermilk Biscuits
Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery
Sidetrack Tap


'The News from Lake Wobegon' (full transcription)

Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, especially now with almost all the storm windows on. People who have been keeping their voices down since April and May for fear of what the neighbors might think are now able to express themselves fully and clearly. people whom they live with, and the neighbors probably doing the same there. You gain one sort of privacy, though you lose another. Carl Krebsbach went out here the other day in his undershorts to get his pants off the clothesline and found out too late that the rain and the wind the day before had made the old maple tree in the backyard about as nude as he was. Walked out in the yard and looked over and suddenly there was Mrs. Cederberg looking out her kitchen window. I tell you, she looked away so fast she could have broken her neck.

Carl jumped and ran back inside, put on a pair of pants, came out. She was out in the backyard covering her roses. I said hello to him as if nothing had happened. And I guess nothing had, really. I don't know what's been happening in Lake Wobegon. I've been on the road and sort of been out of touch with events back there. Though, of course, when you come from a little town that time forgot, You don't have to stay real current, you know, to have a fairly good idea. I do find, though, that I want to get away from it for even a short period of time, that everything seems to run together, and I forget what year it is back there. and people who have died a long time ago come back into the present in my mind and it seems like a long time ago i don't know it's kind of confusing but i was thinking during the script that we did with studs earlier that this was the time of year when people would slaughter back when people did that. Raleigh and Eunice Hockstetter, I think, were the last.

They kept pigs, and they'd slaughter them in the fall because people always had. Going back to before refrigeration, they'd wait until the weather got cold so the meat would keep. And I went out to see the last, well, close to the last hog slaughter ever took place in Lake Walpurgine when I was a kid. Went out with my cousin, along with my uncle, who was going to help Raleigh. People now, if they're going to slaughter an animal for meat, they send it in to the locker plant. Pay to have the guys there do it, which I can understand.

You slaughter pigs, it kind of takes away your appetite for pork for a while. Because the pigs let you know that they don't care for it. They don't care to be grabbed and dragged over to where the other pigs went and didn't come back. It was quite a thing for a kid to see, I tell you. It was quite a thing. to see living flesh and living insides of another creature. I would expect to be disgusted by it, but I wasn't. I was fascinated. I got as close as I could. Now I know that some of you listening are probably eating dinner about now.

So I think I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this. Like you ought to be able to enjoy your food without getting a full account of where it came from. But I'll just say that it was fascinating for a lot of reasons. And I remember that my cousin and I sort of got carried away in the excitement of it all and we went down to the pig pen and we were throwing rocks, little stones at pigs to watch them jump and watch them squeal and run. And all of a sudden, I felt a big hand on my shoulder, and I was spun around, and my uncle's face was three inches away from mine. And he said, I ever see you do that again, I'll beat you till you can't stand up, you hear? And we heard. I knew at the time that his anger had something to do with the slaughter.

And I think that I understood it better back then than I do now as I try to put it into words. But I tell you, this was a ritual. It's all gone now. But it was a ritual. And it was done as a ritual. It was done swiftly and there was no foolishness, no joking around, very little conversation. People went about their jobs, men and women, knowing exactly what to do and always with respect for the animals that would become our food. And somehow, in some way, our throwing stones at pigs violated this ceremony and this ritual which they went through.

It was a terrible violation of it. And we were terribly wrong. Raleigh was the last one to do it in town. One year he had an accident. the knife slipped, and an animal that was wounded got loose and ran across the yard before it fell. And he never kept pigs after that.

He didn't feel he was worthy of it. And that's all gone. Children growing up in Lake Wobegon will never have a chance to see that. Adults going about a ritual of slaughter that goes back centuries. I remember the dog, Raleigh's dog Rex was there and he would play with the pigs. He'd go out in the pen and chase them and then they'd chase him for a while. That dog sat and cried. I'd never seen a dog cry before. That dog lay right there, big tears rolling down his cheeks, moaning. I went up to comfort him and he turned away from me.

It was a powerful experience that had life and death hung in the balance. and your family and all of them there. And now it's all gone like so much of that life that I saw a little bit of when I was a kid. A life in which people made do and which people made their own, lived off the land. They were independent on that account and lived between the ground and God. And you know, it's lost, not only to this world, but also lost to memory. Because I can't bring it back, even in words.

My memory is faulty, as everyone's is. And I think back to that life that's gone, and those people. And I think about it as the olden days, the good old days when life was simple. And it's not true. It's a terrible disservice to them. Life was simple for me then because I was a child.

And my happiness was looked after by other people. But it was not simple for the others. Never. Never. And if I think, I can think of people who were terribly angry and people who were terribly hurt back on the farm. I can think of old Grandma Soderberg who raised eight children and then her husband died and she had no home the last 30 years of her life. Her son took over the farm and she traveled from one child's house to another. She made the circuit in about a year. Whenever she arrived, it was like the National Guard coming in after a tornado.

Suddenly there was fresh baked bread and there was someone in the house who'd listened to children and who showed affection to children. But she never felt that her own children loved her, you see, because she'd brought them up strict. And so now, as they were older, they were strict with her, with their affection. She missed a generation.

She was able to show affection to her grandchildren, but not to her own. She carried with her a big steamer trunk and a crate full of chickens. She took her chickens wherever she went. Six old leghorn layers. Hadn't laid anything in a long time. whole chickens with varicose veins, bad tickers.

She always said that when she looked out and saw the chickens lying on their backs with their legs in the air, then it was time to move on. In fact, she moved on because she didn't feel wanted. I think about Elizabeth June, who lived back in Lake Wobegon on the farm with her parents. Back home, they'd rather I didn't talk about this. They'd rather I presented a picture of Lake Wobegon as a sweet, simple place where people are kind and good to each other. But if I'd said that, a lot of people would want to go live there. And they wouldn't like that.

And the people who'd go live there would be disappointed because it's not true. Elizabeth June was in her 40s. She was not quite right, as they said. She was a little slow. She was also immense. Elizabeth June, the human balloon, we called her. She was a woman of such loneliness that it hurt to look at her. So people didn't, and they didn't talk to her And so she invented friends for herself out of the pages of the Sears Roebuck catalog where she saw them dressed in their fine clothes. And she put on parties with her friends out in the woods, her Sears Roebuck pals.

Gracious parties in which they dressed up and they drank day queries. Probably the only fancy drink she'd ever read about. And she talked to him out in the woods, and then at home, and then in church. One Sunday morning, when they were just about to pass the sacraments, she was heard to speak up. And she said, well, Roger, maybe I will buy that car. It was a part of a conversation that had begun somewhere else and was heading in another direction. Her mother shushed her up. But every Sunday she'd speak out, talking to her imaginary friends during church. The kids loved it. Got a big kick out of her.

We loved to see the Christian faith of our parents tested and tried before our eyes. They didn't kick her out. Nobody said she shouldn't come. She stayed there for years providing entertainment for us. Until one day her rope came loose and her balloon drifted up to heaven where I'm sure she sits today on the right hand of the throne of God and has forgiven us all a long time ago. People would rather I didn't talk about that back home because there are some things you're not supposed to talk about to strangers, secrets you're supposed to keep within the family. But you know, over the years of doing this show, I've come to think of the people who listen to this show as being family in a way, which is not true. which is crazy, as a matter of fact. On a level of craziness, it's right up there with Elizabeth June, talking to her Sears Roebuck pals.

I'm as crazy as she is, or was, or is. I keep expecting to see her. Maybe in Chicago. She'd be old now. I look for her. on the streets even though I know she's dead. Old woman, she'd be coming down the street pushing a grocery cart full of old clothes and Sears Roebuck catalogs.

If I ever see her, I mean to give her some money, say a blessing, put my arm around her. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. For all the women are strong, including her, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.


Other mentions/discussions during the show

Visiting old LW people who have moved to Chicago. Cleaning up the house for guests. Studs Terkel in Diet Squad which stops people from smuggling steaks and junk foods into Chicago. Singing greetings.


This show was Rebroadcast on 1989-10-07

Notes and References

1982.10.04 Chicago Tribune / This is a Berto tape. Complete. Audio-Good. It was rebroadcast on October 7, 1989

Archival contributors: Frank Berto


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