Stevie Beck, Lou Berryman, Peter Berryman, Pat McDonald, New Prairie Ramblers, Orchestra Balkan, Claudia Schmidt, Butch Thompson. Pop Wagner,
[undocumented]
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. It’s been a quiet week. And even quieter now that they have started up the Friday night fish fry at the Sidetrack Tap. All the fish you can eat- whitefish or lake trout or sunfish or walleyes- deep fried in pounds of melted lard. After they're dipped in a batter made of pancake mix and beer. It is a kind of a supper that sits heavy on the stomach and lowers the center of gravity so that a person has a hard time getting up and moving away from the table, and so you eat some more so as not to be conspicuous. And you eat up to the point of pain and then beyond the point of pain where you can't even think anymore- you're not aware of your mind anymore. Your head, your head is just a little bump on top of this great balloon with arms and legs attached to it. And the problem is to get this balloon up and to move it through doorways and to walk through rooms and to lay the balloon down on a bed without bumping into anything sharp. In which case you just go up in a cloud of methane, I'll tell you’d just be a goner.
They don't need that in Lake Wobegon. It's a quiet enough town. It needs no sedatives at all, no tranquilizers. What they need is more good books and more good music and more conversation. But I tell you, I'm through trying to reform that town. There are better people than me who've gone through there and tried to reform it- preachers and teachers and salesman have come into that town and left, and I've had my crack at it and I've about given up on it. But this time of year is a beautiful time of year on account of the vegetables which we heard the song about before.
People plant huge gardens in Lake Wobegon because they're carried away with the spirit of it in the spring. And then in the Fall, why they have to face up to the consequences of it. Acres of tomatoes. Bushel baskets full of them down in the earth cellars, canning and canning and canning, 50-75-100 quarts of stewed tomatoes. Peeling tomatoes, cooking them, sweating in those kitchens. It's the time of year when people give them away. I usually take them to church on Sunday and give them away to whoever will have them, and there's such a surplus at the end of this year that it really doesn't matter a whole lot whether you had your own garden or not, you're likely to get just as many from church on Sunday as you would have if you'd gone to all the work of raising them yourself.
It kind of goes against the principles that we were brought up with that you're supposed to work for your bread. But you don't always have to work for your vegetables. It's like the parable of the vineyard in the Gospel of Matthew in which the laborers who came to the vineyard late received just as much as the ones who got there early in the morning and had been working all day. And though it didn't seem fair to the ones who got there early, it just was a way of showing that God’s goodness and generosity are so great that they need not be rationed, and we need not divide them into tiny portions. There's more than enough for anyone, and it'll all be there for you if you should drop into town on Sunday.
If you drop down to the Lutheran Church Pastor Inqvist will be delivering his sermons- worship services at 10:00 o'clock and his sermon is on Tithing; Obligation or Opportunity. Up to the hill Father Emil will be speaking on the Doctrine of Invincible Ignorance. But wherever you go, you will find enough food for yourself, I can guarantee you.
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.
Wisconsin State Journal Aug 25 1980
1980.09.03 Madison Capital Times / 1980.09.13 Madison Capital Times / 1980.09.07 Murfreesboro Daily News / Audio of the News available as a digital download.