Stan Boreson, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Robert Johnson, Peter Ostroushko.
[undocumented]
Anderson, Ella Chatterbox Cafe Coach Magandance Tolefson, David Tollefson, Florence Tollefson, Mary
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's been cool up there this last week. Reminds you that fall is coming on and in fact about 20, 25 high school boys have been working out down at the football field under the eye of Coach Magandance. They're doing a series of calisthenics and taking their laps until they aren't so cool anymore. They lie on the grass and look up at the sky and feel hot and wonder what they're doing there with this strange man shouting at them so loud.
I imagine a lot of those boys are imagining some other kind of life for themselves as they lie there in the grass and wondering why they did this. It's been cool at night, cool at night so that it has the farmers a little bit worried up around Lake Wobegon as well.
It's been a great year for them, great summer so far. But when things go well it makes farmers nervous and they find other things to worry about. Even though the oats and the wheat come in great and the rain has been perfect, about a half inch a week steady as you could possibly ask for, still it's been a little cool. And they worry about that. Sit around the Chatterbox Cafe murmuring over their coffee cups to each other. Yeah, it's been cool that night. Kind of makes you wonder if we might not have an early frost. Boy, that'd be something, wouldn't it? Boy, that'd just wipe out everything. That'd be a disaster.
Next week, big frost, that would do nobody any good. It wasn't cool at night. It's not doing the beans any good. Yeah, the oats and the wheat were good. The rain has been good, too. But we could use a little bit more. Fill out the ears on the corn a little bit. Could be a little bit better.
It's good, but it could be better, if you know what I mean, because you never know. So it could be better, is what they've been talking about in the Chatterbox Cafe. Other people were talking, women, were talking a little bit about the notice that was in the Lake Wobegon-Harold Star last week.
A lot of people noticed that, and particularly women. Down the bottom of page 4, down below the 4-H notes, it said, Thank you, in large type, and said, I would like to sincerely thank all of my family and my friends for their prayers, visits, and gifts of flowers and food to me during my recent stay at the hospital. I don't know how to thank you. Manga talk. Florence Tollefson. Virginia Inkvist called up Arlene Bunsen after she saw that and said, was Florence in the hospital recently? Arlene didn't think so. They called up Marilyn Pallerud. They called up Marlis Diener.
They hadn't heard anything about Florence being in the hospital. It started to feel worse by the minute. Arlene called up Pastor Inkvest, thinking that for sure he would know, the minister would know, if one of his parishioners had been in the hospital recently. He said he didn't know. He would think he would know too, Val Tollefson,
Florence's husband, has been Pastor Inkvist's adversary there on the church board for years. So maybe Val wouldn't tell him if Florence went in the hospital. Maybe he would get some other minister to come see her, afraid that Pastor Inkvist would feed her a liberal line of theology while she was too weak to resist take advantage of her or something while she was under an anesthetic. The Bible must be read in historical context. The Bible must be read in historical context. No, no, I know it's not right. Historical context. Historical context. He was afraid of that. Maybe, I don't know. But they began to feel bad about it. Virginia and Arlene did. to think that maybe Florence had been in the hospital and nobody had known about it, and she had felt so lonesome and so miserable that she'd put an ad in the paper thanking them in order to shame people. Arlene said, no, I don't think Florence is the sort of person who would do that, but it does seem as I think of it that she was gone for a while back around the middle of July. You don't suppose? Virginia saw Florence down at Ralph's that day and came up and said, Florence, it's good to see you. I've been thinking about you. How are you feeling? Florence gave her a strange look, stood up from the frozen food chest where she was looking through the hams and gave Virginia a strange look. It was the tenth time she'd been asked that question. Florence wondered, what's wrong with me? Am I sick? Just old? Am I gaining weight? Finally, Arlene called her up and came right out and asked her.
She said, Florence, you been in the hospital lately and didn't tell us? Florence said no. Turned out it was an old item. Went back ten years to an operation of Florence's that she had that nobody ever knew what it was Harold Starr down at the newspaper he's got a lot of stuff even older than 10 years sitting on his desk sometimes old stuff leaks into the newspaper surprising every time it happens open up the paper and there is your high school honor roll and you still not on it 25 years later, no smarter than you were.
Turn to the next page, your grandma's dead, again. Once wasn't enough, she came back, had another funeral. Same pallbearers. So Florence hadn't been in the hospital. Arlene still wondered about that time back the middle of July, though. It seemed as if Florence and Val were gone for a while. Where were they?
Had they gone on a trip and not told anybody? Well, no, they hadn't. They had been planning to. Back in June, Val and Florence Tollefson had been planning to drive out to Mount Canaan, Washington to pick up a trunk of papers and belongings of his father, David Tollefson, who died out there in Mount Canaan back in April.
Val had not gone to the funeral out in Washington, and in fact hadn't told anybody in Lake Wobegon that his father had died. I think a lot of people in town just assumed his father had died a long time ago. He was going to go out and pick up this trunk in June, but he got cold feet.
But he wanted it because he thought there might be some Taliesin family history in it. So he wrote to them out in Mount Canaan, and they shipped the trunk to him like Wobbegon, and it arrived about the middle of July. He brought it inside, and he put it down in the basement, down by the wash tubs where it sat, unopened for a few days. He couldn't bring himself to open it. David Tollefson, born in Lake Wobegon, back around the turn of the century. He and Mary Tollerud were married in 1927. Val was born in 1928. And in 1946... David, who was a carpenter, went to work on the header's house just about a quarter mile west of where they lived out on the county road to add on a couple of rooms for the headers. It took him three months to do it, adding on a bedroom and an extension of the living room, including a stone fireplace.
And at the end of the three months, in the fall, David Tollefson got in his Ford Coupe and late one night he came by the Hedder home and he picked up Mrs. Hedder who was waiting for him at the end of the driveway and they drove west. And they were never seen again. And like Wobegon.
That was in 1946. Ten years passed before he even tried to get in touch with his family back in Minnesota. David Tollefson. He wrote to his sister, Ella Anderson, and they corresponded for a while. But nobody in Lake Wobegon wanted to hear about him. And when Ella Anderson saw Mary Tollefson one morning after church and told her that David was well, Mary turned on her heel and didn't speak to Ella for more than a year. David Tollefson was completely forgotten in Lake Wobegon, even though he was a steady worker. And even though he played the violin for dances, and he knew a lot of jokes, and he was handsome and polite, and even though children loved him, and when he stooped down and held out his arms, children used to run to him and he'd scoop them up in the air. Even though he was loved and admired, When he went off with another man's wife, leaving her child and four of his own, there was no doubt which side Lake Wobegon would come down on. And he was eliminated from memory and history. And the space that he occupied in that town was blank. Val was 18 years old at the time, and when his father left and it was clear that he was not coming back, he took every gift his father had ever given him and he threw it away. He burned it, he threw it away, including a new deer rifle, his most precious possession. The boy took it down to the lake late one night. and went out to the end of the dock and he took the rifle by the barrel in both hands and swung it way back and swung it way out and up and it sailed into the dark and he heard the splash way out there and he fell down on his knees and he cried
So when he looked at this trunk of his father's things, it took him a long time to open it. They were the first things of his father that he had seen in 40 years. He opened it and there on top were some Sunday school papers and hymnals, some books, Bible study. some certificate from the Zion Lutheran Church in Mount Canaan, Washington, thanking David Tollefson for many years of faithful service. Val felt weak as he looked at these things, handwriting that he recognized even after 40 years as being his own father's who had run away from him.
There was a little envelope with golden hair, a ringlet of hair inside in the trunk. And on the outside of the envelope was written Val. There was a Bible. And on the inside of the Bible was the name of Mrs. Hedder. Val had never known her first name before. The woman that his father had run off with never knew her first name. Agnes. Amazing. To know it after all these years. Agnes. He felt guilty in a way knowing her by her first name. Felt it was unfaithful to his mother in a way that he should say her name Agnes. There were tools, carpenter tools in the trunk. There was a poem that his father had written to Agnes. His father had never written him a poem, but here was a poem written to her. There were letters. There was a little wooden box. He knew it was his father's. It was so well fitted.
A little box made of maple wood. and a carving in the top of Norwegian trolls fishing under a bridge. He opened this box which opened perfectly and inside in 12 little compartments were fishing lures, flies, trout flies that his father had tied. Beautiful purple and blue and green flies like diamonds, like gems, little gems lying there in the box. and letters. Letters that his father had written back in 1946 to the woman he ran away with. written on old school tablets in pencil letters folded many times and parts of them faded out parts of them where it looked as if water had gotten on them as if maybe he'd folded these letters to hide them for her to find to hide them in a tree or hide them under a doormat or hide them in the stone chimneys letters addressed to my darling Agnes, my dear Agnes. My dear Agnes, he wrote, something has taken hold of my heart and though I know you are right when you say no, I cannot turn away from this wonderful feeling or else I would be sad and I would be of no use to anybody.
When I am with you I feel alive and quick and happy and when I am away from you I feel sad and wonder where you are and I walk out of the house and down the road so that I can say your name. Val felt weak reading this. The story always had been that Mrs. Hedder had lured his father away, had seduced him. And here it wasn't true. He could only look at these things for a little while and then he had to go upstairs and go for a walk. And as he went for a walk, Florence came downstairs and looked at them. It was clear that
When David Tollefson ran away with Mrs. Hedder in 1946, first of all, they stopped and got married in South Dakota the next day, which made them guilty of bigamy, but perhaps they thought adultery was worse. So they got married and they went straight out to Mount Canaan, Washington.
And evidently they'd gotten right to work out there and settled down to become good citizens and were. And were loved and admired and respected in that town and had done good work. And people had honored them for it. It was all there in the trunk in the papers. But Florence was especially interested in these letters, old love letters from 1946. This terrible passion that had seized two people who had lived so many years a quarter mile away from each other. Florence could almost imagine her father-in-law going to work at the Hedder house. And as he was building the addition, and as the walls came up, as he framed them in, he's noticing Mrs. Hedder. But maybe the woman came out and talked to him. Maybe the woman came out and asked him how things were going. Maybe she made him meals every day. but as the walls rose and as he finished the bedroom and the living room and the fireplace he knew that he was in love with her and must have felt how could he have felt to work on a man's house and know as you finish the bedroom that you are taking his wife away She read the poem. Florence read the poem.
She had never seen a poem that one person had written for another that wasn't in a book. Agnes, I write this poem with a trembling heart Hoping to reach the end so you will see The carpenter who kissed you last night in the dark Remembers you by day and writes you poetry I have tried so long to think of the right words. But last night, my hands around your waist, lying in the grass beneath the universe, I could not speak at all, but only touch your face. Whatever I can give you that is good, whatever love this moment will allow, this moment in our sweet old neighborhood, a village of romance to me right now, Agnes, accept whichever of my gifts you can and know I love you heart and hand. Florence looked at him. Then Val came back from his walk. They sat down on the basement steps. Val said, I've made up my mind. He said, I'm going to burn it, all of it, everything.
I've seen it. He says, that's all that matters. I've looked at it. Nobody else has to see this. Florence said, well, it's yours if that's what you want to do. Val said, I've decided. He said he went off and he lived the life that he chose to live. And it's not for me to judge him.
God is judging him, I'm sure. I don't stand in judgment of my father. But on the other hand, I don't need to keep his memory alive either. He gave up the right to that when he left here. I'm going to burn it. She said everything. even the palm. He said everything.
She helped him take it out to the car. They loaded everything into little cardboard boxes, took them out one by one and two by two and put them in the trunk, the back seat, the floor of the front seat, filled up the car with his father's stuff and drove out to the dump, up to the dump and way back to the back corner, back behind the birch trees and the brush and spread it all out down there in the trash. And he put a match to it and it went up like dry straw old stuff burns fast and it was gone except for the trunk he kept that he thought he might have some use for that and he kept the tools the carpenter tools he thought they might come in handy he'd like to have them he kept the little box with the lures in it too the rest he burned everything he burned except for the poem she took that She snuck it out.
She put it in her purse. She just had never seen a poem that one person had written for another person. It was just amazing to her. And she felt guilty. Florence did. Keeping it and not telling Val about it. She doesn't have many secrets. Florence doesn't. And she's never had a guilty secret from him in the past.
But she snuck the poem out and she kept it. It was like something, like a gem, like a precious stone that you find by the highway. And it's not yours, but whoever it was who had that, they've gone on. And what do you do with it? It sits there. You can't throw it away.
What do you do with it? She carried that poem around in her purse for a while, and then this week she took it down to Viola down at the Historical Society. And she said, Viola, I found this in a trunk. This is a poem. Somebody around here wrote this a long time ago.
And I didn't know them, but I think it's worth saving. Viola didn't read it. She stuck it in an envelope. and wrote poem unknown on the outside and took it down the basement. And way back in the corner, back behind some old broken commodes, back among boxes of old plaques and trophies and pictures of old baseball teams and license plates and old high school yearbooks, way back in a file cabinet, a file cabinet full of old letters, she stuck it in there. That poem that began, Agnes, I write this poem with a trembling heart, hoping to reach the end so you will see the carpenter who kissed you last night in the dark remembers you by day and writes you poetry. She stuck it down in there. among letters in English and Norwegian and German from people going back years and years writing letters about the weather and about crops and worries about money and about children. And there those two lovers lie. I have tried so hard to think of the right words, but last night, my hands around your waist, lying in the grass under the universe, I could not speak at all but only touch your face.
Those lovers lie now in a kind of a dry grass of old Lake Wobegon business, stuck down between the pages of an old account book of the Farmers Co-op Association. where it says that back in 1902, just as this year, they got pretty good rain.
The oats and the wheat were good, but things could have been a little bit better. That's the news from Lake Wobegon. For all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
1984.08.11 Star Tribune