Philip Brunelle, Jan Mara, Vern Sutton,
[undocumented]
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. This last week a lot of the exiles and immigrants came back course for Thanksgiving Day on Thursday, sat down to dinner with their families and were all welcomed back properly. Though not too big a fuss was made over them, of course. People in Lake Wobegon never make too big a fuss over anything and especially not over those who have left home so as not to give them the wrong impression- that people are miserable without them or even miss them very much. So that the people who have left might feel a responsibility to come back. Which, if they did, they would very soon discover that guest privileges are not good for more than about 24 hours. And they might rediscover why they had left town in the first place.
They don’t make a big thing over returning people in Lake Wobegon. A lot of times the kid will come back, visit the parents having been away for a year or two and sit down and want to talk about his or her successes. Some kind of success that they've had elsewhere. At least they've done better than their parents said they thought they would when they left. But they never get much of a chance to, because nobody ever asks them what they're up to in these days. The conversation sometimes just runs along in the same old tracks- weather and cars and crops in the old days. And the children sit there and are not recognized- as Barbara Ann Bunsen was back for Thanksgiving, which was over at Clint and Irene’s house on Thursday- her aunt and uncle.
And she is doing awfully well. She's going back to the University of Minnesota to resume her studies. She’s getting good grades on her mid-quarters and enjoying it, as people often do who go back to college out of choice. But nobody talked to her very much because her husband Bill was not there with her and it made her family apprehensive that she and Bill might be separating and if they were separating her family didn't want to know about it.
So she sat off in a corner pretty much. Bill and Barbara Ann not separating, he's simply down still on the farm in Wisconsin and trying to finish things up and to sell the last of the llamas. But he will be back. And they will be reunited.
So that's how things are. Those of you who still living in Lake Wobegon thinking of leaving for greener pastures, you give that a second thought. Because once you leave that place, to a lot of people you're gone. You may come back but you can't be reunited. There's no reunion. You can't rejoin things that have separated. You're just one of those amebae gotta find some other protoplasm to hook up to there. I tell you it's a strange town, but there it is and that's the truth. If the prodigal son came back to Lake Wobegon, I don't think anybody would sit him down to some fatted calf or anything like that.
They would probably just say, oh, there you are. Give the prodigal son whatever was in the fridge at the time you know. A mess of pottage or some loaves and fishes, whatever they happen to have on hand.
Which reminds me that Sunday school tomorrow be at 9:45 at Lake Wobegon Lutheran. The worship service will be at 11, the Sunday Mass at 11:00 o'clock at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility.
Scheduled for the same time as the Lutheran worship service to remove whatever temptation there may be, however small. Weekday mass at 8:00 in the morning and Saturday at 8:00 o'clock at night. The Catholic Family Action Group will be meeting on Sunday evening in the church basement. The discussion topic will be Winnowing. The Sons of Knute Turkey Shoot be on Saturday and as I mentioned, the mixer will be tomorrow 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. Every one.
1980.11.29 Chicago Tribune / Audio of the News available as a digital download.