[undocumented]
Gary and Leroy Krebsbach, Wally Statue of the Unknown Norwegian
This transcription may have been auto-created from the audio. Can you help improve the text? Email us!
Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. About the only thing of note that has happened there this past week is the fact that the Christmas tree came down. The Big Norwegian spruce that was up since the week before Christmas and the little square at the little park in front of the statue to the unknown Norwegian. Came down here on Thursday night and a high wind- fell down as a matter of fact- narrowly missing Wally Krebsbach, who was on his way home from the Sidetrack Tap at 10:15 and who had paused there in the park by the statue to alleviate the discomfort that was caused by the fact that he had just downed four big schooners of beer at the Sidetrack.
I don't know if anyone will ever know exactly what happened, but I'm sure that you men know that a person who is engaged in that business is in a very relaxed state. And so when this great thing loomed out of the darkness and fell down directly in front of him he did not move nor leap away, but simply stood there and continued doing what he was doing.
Which is what Gary and Leroy- Lake Wobegon’s professional peace officers- saw when they heard the tinkling of the decorations as the tree fell and pulled up to the park in the squad car, and shone the spotlight in his direction. They immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had pulled down the tree with his own hands and was desecrating it. And they became even more suspicious when he ducked his head and took off at a fast trot. They were incensed, they turned on the flashing lights and the siren, and they give chase.
Now, Wally is not known as being particularly swift on his feet. But the thought of being arrested for what he imagined they thought he was doing and having his name in the paper and the humiliation that it would cause his wife and his children put the hot coals to his feet and he took off across yards and arrived home and dashed upstairs and climbed into bed and awoke his wife with his heavy breathing and told her that it was only a misunderstanding and that he would explain it to her later as they heard the sound of the siren as Gary and Leroy went up one street and down the other.
They woke up everybody in town. All of the lights in every house in town was on except for the Krebsbach's home, which, if Gary and Leroy had been reading their Crime Stoppers textbook, they would have known that was a suspicious sign. They woke up Mayor Bunsen, who pulled on a coat over his PJs and got in his car and finally stopped them. Got them to turn off the siren, the flashing lights. They told him what they had seen. And Clint figured there was either a very complicated explanation or a very simple one. And he decided that at that hour of the evening he would vote for the simple.
He said “boys, let's just forget it and go home and go to bed.”
Mrs Krebsbach took pretty much the same position. She said “I don't want to know. And if I should ever ask, don't tell me."
So ignorance wins out again in Lake Wobegon. But there are some people in that town who would dearly love to talk to some other people and get the answers if only they knew who to talk to.
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 are above average. So the tree’s down anyway...
1980.01.26 St Cloud Times / Audio of the News available as a digital download. "One of the very first, if NOT the first Lake Wobegon monologue broadcast"