Butch Thompson Trio, Garrison Keillor. Robin and Linda Williams, Seldom Scene,
Old Family Radio ( Garrison Keillor ) I'll dance at your wedding (Butch Thompson Trio ) Mabel's Dream (Butch Thompson Trio ) Deed I Do (Butch Thompson Trio ) Memories of You (Butch Thompson Trio ) Cheater's Love (Robin and Linda Williams ) Freight Train Blues (Robin and Linda Williams ) Red Clay Georgia Dirt (Robin and Linda Williams ) Train to San Antone (Seldom Scene ) Hearts Overflowing (Seldom Scene ) Alabama Jubilee (Seldom Scene ) Lay Down Sally (Seldom Scene ) Take Him In (Seldom Scene ) Everyone Knew (Seldom Scene ) City of New Orleans (Seldom Scene ) After Midnight (Seldom Scene ) Killy Kid (Seldom Scene )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Eternal Lap Cat Cemetery) Chatterbox Cafe Helsinki Saunas Krebsbach, Judy Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Sidetrack Tap White Cloud Bread
...Time to come out and talk a little bit about Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown. The place I intend to go back to when all this is done. Little town up there in the exact geographical center of Minnesota. Settled by Unitarian missionaries, who went out there in the Civil War years trying to convert the Ojibwe Indians through the use of interpretive dance.
They went back to Boston and wrote books about it. They were followed into that site by Norwegian Lutherans who were on their way back from North Dakota. And then by German Catholics who had misread their maps, but who refused to admit it, and stayed there. Stayed there as if it was the place they'd intended to be all along. Sort of the case with the Norwegians too. They arrived and there is a point in town where there's a statue of the unknown Norwegian which refers to the fact that the guy who modeled for it left before they got his name, but it marks the spot where the 1st Norwegian settlers arrived and they fell on their knees to thank God for bringing them to this place, and upon falling to their knees they noticed that this place was kind of rocky.
But I'm stuck on. They stayed on and I don't know how- I don't know- how some of those people back in the early days they worked like animals and how they ever survived and kept some light-heartedness and some fun in life. Somehow they did. They were great people, our ancestors.
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, I guess it has. I don't know because I've been gone all week though I tried to call this afternoon and tried to call my parents. Actually, it's last night, not this afternoon, because Elizabeth down to the phone company would not put the call through. She said “they're probably asleep.” She said “I'm not going to wake him up.”
I said I wanted to- I wanna talk to them.
And she said, “well, there was plenty of time to do that earlier, wasn't there?”
I said “well, I thought maybe they'd want to talk to me. I've been gone all week” and she said “well” she said “I will take down the number where you are so that if they call me and ask I'll know where to send them.”
Phone service has never been an urgent item in Lake Wabogon- was nothing that anybody ever depended on it. In fact with Elizabeth and her sister Catherine at the switchboard there in their kitchen. It is a lot like having a public address system- I'm broadcasting on the radio to make a phone call in that town and there are people who claim that they can tell when one of them is listening in, and it's not exactly a click it's a kind of an echo in the line, but those people have learned too late- and they can't... they have been on the phone and pouring out some deep dark secret only to hear Elizabeth or her sister say “oh for heaven sakes. Oh my goodness, how ridiculous.”
And they say “Elizabeth! You’re listening in. shame on you. Catherine. Shame on you” and they say “well. That's our job to listen. How else we're going to know when you're done with the phone?”
I think they sort of regard that switchboard is something like having a radio in their kitchen, there, they tune in different calls and are probably big fans of the Inkvuists phone calls, and have a few other patrons that they follow. But they don't repeat it. They don't repeat it.
You ask any one of those, either one of those women what's new in town and what's going on, and she will draw herself up to her full height and touch the bun on the back of her head- either one of them- and say “I am not a gossip.”
So they hear the news, but they don't repeat it. Because that might tend to kill off the source of entertainment. But everybody knows- everybody knows anyway. You don't keep any secrets in a town like that. It's one of the lovely things about it. Is that we all know about the same stuff there. And it's not that we know that the Krebsbach girl Judy Krebsbach had a baby out of wedlock. That's not what I'm talking about. In fact, she didn't. It just wasn't born far enough into wedlock- was the problem. Baby was severely premature, but that's not the important thing or the fact that Mr. Tolleson is trying to give up chewing weeds. It’s a habit that he said for about 20 years he always used to see that man where the stem stuck in his mouth and big wad of green stuff in his cheek. He's trying to give it up now. Lord knows what he'll substitute for it.
It's not that. But we all know who we are. And we all know where we're from. And when we look about us at that little bluish green lake with the pines and the scrub oak so it is slowly toppling into it and the forest of maples and elms and apples and birches and poplars- that forest that is our town and in amongst the trees, the white houses and some stuccoes and one brick and a few odd ones, yellows and greens, and the one bright red House in town. Old Mrs Inkvuist had a dream that she lived in a house that color and the next day she had it painted. Look about us at the big yards and we hear dogs barking and we smell fish frying on a Friday night.
We know all these things you see. And we don't have to comment on them. We don't have to say that it's lovely or it's beautiful because we know that it is. I seem to find myself among a lot of people who whenever something beautiful appears they have to account for it. Every time I see something that is so lovely that it takes my breath away it seems there is somebody else sitting next to me who is just taking a big deep breath so that they can tell me about it. And describe it as if we needed too.
I think of Friday nights in October, sitting out in the backyard with my family and we've brought our army blankets out and we're staying out as late as we possibly can, even until we see our breaths. And next door Mrs Forsmand calls her children into bed, always in the same order every night for 20 years.
“Donald”, she calls “Janet, Judy.”
We see the Bunsen boy ride by on his bicycle. The boy who was hit by a truck last summer and was almost killed. And now he's alive and he's as mean and nasty as he ever was. We hear people talking in their houses and the sounds are far off. Music playing. Somebody- a child is playing a Chopin waltz over and over and over again. The same section.
And then the bells rang at the church across the street. Nobody has to comment on that. Nobody has to say that the bells remind them of something. They don't. The bells are the bells. The bells ring. And it's time to go in.
It's peaceful. Being with your own people whom you can be quiet with. We all talk too much. I talk way too much. Sometimes I feel like shining a flashlight towards the stars. Never be able to say it. Because what is most amazing. You know it and I know it. And we know that it is in the silences, and it's in the space between sentences. And that's why I like being from a quiet town.
That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking and all the children, every single one of them, is above average.
1984-06-23 1987-08-15
This is a Sliker taper. Complete. Audio Good. Berto also has. The live broadcast a PHC tour. October 16, 1981 was a Friday. It was rebroadcast on August 15, 1987.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto