Guy's All-Star Shoe Band, Garrison Keillor, Heather Masse. The DiGiallonardo Sisters,
Give My Regards to Tanglewood/Ut us Si Beautiful (The DiGiallonardo Sisters , Heather Masse , Garrison Keillor , Guy's All-Star Shoe Band )
Guy Noir, Private Eye (The Tanglewood Caper with Garrison Keillor, Arlo Guthrie, Fred Newman, Tim Russell, Richard Dworsky, Pat Donohue, The DiGiallonardo Sisters. )
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It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown, out there on the prairie. It’s been a beautiful, beautiful week. Beautiful. It’s been warm. Warm and sunny. It gets up in the 90’s in the afternoon, but the mornings are perfect. You wake up without an alarm clock at 5:30 in the morning, and it’s just from sheer anticipation. You wake up and you rolled right out of bed. And you wash your face and you get dressed and you go down and pour your cornflakes in the bowl. And you get to it, you get to what you are supposed to do today, because nothing significant happens when it gets above 85 degrees. We all know this. Those are the great hours, the hours of the morning. Some people claim to be unaffected by the heat, and when it gets up in the 90’s, you can see them out there in their gardens, they’re bending over, hoeing their tomatoes. But for the rest of us, for normal people, you have to take it easy in the afternoon. Anytime afternoon, after one o’clock, two o’clock, you have to take it easy. You lie down on the couch, and you have your old fan set up on the floor. You’ve been listening to that fan, to its murmur for 30 years. And it’s just a simple conditioned reflex. When you hear it, it puts you to sleep and you take, you take a nap. Or you go down in the basement, you go down into the slightly damp cool of the basement. And you spread yourself across the easy chair down there. And there’s a book that you get to look at, which you keep secretly behind a shelf of books. You wouldn’t want anybody to know that you were that interested in this, but you keep it back there. It’s a book that you never would have gone into a bookstore and asked for. But you saw it in a used bookstore once, and you took it to the counter. And the clerk, who had yellow teeth and a bad toupee, that looked like a cat had been run over by a semi-truck. The clerk looked at you and grinned. And you could tell that you had similar interests to this clerk. And here is this book, which thrills you in some perverse way. And why be coy about it. This is, this is “Fox‘s Book of Martyrs.” This is stories of the torture of French protestants by you Papists, back years and years ago. Protestants put to the flames. Read two or three of these stories on a hot day and it makes your slight sunburn feel sort of saintly, you know. They didn’t burn you, but they toasted you a little bit. And it’s suffering that was not caused by Americans – it was in the 16th and 17th centuries, so we’re in the clear on this. Somehow interesting, Because all of the plagues of summer are on us – the mosquitoes, and the mayflies, the horseflies, the deerflies. Frogs are all over, millions of frogs have come out of the universe. And there’s, no matter how careful you are, you are going to step on some, and you’ll feel their bones crunch under your feet. You’ll feel like a sociopath. Unless you stay in the basement, of course. But the mosquito bites are helped by aloe vera gel, which Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery stocks by the truckload. But they sell tons of it every week. It’s good for everything, aloe vera gel. It’s good for sunburn – you just slather it on yourself in the morning and it makes you feel fresh and clean and you sort of vibrate lightly to the smell of aloe vera. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous thing. It does have side effects. It gives people very vivid dreams. And you may be surprised at your own dream life. You have dreams about flying at low altitudes. Just you, you, covered with white feathers. Flying over fields and forests, and over farms, little towns with steeples. You’re flying over them at night and seeing the lights pass underneath you. You, who’ve always had dreams about falling, about being chased through the tall bunchgrass by men carrying spears. And you come to this precipice. “Whoa!” You come to the precipice and you feel the suction of the sea and the surf and the rocks below pull you down. And that’s when you wake up and walk around the house for three or four hours. You can’t get back to sleep. But with aloe vera gel, you are flying. You fly. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous thing. The meanest woman in Lake Wobegon died this last week. This was the big news she died on Tuesday. Patty Jo Polkett. She was sitting on her front porch. She was born a Klinkenfus and then she married a Mr. Shane Deenst and he died. And then she married a Mr. Carlson, and he died. And then she was engaged to a Mr. Deener, and he killed himself before the wedding. And then she married Mr. Polkett, and she’s been married to him for about 10 years, and he is alive, but just barely. She was sitting out there on her front porch. She was sitting in her Adirondack chair, kind of a heavy-set woman. And she was drining iced tea with a little fresh sprig of mint from her garden, in it. And she was leaning a little bit to the left. And the boy, who had batted a whiffle ball into her front yard, came walking carefully into her yard, rehearsing his apology, because she was a woman who screeched at children. “You children are driving me to a nervous breakdown. I’m not having a moment of peace. You just keep, you just, there’s no respect for old people anymore. You’re driving me to drink. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. It’s no wonder I turn to this stuff, You just driving me to the edge.” She had this screechy voice. And he walked toward her, waiting for her to screech at him. And then he saw she was leaning to one side, and her eyes were open. And his dog noticed too. And his dog, who had held back, walked up to the porch and sniffed her. Which nobody had ever done before. And the dog, out of deference to the deceased, lowered his head and put his tail between his legs, and he walked off. The boy went and told his dad that something was wrong with Mrs. Polkett. His father looked over, and could see her on her Adirondack chair and said, “No, she’s just sleeping,” Well, the boy knew the difference between death and just sleeping. So he called the constables, Gary and Leroy, who were just finishing up lunch down in the Chatterbox Café. They said, “We’ll call the fire department,” and so they did. And a truck rolled up in front of Mrs. Polkett’s house and they stood there in the driveway for a moment, and finally, they said to the rookie, The said, “Rook. This is your job, here. You go.” Because they had all been yelled at by her. ”You are driving me over the edge to a nervous breakdown.” So, Tommy walked over and he was prepared to apologize. “I’m very sorry Mrs. Polkett. But we were just worried about you and wanted to make sure that you were alright.” And he put his hand on her shoulder, and she just leaned way over. And she released some gas, which smelled like somebody had died. And somebody had. And they got her out of there in about 10 minutes. They got her on a gurney and they put her on the fire truck and they carried her away. And just that Adirondack chair sat there, with that iced tea and the sprig of fresh mint, untouched, sat there on the arm. They went downstairs to get Mr. Polkett, who immediately assumed that she’d just gone away. And that it was something he had said or done, that it was his fault. So, he was sort of in shock. They had to put him into foster care, though he’s72. And then of course, they had to start planning the funeral. And people started to think of nice things to say about her. They said, “Well, she made good brownies.” Which is not the legacy you’d want to leave behind. Not the only one. But maybe all of us are diminished by death. And maybe it won’t be as dramatic as we, as we think. You’re the star halfback on the football team, but if you stick around town long enough, all of the people who remembered that great game, where you scored on the punt return and you won the title of the Mid-Minnesota League, and you went to state, they all will have gone away, or died. And you’ll just be “Earl,” the old mail carrier. And when you’re dead, what they’ll say about you is that, “Well, he never missed a delivery.” You had a moment of heroism. You’re a history teacher and you teach high school. And you put your heart and soul into this. And at your memorial service, a student stands up and says, “He gave me the confidence to think that I could be myself.” And you look at that kid, and that’s not the brightest kid in your class. Not even close. Maybe that’s your legacy. Well, this was the week when her brothers and sister were coming up to Lake Wobegon to spend the week at the family cabin. And of course, they were shocked, because she is a strong woman. And they never expected this, and she is only 75. But still, they thought, maybe now they’ll would come and stay at the cabin for two weeks. They love her, of course. But, she was a pain in the ass. She was always complaining about the showerhead. She was always complaining about something. She was always yelling at kids, she couldn’t stand them. And she used to spend 45 minutes in the one bathroom in the family cabin. Forty-five minutes, she would be in there. And people would be waiting, quietly, patiently. And then they would disappear out into the woods. And you just didn’t want to know. It’s not the legacy you wanted to leave behind. Now that she is gone, she has made it possible to for us to use the toilet and not have to go in the woods. But this may be the case, and in a small town, where there are no secrets, all things are known. Everybody’s life is an open book. This may be all, all too clear. One more reason not to live in Lake Wobegon. Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
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