Hot Rize.
[undocumented]
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon this last week, quiet despite the big crisis. I don't know if you heard about this or not- over to the water tower. I guess it started back early this fall when the students in the civics class up at the high school decided to start a water conservation project and they got the 4H behind it and they got the Sons of Knute and the Knights of Columbus and they went from door to door all through town, urging people to save water and actually went into quite a few homes and repaired leaky toilets and put in new floats and new valves so they wouldn't run all night.
Well, it seemed innocent enough until Thursday morning when people woke up and found absolutely no water at all anywhere in town. Nothing came out of the tap and Mayor Clint Bunson had got about 100 phone calls at his home that morning before he even sat down to his waffle, which is one reason why he's not running for reelection this fall because he doesn't care to be a public servant. But then he didn't run in the last few elections either. He's always been elected by a write-in vote because nobody else wants to be a public servant either.
Anyway... He got calls about this angry irate phone calls. People who were upset because there was no water that morning and no water means no coffee and no coffee in Lake Wobegon means that a lot of adults do not function and are unable to think and don't have many physical sensations to speak of. And can't speak very well either. And to be a parent and to not be functioning when your children are around functioning at top speed is to be helpless like some great wounded moose surrounded by wolves. So they were irate.
Well, He thought about it and he thought well there was a hard freeze last night and freeze was the first thing he thought of and then he thought about all those toilets having been repaired and not running at night. And of course, a running toilet would keep the water running in the water main, and you fix those toilets you got standing water and it probably froze. So he was thinking freeze all the way.
And he remembered once talking to Bud, the village maintenance man whose dad old Mr. Soderbergh, built the water system, laid the pipe back in 1924- telling him that they had run out of 6 inch lead pipe towards the end and had to use one short section of two inch pipe and a little ujoint. So he figured that must be where the problem was. He went out and he got Bud and it was then that Bud remembered that there never was a map of the water system in Lake Wobegon, because old Mr. Soderbergh had built this water system to last out of lead pipe- it was made to be foolproof and never need any work on it so he never made a map of it.
Though there was a kid who made a map of it as a 4H project, but he made it out of paper mache and it was stored for years in the closet under the stairs in the town hall and there was a leak in the roof and the water gathered around it in a puddle and turned it into a kind of a pudding.
Well,sir, they had no idea where this little u-section was in the section of two inch pipes, so there's only one thing they could do. They went down to Jack's Auto Repair and they got 100 gallon drum of antifreeze and they went up to the water tower. And it was only after they had poured the antifreeze into the tank- and it was hard getting it up there with their block and tackle- it was only after they had poured it in that Bud remembered that there had been a leak in the tank late the night before. And he had turned off the main valve so as to repair it. It was one of those low moments in a person's life when you think “Oh no, I didn't do that, did I? Now I couldn't have, I couldn't have done anything as stupid as that. Oh yes, I did do that. Yes, Sir.”
So they opened up the valve and the water flowed again and Lake Wobegon along with 100 gallons of antifreeze. The water ran blue all day Thursday and part of Friday and it still tastes funny today. And by coincidence, Thursday night was the night of the town meeting. I tell you a lot of people turned out for it. They had an awful lot to say. They were first on the program and they took up most of it. There were a lot of harsh things said about municipal government in Lake Wobegon and the village maintenance man in particular. People took a real run at him. And by coincidence it was that same night, that there was one item on the agenda that had been placed there weeks before. And that was an item in the budget which called for a raise in Bud’s salary from $5500 to 6000.
He stood up and told him all the work that he does in town and plowing the streets in the winter and raking the park and mowing the grass and keeping track of the town hall. And there was just dead silence. And when he was done speaking the motion was tabled hard enough to probably keep a table for a long time to come, but then his family were upset and they walked out of the meeting in protest, but they were all sitting in the back of the room so nobody noticed.
Which should be a lesson to all of us. If you're going to walk out in protest, you sit in the front. Anyway, the water is running once again, it should be alright by Sunday. We certainly hope that it will be, and that's the news in Lake Wobegon. Where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking and all the children are above average. Lake Wobegon Minnesota out there, surviving another week.
1980.10.04 St Cloud Times / 1980.10.03 Raleigh News / Audio of the News available as a digital download.