New Prairie Ramblers, Jim Price, Gary Schulte.
[undocumented]
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Not a whole lot going on that hasn't happened a whole lot of times before. Been kind of warm this last week, at least when the sun was out. Course when the sun isn't and it rains it's been downright chilly and cold at night, getting on towards the time of year when they’ll be putting up the storm windows in Lake Wobegon, which is usually about the first or second week of October.
Of course, if we had a little false summer here, why they'll put that off a little bit, and of course, your dreamers, they sometimes wait until November- your unstable element in the community. Everybody else comes in pretty much on time with the storms.
A lot of people now have the combination storm and screens not in Lake Wobegon, but elsewhere, In Lake Wobegon they have the old wood frame storm windows and you take off your wood frame screens and you put up your wood frame storm windows, it's kind of a ritual at this time of year.
Part of the reason I think that they don't go to the combinations is that they don't believe in throwing away things that still work in Lake Wobegon, but also I think a lot of the old boys there in town like the ceremony of it. Something that you do twice a year in the spring in the fall, take one off and put the other on. And in the fall... it's a kind of... there's a kind of a feeling about it of getting ready for winter and getting things battened down and tightened up.
Kind of makes you feel like it's your ship, you know, and you're the captain of it, which you wouldn't get if you just walked around inside the house and lowered your combination storms.. You want to get out there and go through this so as to feel a little bit more secure here as we head into October and November. 'Cause you know our fleet is headed towards the Arctic, we know that now, don't we?
It's sociable too... the kids are all out and washing the windows, and not that they're necessarily sociable about it, but. Other guys drop by when you're putting your storm windows up and stop and talk with you for awhile- guys who have already put their storm windows do. Though they don't help with it. It is something you don't help with. If you were pouring concrete or shingling or something that might help you with it but putting up storm windows is a personal thing, and it's your ship. It's not their ship and they just sit there on the lawn and talk with you as you do it.
The Olsons up by the Lutheran Church have got their storm windows up, which kind of startling they're painted yellow, but not quite as startling as their house, which they've just about finished repainting in a kind of a startling shade of blue. It's caused quite a stir up there. Harley was trying to explain that it didn't look that bright when he was looking through the sample book. But my Lord, that house just seems to jump out at you as you walk down the street, and the effect of it of course is to make a lot of other houses on the same block there look awfully drab. That had looked alright until the Olsens got around to making improvements in it. I mean, even at night it kind of gives off a certain glow.
I don't think there's much danger anybody going to drive their car up into it. One of these dark nights. I tell you it's, it kind of points out the danger of making improvements and trying to get ahead. You go to improve things and get ahead and all of a sudden before you know it, you're way farther ahead of other people. You're different and you're strange and everybody is looking at you and thinking well, who do they think they are? And you notice when you come out of church on Sunday mornings that people seem to suddenly start up conversations with other people as you come along, and all because you picked out this color out of the sample book. It didn't look that bad, but in the light of day it makes your house look like a liquor store. Or a motel.
Something odd, I sympathize with them. I sympathize with the Olsons because I imagine they may feel a little bit the way I felt when I came back to Lake Wobegon from going to college, where I had gotten varnished up, sorta you know. And got back and went around giving off the aroma of a fresh education. I imagine it's pretty much unbearable to a lot of people.
Until Uncle Charlie got hold of me, I was out at his farm and helping him run his manure spreader. I was dressed in my houndstooth sport jacket with the leather patches on the sleeves and I told him that's what they were wearing in college. He was kind of curious about it. He said he's wondering what I'd learned down there. And I said, “well, a lot of things, you know.”
He said, “well, I don't know”, he says. “I'm curious”, he said. “Now I never went to college, but I know how to farm and I know how to hunt and I know a little bit about Scripture. What exactly do you know from having gone to college?”
And I mentioned some of the subjects that I had taken.
And he said, “But what do you know from it? He said, “take your time, he said, I've got all afternoon.”
Well, it was hard to think of just exactly what it was that made me stand out and made me different. Now all of a sudden I didn't want to be quite so much as I had just a few days before and gradually all that varnish wore off, and I imagine the Olson’s house is going to pale a little bit as time goes on and it’ll be what it was before and what it is now- just a house. A place to raise a family and argue and live from day to day and do all those other important things up there in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking and all the children are above average. Every single one of them. You're listening to a Prairie Home Companion. That's the news from Lake Wobegon.
1980.09.27 Akron Beacon Journal / Audio of the News available as a digital download.