Butch Thompson Trio, Kate MacKenzie, Garrison Keillor, Kate MacKenzie, Leo Montgomery, Peter Ostroushko. Stoney Lonesome, Butch Thompson,
Walking in my sleep (Stoney Lonesome , Kate MacKenzie , Stoney Lonesome ) The Land Where No Cabins Fall ( Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson Trio , Stoney Lonesome , Garrison Keillor ) Eight to the bar ( Leo Montgomery ) Georgia ( Leo Montgomery , Butch Thompson ) Welcome to New York (Stoney Lonesome ) Stoney Lonesome special (Stoney Lonesome ) By The Side of the River of Life ( Peter Ostroushko ) Dixie Land Piano (Butch Thompson Trio ) The Goodbye Polka ( Peter Ostroushko , Stoney Lonesome , Kate MacKenzie , Garrison Keillor )
Ajua! Hot Sauce (Stoney Lonesome and Peter O sing Ajua Theme... Garrison pushes the little red bottle!) Bud's Old Fashioned Salve (Now being stocked by Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery. Theme song sung by Stoney Lonesome.) Father Emil Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery (Ralph's selection of meat and fresh vegetables is getting a little old, so get down there and buy some. New! Ralph now offers some hardware and 4 different colors of paint!)
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Oh yes. It's a long way back there, back to Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, a little town that time forgot. Some people ask me how to get there and talk about going there to visit. I don't know why. They would get that impression that they ought to from what I've said about it over the years. I tell you the thing about Lake Wobegon and visitors is that Lake Wobegon is so hard to find, so far off the beaten track, the directions are so complicated, that if a stranger shows up in town to visit, they more or less assume that they didn't know where he was going, and they have a lower opinion of you as a result. Figure you must be lost. Wobbegon is a town in which people are sort of graded according to their usefulness. And the more useful you are, the more they like you. And visitors, I'm afraid, in a town like that, come somewhere down below the Belgian horses and somewhere just above the dogs that suck eggs. So if I were you wanting to visit a little town, I'd go to one that's used to tourists. I wouldn't go there. It's even hard for me to go back. You know? I've been gone now on the road for a week, a little more than a week. So I'm kind of out of touch with the current events there. But even when I'm back home in St. Paul, I'm never sure just how much they tell me about what's happening. Because I left Lake Walpurgine 20 years ago. And when you leave, you're gone. And that's not true. And you call up home and you ask them how things are and they say oh just fine so much happened pretty quiet and you know that they would say that even if the roof were falling around their heads and life was unraveling and coming apart for them because we don't believe in complaints When I was young, I used to think that that whole world of my parents and home and the church and the town, everything I knew as a kid, was like concrete, was like rock. And I could rebel against it and make fun of it to my heart's content and not make a ripple in it, not make a dent. But as I get older, I see it now as being very fragile, along with a lot more that I always took for granted. And so when they say, we're just fine, we're okay, it makes me afraid. And when I become fearful enough, I drive up there. And I make the turn off the state highway onto the gravel and I go on a few miles, take a right there where the Holsteins are in the corner of the field. I go on there past the Sorenson's barn where it says the wages of sin or death, the gift of God is eternal life. My heart starts to beat faster and faster as I go on down past the Krebsbach's house with the white stones out at the end of the driveway and the ornamental deer in the front yard and the little bathtub shrine with the BVM in the back. And there's St. Francis Bird Feeder, which is counterweighted to keep off squirrels. And in past the Magadath's house, and in past the Olsen's house, and I'm always afraid that as I come over that last rise and go over that last, around that last bend in the road, that I'm going to see it in ruins. It'll be deserted. Burnt out shells are building and grass growing in the sidewalks and the wind blowing a few old church bulletins up the main street. I'm afraid for that town. I don't know how it survives. It's a tough little town. It's a proud town despite its checkered past. Founded now over a hundred years ago by Unitarian missionaries who came west With a vision, came out from Boston with a vision, that they could convert the Ojibwe Indians through the use of interpretive dance. I went back home to Boston to write books about it, I guess. To translate Emerson into the Ojibwe language. To be followed in to that town site there beside the lake by Norwegians who were on their way back from North Dakota. Where they had gone to found a great fishing fleet. On the banks of Great Lake Agassiz, which turned out to be several hundred thousand years prehistoric. And then later joined there by German Catholics who had misread their maps, but who refused to admit it. - Stay put. The town endured despite the great survey of 1877 when the state of Minnesota was surveyed to lay out the townships and the county roads. When the state sent out four teams of surveyors to the four corners of the state to work inward, making the first map of Minnesota, and discovered when they got to the middle and finished their job that they had surveyed more of Minnesota than there was room for before between the four boundaries. And so rather than cause consternation and inconvenience to neighboring states and Canada, they simply folded under the middle corners of the four maps. And Lake Wobegon wound up on the bottom corner. And so will not be found in the Rand McNally, nor is known to the National Geographic, but endures to this day. And as Father Emil says, "If God didn't mean us to be here, he sure went to a lot of trouble for nothing." Well, it was the feast day of St. Francis here this last weekend, and Father Nemo presided over the whole day, a holiday he would rather skip. Which includes the blessing of the animals down on Main Street in front of the Central Building, four stories high, the tallest building in town, by two stories as a matter of fact. Bring all the animals in there, some Holsteins and Heffords and some old Belgian horses and dogs and cats and fish and rabbits and gerbils and everything. For Father Emil to stand up and bless them in the name of the great patron saint of the other animal kingdoms. Father Emil was allergic to almost all those animals, other than maybe lizards or newts or salamanders. So, of course, he gets to sneering about halfway through the benediction. People are saying, bless you, Father, bless you. On up to the church they go. Holiday he would rather skip. It was also, this last weekend, the annual installation of the ancient and honorable storm windows at the Sons of Canute Temple. And the ritual house cleaning as well. At which, every year, the Grand Oya stands on the front steps and issues the call And sings out, "Oh, now's the time for all you guys to come and make this place death-y." And all the canoots assembled sing, "Oh, yeah." And they all go inside into the temple for the ritual tasting of the amber essence of the blessed hops. After about an hour, why, they call the whole thing off. It'd be dangerous for those old guys to handle a storm window at that point. I don't know when they'll get that done. Some of those boys, annual means that it takes a year, you know. Haven't just been a week, not this last week, I don't know about that, maybe it's quieted down since then, but I'm talking about the week before when Brother Bob and Sister Verna came to town for a four-day revival at the Lutheran Church. Brother Bob and Sister Verna from the Worldwide Fields of Harvest Gospel Mission in Lincoln, Nebraska. She is Pastor Inkvist's aunt, so when the Spirit calls them to come, you know, the pastor can't very well say no. Four nights running there in the church. You're expected to attend three out of four. Otherwise, you will get a pastoral call from Brother Bob, and most people would rather avoid that. I don't know what he's like up close. I hope not to find out. But I've sat under his preaching, and I'll tell you, it's without mercy. Four nights running in the Lutheran Church, and as the revival goes on, people are coming earlier and earlier so they can sit farther to the back. Brother Bob knows no time limit in his sermons. He stays up there as long as necessary. And what he thinks is necessary is to convince every single person sitting under his preaching that if they don't at the end of the service come up and kneel down right here, spend a good long time and shed some genuine tears, if they head out that back door first, a truck's going to hit them. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God is his text. And God knows it's true. But it's not the only verse in the Bible. Well, there he is. My goodness, he made himself well evident in that town all the week before last. People were glad when he left. It was the Sorensen's 40th wedding anniversary while he was there. Elsie and Harlan, married 40 years, held the party up at the Sons of Canute Temple. I don't know what got into Harlan. Evidently, with 40 years under his belt, he got overconfident. And he took a drink. Something he told Elsie long ago he'd never do. And he had a good many of them, too. He just sort of climbed in the bottle and pulled the cap over his head. Well, Brother Bob went to visit him the next morning. Probably the worst time when a person would be least receptive to the gospel. Matter of fact, Harlan was sort of lounging around his home, holding his head under his arm, hoping not to drop it, you know. Well, Brother Bob came at him with scripture. Scripture quoted nonstop in a voice like a chainsaw. Until Harlan reached for the shotgun and he put it to his own temple. And he said that if Brother Bob didn't go out the same way he came in, that he, Harlan, was gonna usher himself into eternity and take his chances. I tell you, I'm glad I wasn't there. It was the sort of week, the sort of week with Brother Bob there that you just almost rather come to Chicago. You've got to get away. You've got to get away. It's just too much. All year long, people live in the faith that this is a town of hardworking, decent, God-fearing, church-going people. And everybody is doing their best with the grace of God. To do what they have to do. And in he comes and portrays the town as kind of a Sodom and Gomorrah on the prairie. A sinkhole of debauchery and corruption and sin. A collection of whited sepulchres. Well, Father Remo kind of stands back and laughs at that. Kind of amuses him. He thinks of it as something Protestants do to each other out of boredom with an inferior theology. And I tell you, Brother Bob makes the feast day of St. Francis look good. There are times when it's too much. When it's just too much. When all this accumulated weight of old grudges and old history becomes too much for you and you have to leave. Chicago's always been an escape for me. A place where I could go and not be held accountable. Not be held accountable for five generations of family history, anyway. That's the news from Lake Lobegon, Minnesota. All the women are strong, and all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average. You're listening to a Prairie Home Companion, recorded at the Studebaker Theatre in the heart of Old Chicago.
GK talks about the Chicago Museum of Art. Chicago has black people to supply juice. The Chicago Diet Squad fights against junk foods. Butch gets questions from fans about the things he has on his piano.
Chicago Tribune Oct 11 1982
Date mentioned by GK on 1982-09-25 show / It's possible this was recorded on October 8 / Partially broadcast on February 12, 1983. Epilog: Feb 13, 1983 is a compilation show which included the 10/8 and 10/10 shows. There is, so far, no way to tell which parts are from which show and whether a monologue was repeated or unique.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl