Bryan Bowers,
[undocumented]
Chatterbox Cafe
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, especially with Gary and Leroy gone most of this past week. The town's constables or professional peace officers as it says on the certificates that they keep clipped to the visors on the cruiser. They're off in Worthington, attending a three day seminar on counterintelligence. I don't know how that's going to come in handy, but I guess somehow. A couple of fellows- just always seems to be quieter when they're gone. They're good boys, but they do tend to have a way of drumming up new business for themselves they... This last spring here they had Bud, the maintenance man spend the better part of a week painting diagonal painting stripes all up and down Main Street on both sides so that they could get into the parking ticket business.
Ordinarily in Lake Wobegon, it wouldn't matter if you left your car in the middle of the street with the keys in it and the motor running, nobody would bother it- it'd just sit there until it ran out of gas. But they put in the parking stripes and they also tried to get a stoplight, which Lake Wobegon has never had after they attended a seminar on traffic control. They came back with that idea. Though there isn't much traffic to speak of and like Wobegon, they wanted to be in control of it.
Well, at least that's been put off for a while and Bud spending almost a whole week putting in the painting stripes meant that he didn't get around to fixing the potholes on Main Street, which has almost completely eliminated the speeding problem. So there's some good in everything almost.
But they certainly do not keep the peace in Lake Wobegon- those two do not, they sit and observe the peace, that's what they do.
I'm not sure what keeps the peace in Lake Wobegon, what keeps that town on an even keel and I don't know the people there know. But I do know that most of them feel that whatever it is, it is very delicate and it is very fragile and that the least thing that you do that is wrong may danger that balance or whatever you might call it. That if you were to go uptown and not say hello to people and not stop and talk to people.. even that would do some damage to this delicate fabric of society that holds everything together and it makes it possible for it to get... It's not like that in the city. A city this size is apt to seem very large and impersonal and sort of like a machine to people so they feel there's no damage done and taking a run at it now and then. Flouting the law. Doing something antisocial, in fact, it may even seem romantic and rebellious to people. Maybe the people who drop garbage in the street, feel that they're making a statement of some sort.
But people in Lake Wobegon don't see it that way. I think it's very delicate. In like Wobegon for example, Mr. Eckberg leaves the feed and seed untended for most of the day. He doesn't have time to be there all day. He's almost 70. He doesn't have much time period. He wants to be out fishing. He doesn't want to sit behind that counter, so he leaves the door open. The lock never worked anyway, but he leaves it open and he leaves a sign on the rolltop that says help yourself, thou shalt not steal. And people do, and there's no problem with it. Of course, if you are the customer and the sales clerk all in one sometimes you do talk yourself into taking a discount, but not much. Not much. People don't do it because they know that if they discourage that old man, he's going to go out of business. He's just going to quit and lock it up. He can't sell it to anybody because they know he doesn't make any money at it they know the house that he lives in. And that would mean about a 40-50 mile round trip just to get yourself some fertilizer or shovel or a piece of harness. It wouldn't be worth it. That's one reason why larceny is no big problem in Lake Wobegon.
And the other is that it's a town of churchgoers. It's kind of a theocracy, in a way. Divided evenly between Lake Wobegon Lutheran and Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. And it's true that churchgoing people have their problems and sometimes take on more guilt than is good for a person. And sometimes you just think that both Pastor Ingvist and Father Emil could do a lot better job of preaching the doctrine of forgiveness of sins. A lot of times they make it sound as if God has a kind of a plan of installment payments. And I think about the Olsen boy in that regard- a wonderful boy and lead a quiet life right up to the age of 18 when he was attracted to Inga the waitress down at the Chatterbox Café- and got her to go to a movie with him and then to sit with him in his dad’s pickup down by the depot under the cottonwood trees. And just at the moment in time- a moment I'm sure that is forever fixed in time and that boy's memory- just as he reached toward the gold medallion that hung at the end of a long chain around her neck, to ask “this sure looks nice. Where did you get this?’- At that exact moment, about 200 yards away the grain elevator blew up- an explosion that was seen for three miles- heard for five- forever engraved in that boy's heart, and I'm sure that someplace he's still making installment payments on that one. I'm sure he hasn't forgotten it. I don't know where he is, he moved away he doesn't write.
But there's one thing about a town that's made up of churchgoing people, and that is that every single one of them knows for a fact that God is watching them everything they do every single moment. God is studying them. And we may not know a great deal about God, but we do know there are things that do not amuse him in the slightest. It doesn't entirely eliminate wrongdoing but it does cut down on the sneakiness.
If you're going to sin, you may as well do it boldly out in the open in front of everybody. Doesn't matter if other people know about it. It's God who knows about it anyway, and he's the one you got to reckon with. And if you don't believe in God or don't know if you do or not, you might as well say it out loud 'cause God knows what you're thinking. You can see it. I'll tell you it helps keep the peace in a way we may never understand.
Well, that's taken me off in a different direction here. I'm meant to come out and give you the news from Lake Wobegon, but there isn't much and that's about all there is in Lake Wobegon in Minnesota where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking and all the children are above average.
Fort Worth Star Telegram Aug 16 1980
1980.08.15 Star Tribune / Audio of the News available as a digital download.