Sean Blackburn, Fiction Brothers, Dakota Dave Hull. New Prairie Ramblers,
[undocumented]
Bunsen, Arlene Bunsen, Clarence Bunsen, Duane
It has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. This last week of August is kind of a lull before school starts and the harvest gets underway in serious, the wheat harvest. Threshing machine coming in from Breckenridge sometime the second week of September, but people just kind of drift here.
This last week, Clarence and Arlene Bunson, off on vacation, their first real one that they've taken in years. Of course they've gone on trips to visit relatives and trips with their children, but that's not a real vacation. A real one is when you go someplace by yourselves with no purpose whatsoever. And they went off to Seattle. Nobody knew why they didn't know anybody out there, but it looked good in the brochures and so they went off. And that's where they are and what they're doing out there is their business, I have no idea. They’re expected back on Tuesday. Duane is looking for them. But he's 17 years old, he's old enough to take care of himself.
And you can't be too sure. People go off and take their first real vacation in decades. If they really get away from it they might forget what it was that they got away from and never come back. They're pushing 60, but it's never too late to run away from home.
I imagine Duane be thinking about that on Tuesday morning when he has to get off to school. That's when school starts the day after Labor Day.
Lake Wobegon high school still has positions open for teachers- they are looking for a band director who can also teach 3 sections of history and advise the school newspaper. And an English teacher who will also coach the debate team and supervise the lunchroom and coach the track team.
They pay $6000 a year starting. Which isn't a lot, but there are fringe benefits, teaching in Lake Wobegon. For one thing, in Lake Wobegon the kids are brought up to do as they're told. And that's a benefit for a teacher. To be able to tell kids to shut up and they shut up and you don't have to explain it to them. Or if you want him to be independent and think their own thoughts and be on their own, you tell them to be independent and they go do it.
I always looked forward to school when I was a kid, even with the strict discipline that we had back then 30-40 years ago. Summer was always was about a month too long for me. It was kind of an experiment that didn't quite work out- a kind of a utopian experiment. I'd wake up... oh about the beginning of August and start to feel uneasy that getting up in the morning without having to be someplace at a definite time.
I'll bet you Clarence and Arlene do come back now that I think of it, I'll bet they won't stay away on vacation.
The hard part about school was that it reminded you after a long summer... reminded me I should say, that I was not among the most popular children in school and you tend to forget that during the summer because you know you hang out with a smaller bunch during the summer. If you're a kid, you're with your brothers and sisters and your pals, who live close by and you just hang out and do stuff.
But it's when you go to school that you go through the business of standing out on the playground during recess when they choose up sides for Prisoner’s Base and softball, football. Then you look both the captains in the eye and you wish just once they'd pick you close to the top- that you wouldn't have to be among that last scraggly bunch of kids- the last three or four standing there. And then one of them look over and say,” well, I'll take you”. Just once.
They well looked at me and said “I want him! I want you. I want that big tall kid with a beard there in the white suit. I want him on my team, he's my guy.”
Well, speaking about the Lake Wobegon Whippets... wound up their 1980 season this last Sunday with a doubleheader it is the end of the season for them with a record of two wins and 25 losses. They don't go on to the playoffs. This is not the National Hockey League. This is baseball. And they are out of it.
Did I say 2 victories this year? That's right. They lost the first one to the Albany Algamineshaft by a score of 10 to 6, and the Whippets came back in the nightcap and shut them- 14 to nothing. 14 zip it was an amazing game. It was just incredible. Albany is the champion of the old Sod Shanty league this year- looks like there will be. But the Whippets went out there in the second game, and they couldn't do anything wrong. I tell you, they just stuck out the bat and the ball bounced off it and hit doubles and triples and out in the field and they just stuck out the old glove and the old ball just landed right in the pocket. Like it was a trained ball.
Top of the Ninth Albany came up, loaded the bases, their big slugger came up- Schlager- hit the longest home run ever seen in the Wally Old Hard Hands Bunsen Memorial Park. Except that the Whippets center fielder went out towards the fence and he threw his glove I would say about 40 feet near.
Ball lodged in it came down, came down, he caught the glove umpire called it a fly out. It was that kind of game. They couldn’t lose. They were tremendous. Played over their heads, about 40 feet over their heads.
About the 6th inning, some of those young guys starting to get excited down the dugout, they were running up and down, they were slapping guys on the backside, they’re saying “We got it. We can do it. We can win a game!” And the old veteran said, “Cut that out. Quit hitting me. Don't slap me, slap me one more time I’ma bust ya. Sit down, shut up.”
See the veterans, it's hard for them to win a game like that. Ernie, the old knuckleballer had it all figured out. He was going to go out there, he was going to give up about 20 runs. He’d janked, yerked, uh, jerked yanked in about the top of the fifth, and then he'd announce his retirement and then he could go off and he wouldn't have to play baseball anymore. He could be an adult.
Instead, he went out there, pitched the full 9 innings, threw the first shutout of his career, knuckleball, nobody could touch it, not even the catcher. 21 passed balls in a game, a new whippets record. He was amazing. Now how can he quit when the best years of his career may be ahead of him.
Only 18 people showed up for the game on account of the Whippets wanted it that way. They wanted to go out in privacy. Only immediate family members. But people started to come down to the ballpark when they heard that the Whippets were ahead. Filled the stands by the end of it- the Boosters Club going to put on an awards banquet for them now in November. Now all winter they're going to be hearing about that game. Go into the Sidetrack Tap and those old guys at the Sidetrack will say, boy, you were great in that game in September. You got a team there.
It's hard to accept compliments when you know that you're no good. And when you're all set to lose. And you're resigned to it. To suddenly win like that. It's tough. God throws his curveballs like that now and then.
Well, I'm going to go to that awards banquet. It's November the 11th, Armistice Day, it’s at the Chatterbox Café. We're not invited but I intend to go out of curiosity.
And that's the news, all I can think of from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking and all the children are above average. Each and every one of ‘em.
1980.08.29 Waterloo Courier / Audio of the News available as a digital download.