[undocumented]
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's been sort of cloudy and warm out there. Some of that snow has been slightly reduced, and the news in town was that Judy inquist has had to take back that car that she sold last week for $800 to a man from St Cloud who bought, at sight unseen, her old Plymouth Fury and $800 that was going to finance hers and Pastor Dave's trip down to Florida in January for the Lutheran ministers retreat, a trip that the church board is not going to finance so long as there is hunger or suffering anywhere in the world.
And she had the $800 in hand, and then this guy came tooling back in the Plymouth Fury, and they stood around and talked sort of laconic talk for a while, and he allowed us how this car was in worse condition than he'd realized or guessed, that it wasn't, it wasn't just the mysterious cough, and it wasn't just this white slime that oozes out of the out of the radiator after it's been running for about 10 minutes. He looked off in the distance the way Minnesotans do when they're talking to each other about serious matters, not making eye contact. He looked off in the distance, and he said that he'd spent $400 replacing the head gasket, and that really didn't solve his problems with this car that he had bought from her. And then he paused, that moral pause, he said, so anyway, and there was that little pause when she was expected to do the right thing. And so she did. And so she did. It's buyer beware, and there was no guarantee on this car, and she cashed his check and it was in the account, but she had no choice, because that's where we come from, is out there, where we believe in the moral pause you Lay out your complaint quietly looking off into the distance, not making eye contact. You describe your complaint, and then the other person is expected to do the right thing. It's not how our judicial system works, and the judicial system one person Accuses the other person, denies everything, and then they hammer out a compromise. But back where I come from, we operate by this assumption that other people will do the right thing if we tell them, if we don't make eye contact, and if we look off into the distance, and if we say so anyway, and we pause, so she gave him his money back. She gave him back the $800 and now this, this horrible machine, is back in her driveway. And you know, it never had any problems with this, with this grayish slime that comes up out of the radiator, and never had any problems until she put this car up for sale. It's a fact. It was like the car couldn't bear to lever. It's like he was trying to hold on any way that it could. So it developed all of these problems. And she'd had that car. She had that car back for three days this week, and the problem cleared up.
Took it down to Bunsen motors, Clint looked at it, couldn't find anything wrong with it whatsoever. So the plan right now is that the ink fists are going to drive down to Minneapolis in two cars for Thanksgiving to her fathers and pastor. How grood will be doing the Thanksgiving morning service at at Lake Wobegon Lutheran, which is a terrible thing to do to a congregation, but there he is. He's anxious for the work a man who wears monotony like a badge, and he will lead the faithful over the hoops slowly, and they will drive in two cars down to Minneapolis, and they will leave the Plymouth Fury with her father in South Minneapolis, who will try to sell this. And maybe it won't slime up down in Minneapolis. Or maybe, if it does, the person who buys it won't be able to find her so easily.
Or maybe you don't have a moral obligation to people from South Minneapolis. I don't know she's hoping for the best, because they sure need to go to Florida in January. There's a lot of traffic South out of Lake Wobegon to Minneapolis, a lot more than there ever was. A lot of these kids, you know, who grow up and and move away. They faithfully come back for Thanksgiving year after year. Now they're in their 50s, and they sort of want to have Thanksgiving at their house down in the city, and maybe do things a little differently, maybe grill Turkey, maybe not have turkey, or have turkey pasta or something.
So the old folks are having to drive down and have Thanksgiving in Minneapolis, there's going to be a geezer caravan of about 20 cars. They will be meeting Thanksgiving morning at the chatterbox cafe for coffee at 9am and take off soon thereafter for the for the two hour drive to Minneapolis that takes everybody else an hour and 10 minutes, and they will be heading south for that.
I remember doing that when I was a kid. Our family would drive from Lake Wobegon down to Minneapolis when my want, Myrna and my uncle Earl moved down to the suburb of Richfield, just south of Minneapolis. They were two favorite relatives of ours. We loved them a lot, and so we were very glad to make the long trip down to see them on Thanksgiving Day, my aunt, Myrna, was a slender woman who had tremendous intensity and nervous energy that kids love to see in adults, because it's like our own energy. And Thanksgiving was a great day for her. It was sort of her English Channel. It was, it was like her Mount Everest. And she brought to the making of this meal a passion and a drama and a dedication that was hard to believe if you didn't see her. Every year she worked so intensely hard at it to raise this meal to her own very high standards every event in the competition must somehow attain a perfection that would be worthy of us. She worked away in the kitchen with my mother, serving as a consultant on certain things and the rest of. Went down to the basement, where my uncle Earl kept his television down in the family room with the naughty pine paddling. And my uncle Earl sat and lived and died with the Green Bay Packers on television Thanksgiving afternoon. He was a big man. My uncle Earl, he'd been a tackle in high school, and then he'd added some to his figure since then, and he really got into a game in a big way. We let him. We let him have the couch all to himself, because he tended to get carried away, and sometimes he'd move laterally with the play. Watch me.
He was a big man, but he was quick to get up to his feet when the Packers were betrayed by inept or corrupt officiating, take your choice or or shot themselves in the foot with bonehead plays or poor strategy, he'd be up on his feet. He'd be talking to the referees on the screen, holding, he'd say, Holding, holding. They've been holding all afternoon, and now you call him. He just put his arm out, and that guy walked into it, and he'd explain to us the difference between holding and just holding your arm out as a guy walks into it. He explained this to us carefully so that we'd be able to understand this.
And he sat and watched them as my aunt, Myrna upstairs, was whipping this dinner, whipping this dinner towards the goal line, moving it ahead each unit the candied yams down on the right wing and the mashed potatoes on the left as this phalanx of food was moving down the field towards pay dirt, and somehow, she always made it right at the beginning of halftime. So we all trooped up and we sat down around the table for this amazing feast, my uncle Earl at the end, and my dad next to him, and my cousin Earl Jr, and my cousin bud, and Aunt Myrna had a chair at the other end, though she never sat down or ever used it, and my mother sat next to her on her Right, and then all of our family. There were six of us, the baby in my mother's lap, and the twins and my sister Phyllis and my brother Rudy and I, and we sat around the table as she brought out this amazing feast. And Uncle Earl bowed his head and he gave thanks for it.
And despite terrible officiating, terrible coaching and some real weaknesses in the lineup, still there was a lot to thank the Lord for and he thanked the Lord for in a quiet voice, and we sat in to this amazing feast, the dinner of all dinners. And it always was magnificent, completely predictable. Everything exactly the same, from the watermelon pickles and the cranberry the potatoes, the candied yams, the turkey the same every year, the same dressing. And yet, perfection. Perfection is always surprising, always when you find it, and we found it in this dinner we ate in complete silent bliss and delight as my aunt hovered over us, making sure that we would not starve, hovered over us, mercilessly criticizing her own work, grieving for the dressing that somehow, somehow had turned out too dry, somehow the turkey, who knows why or how, it just had not quite measured.
We understood this. We understood that this was her way of expressing humility, and it was also her way of keeping up her interest in a game she had won a long time ago. She laid out the table for us, and dinner always extended past half time, of course, and so it was sort of a struggle to keep uncle Earl there at the table, even though we were sitting up in the dining room, he could hear very clearly the tiny, tinny voice of the announcer on the TV set down in the family room in the corner of the basement, so that in the midst of the hubbub of dinner he might suddenly leap to his feet. It and say, passing third down two yards, he throws a pass. I can't believe it.
We'd have to settle him down and hold on to him until we couldn't hold any longer, and then he was down the basement for the rest of it. That's thanksgiving to me. Always be Thanksgiving, that beautiful dinner and all of that chaos and then the lethargy that follows the aimlessness and wandering around in the backyard, tossing a ball around, killing time, then a second sort of listless attack on the leftovers, endless goodbyes, endless goodbyes in the kitchen and again on the porch and again in the driveway, leaning on the car in the dark. More goodbyes after we get into the car, all of us getting into the car, my dad driving my mother in the front seat, the baby on her lap, the twin sitting in between the two of them, the twin with the large head that I love to reach over the front seat and bonk On the top, because it makes an interesting sound like a watermelon.
And the four of us in the back seat, my sister sits by the window, which is her privilege, and I sit next to her, and Next to me sits the other twin, the one who gets easily car sick. And then my big brother sits by the other window, which is his privilege as the oldest, and we start the long drive home, the eight of us wedged into this car in our heavy wool coats After saying interminable goodbyes through the open windows. We back out and we head up the highway back to Lake Wobegon, full of food, sometimes squeezing into the car with everybody. You feel a little nervous, and you know there's going to be trouble, but leaving uncle Earl and daunt mernice after Thanksgiving, we all feel so easy and so sleepy. I lean against my sister's shoulder to see if she will allow this, and she does, and it's so nice, all tight in there, like dogs in a nest, sort of easing our way into a more comfortable position.
Eight people in as tight as we can be, driving north, oncoming cars there headlights make this brief light inside our car like ghosts passing through it. We drive north, and my mother reaches down and turns on the radio one of her favorite shows, golden years is on every Thursday night, the story of New York multi millionaires, Edna and and Elmer headland, who tired of the giddy social world and the empty values of the big city, moved to a small town called now, then and and hiding their vast wealth, they open a coffee shop called the golden rule, where they serve their community and enjoy the life of now, then and anonymously give away immense gifts to friends and neighbors. This is the show.
I'm more interested in the giddy, social world than I am in this show, but this is my mom's show and and my mom controls the radio. Children did not have tuning rights back then, so we said and listened to it. And it's an episode in which a young man has come into the coffee shop. His name is Jim, and he's complaining about what a dead end now then is what a what a end of the road. It's just a backwater here, and nothing's ever going to happen to anybody who lives and now then he can't wait to get out of here, but nobody will lend him the train fare to get out. Nobody will give him the money. And there's ed, and she's saying, you want a little more coffee, Jim, she pours some more coffee. He has no idea that she is the great benefactor of this town. He's sitting there and he's complaining, and nobody's ever done anything for Him. His parents never gave him piano lessons, and he knows that he's got talent, but he never had piano lessons, and now it's just sheer frustration. He feels this music inside him trying to get out. And what can he do? Nothing. He sits there, and there's Elmer saying, you want a little more coffee, Jim, you want a little more coffee? And Jim says, Yeah, might as well drink more coffee. Nothing else to do in a town like this. And you listen and you just know that Jim is not going to get today's bequest, the large sum of money that Etna and Elmer give out on every broadcast, anonymously to a deserving person is not going to go to this guy, although I do sympathize with him as we ride north to Lake Wobegon in the dark, squeezed in tight, I sympathize with him. You know that the money is instead going to go to the cheerful and friendly and patient waitress, Tina, whose father needs a back operation, and who has simply put all of her trust in the Lord and is knows that everything will turn out for the best.
I listen to this show as we drive north, thinking about the unfairness of this that somebody who needs something so badly and wants it so bad, wants it so bad, is not going to get it, and the person who's cheerful patient could be All right without it, she's going to get it. This seems to me like a terrible dilemma in life, and I have an idea which side of this great divide I am going to fall on, but I'm too tired to think too hard about this,
I lean against my sister, and then to see if she will permit this, I lay my head in her lap, and she does not push me away. And this is so sweet, listening to the radio, riding down the highway, flashes of light come through the car, and my father's Sure, Swift driving that I would recognize even without looking at the road, I can feel him steering the car as I drift off to sleep and awaken briefly later hearing my parents talking quietly in the front seat about Earl and Myrna and some other relatives and some relatives and something about an elopement and a secret marriage that I never had heard about in our family, a kid always learns more if you keep your eyes shut.
I'm too tired to stay tuned, and I drift off, and I'm carried into my bed and put to sleep again. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the men are good looking. All the children are above average, and all the women are strong.
Dispatch Nov 19 1991 Ithaca Journal Nov 23 1991