Barrett Sisters, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Prudence Johnson, Garrison Keillor, Kate MacKenzie, Kathy Mueller. Peter Ostroushko, Stoney Lonesome,
Catch a wave ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Kate MacKenzie ) Within me tonight ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Kate MacKenzie ) Fun fun fun ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Kate MacKenzie ) Surfin USA ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Kate MacKenzie ) Summer days ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Kate MacKenzie ) Summer in the city ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Kate MacKenzie ) Fear of death boogie ( Garrison Keillor ) Got to have Jesus (Barrett Sisters ) All the time (Barrett Sisters ) Jesus Loves Me (Barrett Sisters ) Lift us up (Barrett Sisters ) Keep on singing (Barrett Sisters ) Sweet bye and bye (Barrett Sisters ) Wild black engine (Stoney Lonesome , Kate MacKenzie ) Waltz of the angels (Stoney Lonesome , Kate MacKenzie ) Florida blues (Stoney Lonesome , Kate MacKenzie ) Echoes of spring (Butch Thompson Trio ) Good morning coffee ( Greg Brown ) A sleeping bee ( Prudence Johnson )
American Tax Fellowship Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Fearmonger's Shop Jansky, Lyle Krebsbach, Florian Minnesota Language Systems Powdermilk Biscuits Sidetrack Tap
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. Last Saturday, as a matter of fact, right about the time I was talking about him on the radio, last Saturday afternoon, Florian Krepsbach came out the door of the sidetrack tap in the early evening before supper, having gone in for a bump and... Looked to his right and turned to his left to head up the street to Krepsbach Shiv and close it up. Wendell was up there looking after things and as he took a few steps down the sidewalk, heard a whirring sound behind him. Turned, it was the Diener boy coming on fast in the dusk on his ten-speed bicycle. Right down the middle of the sidewalk, Florian ducked to his left, the Diener boy swerved to his right, and knocked the poor old man on his back in the street in the gutter. The kid fell down too. Florian sat up to make sure that he was not dead yet, and looked over at the Diener boy who was lying there by his bike and said, "Are you all right?" And the Diener boy said, "Yeah, all right." And waited for Florian to yell at him and is still waiting. A week later, the Diener boy, he went home. All Florian said was, "Well, you ought to be a little bit more careful, son." Went home expected his parents might yell at him, thought Florian might have told them, went to church on Sunday, thought maybe Father Emil would deliver a homily on bike safety and point to him and say, you kid. Went to school on Monday, thought maybe The principal would yell at him for knocking an old man down in the sidewalk with his bike and waited for the Harold Star to come out on Tuesday, thinking Florian might have written a letter to the editor. One of those letters that might, it would start out, I was walking down the sidewalk one day last week when one of our grade school children attempted to kill me. Isn't it about time we put some of these vicious children behind bars and teach the rest a lesson? But there was no letter and nobody yelled at him for it. Well, I'll tell you why Florian didn't yell at him for it. It's because ever since Florian forgot Myrtle at the truck stop, Florian has been waiting for something to happen to him. To kind of even up the score and has been imagining things that might. And being knocked down by a boy on a bike was one of the least of the things that he could imagine, not nearly so painful or awful as most. And so he was grateful and he felt good. That's guilt, friends. It's good for you. It's good for you. It makes your life interesting and improves life in so many different ways. In so many different ways. I once was daydreaming while I was driving an automobile and didn't watch where I was going and crashed into the rear end of a car. She stopped. She got out. She came back. She looked at it. I was there and she said, "Well," she said, "it could have been a lot worse." I ran into a guilty person. She'd done something. I don't care what it was. She'd done something probably in the previous 24 hours that had made her think that any moment the universe was going to come down on her with both feet. And she was imagining what might happen. And it probably included maybe boils all over your body. And... Being wrapped in burlap and sitting in the ashes and frogs all over your house and the lightning getting closer and closer. And this was nothing, a busted taillight. Nothing. I said, I said, I'm sorry. I said, what a dumb thing to do. I feel so bad. I said, listen, let me give you the name of my insurance company. She said, no. It's all right. It's nothing. No problem. I ran into a guilty person. Some people don't have enough guilt. Some people in Lake Wobegon have too much. I think of the Deaners themselves and of their redecoration job there in the dining room, living room that they put off for years and then finally got around to it and knocked out that plaster to put in some sheet rock and found there in the wall the remains of a cat. Which evidently had been deceased a long time. And as they saw the bones of this cat, they remembered a time long ago when they hadn't much felt like eating in the dining room because of an odd smell, which nobody ever mentioned because each of the Deaners thought it might be themselves. Nobody in that family spoke up and said, "Pee-yew, it smells like something died in here." They thought it might be coming from them. That's too much guilt. On the other hand, there are people who have much too little guilt. And I think particularly of those people who have learned to be their own best friends and to look out for number one and, you know, I'm okay, everything I do is okay type of people. The young urban professional people, some of them, not all, but some. Yuppie scum, what we call. Vermin. Filth. They don't have enough guilt, and you and me, friends, our job is to give them some. Let's work on it. Let's do our jobs. Florian's son-in-law, Lyle, had quite a bit, has had quite a bit of free-floating guilt now for a couple of weeks. Of course, he is a parent, you know, of children, and parents can... Pretty much have guilt whenever they want to. You know, I mean, you can think of a dozen reasons. Get up in the morning and you just, you know, you just feel guilty right away. Feel guilt anytime you want to. There's no lack of it, plenty to go around. But his current streak of guilt and shame began Let me see when this was. I believe it was two weeks ago. Monday. It was a Monday night. He was driving home from Minneapolis, driving north. It was late at night. He was coming. Home from a teacher's conference in Minneapolis on chemical dependency. Because Lyle, you see, has been teaching science at the high school for 10 years. He's gotten a little bit tired of it. And he would like to be a counselor up in the high school and have a desk in a room with a door on it and be able to sit behind that desk and just have one person sit possibly two on the other side, and not 27 or 28, which make him feel nervous sometimes in the classroom to have that many. And the funny looks that they give him, little weaselly looks, as if they are just waiting for him to fall asleep and they'll be on him in a minute. Amen. Which, you know, after teaching 10 years, falling asleep is a real danger. Classrooms. So he's been thinking about being a counselor and came down here, go through this Chem Dep, as they call it, seminar, and was driving home and was thinking as he drove home about how nice it would be to be a counselor and to help troubled youth and sit in an office with a door and behind a desk and a few papers and on the desk and troubled youth knock on the door and say, come in. And troubled youth put its head in and say, could I come in and talk to you right now? I'm not bothering you or anything. No, son, no. You come in. Come in and have a seat. Sit down. "Uh, yeah, I just kind of want to talk about a couple of things." "That's fine. Why don't you talk? What seems to be the problem?" "Uh, well, it's, uh..." "Oh, God, I'm so...!" "That's all right, son. You cry. That's all right. It's good for you. You'll feel better." That's all right. So as he was thinking about this and what a rewarding kind of life this would be compared to what he's doing now, he looked and he noticed and he was a little bit surprised to see between his index finger and his middle finger, a cigarette. It was there between his fingers. Which wasn't really surprising considering that it had come from a pack of cigarettes which was in his shirt pocket. And he had taken it out and put it in his mouth himself and lit it himself. And yet he couldn't quite remember having lit it. And as he thought about being a counselor to troubled youth and looked at this thing between his fingers, he thought to himself, I don't want this. And rolled down his window and threw it out in the snow. And drove along little ways and thought to himself, I don't need these anymore. And took the pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and threw it out the window. And at the same time took his foot off the gas and coasted to a stop and turned around at the crossroads and came back to about the point where he thought he had Tossed those. It was a pack of Marlboros, which is a bright red package. It was a flip-top box. It had about 15 left in it. And he was sure he was going to be able to see this thing in the snow, in the ditch. But there wasn't much snow there. There was just real tall weeds and a lot of trash. And it was dark. It was midnight. And as he hunted around for this thing in the light of his headlights, groping down there for this pack of cigarettes, he knew that the sidetrack tap had closed for the evening. Nothing was open in town. He was thinking about maybe he'd have to drive way off to the east and go into St. Cloud and find a 24-hour gas station and get some. But then he thought, no, Lyle thought, there's got to be some at home. Because when you smoke as much as Lyle does... You know there's got to be some at home. There might not be a pack-up, but at least there'd be a few that fell in the crack someplace, you know, in crevices somewhere in your house, in a closet somewhere. He drove home pretty fast and up the driveway and forgot to turn his headlights off, had to come back, turn them off, go in the car and get in the house anyway. Looked up in the cupboard, nope, nothing in the cupboard, went in the closet and looked in the pockets of both of his sport coats and he looked in jacket pockets and he was moving fairly quickly around the house. At this point, he ran downstairs, he looked on the shelf above the washer where Mavis puts the stuff that she takes out of shirt pockets. There wasn't a one. There he was up in the living room in a very short time and down on his knees looking behind cushions in the couch and on the easy chair and looking underneath the chairs and around on the shelves and in the dresser as well and up to the bedroom and looking through the bedroom dresser and in the nightstand, both drawers and underneath the bed. And he went into the bathroom and he was looking around in the dirty clothes, hamper hauling clothes out of there, hand over fist, one after the other, looking in pants, pockets, shirt, pockets, looking in the pocket of his bathrobe, anything. Even looked in the medicine cabinet. Who knows? Who could tell? There might be one in the medicine cabinet. He took everything out of the medicine cabinet. He looked behind everything. He didn't find anything. He looked around on the floor and he didn't hear a little voice out in the hallway that said, Daddy... Of that bathroom and hit that kid with his right knee, knocked that poor little child flat on her back. Her head hit the radiator. It went clunk. His own little girl. Oh, he knelt down by her. He held her head in his hands. He said, oh, darling, I'm sorry I didn't see you. There was blood on her face. There was blood coming down off her face. He said, Daddy didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. She couldn't cry at first. All the breath been knocked out of her. She just sucked. And then screamed. His wife came running. Mavis came running from the bedroom. She ran. He said, What in the world? world have you done picked up the little girl took her down to the kitchen sat her up on the counter Lyle said I didn't see her she's so short it was dark I didn't see her blood was pouring out of her right eye her little hand was over her eye poor little Becky oh darling daddy didn't mean to do it They had to call up Carl and Margaret next door, one o'clock in the morning, have them come over, have Carl come over, stay with the kids. They had to get in their car, they had to drive into the St. Cloud Hospital to the emergency room. All the time Lyle thinking, she fell and a nail went right into her eyeball and she'll be blind in that eye and have to wear a glass eye for the rest of her life. And people will ask her all of her life, they will ask her, "What happened to you, Becky? How did you go blind in that eye?" And she'll say, "My daddy knocked me down when I was a little girl. Yeah, my daddy creamed me when I was a kid." "Oh really? Why did he do that?" "I don't know. I was just a little tiny girl at the time." Oh my gosh! Well, it turned out not to be her eyeball, it was a cut just above the eye, just below the eyebrow. Three stitches. Got home finally at four o'clock in the morning, put little Becky to bed. "Oh, Mavis fixed a pot of coffee," she said, "I'm not going to sleep now, not after tonight." My gosh, she said, "Why?" "Were you tearing around the house like a madman last night? I heard you going up and down stairs three steps at a time. What was the problem?" Lyle said, "I was looking for something. I was looking for something." She said, "What in the world were you looking for at one o'clock in the morning?" He said, "A cigarette." "A cigarette?" A cigarette? You're running around the house at one o'clock in the morning looking for a cigarette and you can't even see your own child and you knock her down and almost kill her? Yeah, it seemed kind of seamy to him too. A story you might see in the newspaper, you know? Maniac dad creams kid in nicotine frenzy. Child lies bleeding on floor, blood pouring from head wound. "Father looking for cigarettes," he said. Jury found him innocent after three weeks of deliberations. Judge sentenced him anyway as a public nuisance. Father sat in courtroom, impassive, showing no remorse. But he did have remorse. He felt deep remorse. And that was how Lent began for him. He came home on the Tuesday before Lent and saw his little girl, her eye all puffed up black and blue, the cut over her eye, dried blood on her face. Oh, you pig, he said. On Wednesday he went to church and when Father Emo put his thumb in the bowl and made the mark on Lyle's forehead and said, Man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return. Lyle knew it was true. Man, thou art dust. Man, thou art dust. "Man, thou art a piece of crap." That's how he felt. Went back to school after church, teaches biology class. They were dissecting a small pig. In biology class, they stripped the skin, they peeled the skin off it so that they could observe its muscle structure. And as Lyle stood by this tiny animal and identified the muscles for the children in his class, he felt pain in his own body as if his own skin had been peeled away from him. And it was the pain of withdrawal, because the one that he threw out the window on Monday was his last one, as it turned out. Although in St. Cloud he had snuck out, of the waiting room at the emergency room thinking there might be a 24-hour gas station somewhere close by. But when he put his hand on the door handle of his car, he felt guilt and he said, "You wretch. Oh, you bastard." "You idiot, get back in there." And he went back in. Carl quit last year at Lent. Lyle could have shot him at the time because Carl said, "Yeah, it's not that bad, really. "You know, you think about it for two, three days "and then nothing, you know, it really isn't that hard." Could have shot him again. On the Thursday after Lent, when Carl said, "So how's it going with the cigarettes there, Lyle? You still not smoking?" And Lyle had to say, "Yeah, you were right, Carl. It's not that hard, really. You only think about it for a few days. And then it's, you know, I'm really surprised at how easy it is for me to quit smoking." And all the time his mind was talking to him and saying, "Come on, I want some cigarettes now, come on, smoke. This is your body talking to you and we want cigarettes right now. All of us, all of us want your heart and your lungs and your whole body. Smoke, come on, let's get some cigarettes and smoke." That's an odd thing. That is an odd thing to have your own mind talk to you. Just butt in and say stuff that you're not thinking about. You're thinking about other things. And your mind, your own mind, interrupts you. You're in church on Sunday morning. You're thinking about our Lord and his life and his passion. And your mind just butts in and says, come on, let's go outside and smoke. I want a cigarette now. You think about your children and our country and the future of the world and peace and arms control, and your mind just jumps right in. Come on. Those guys over there, they got some cigarettes. Go ask them for a cigarette. Let's go smoke. And your mind is sneaky. Days go by and you haven't smoked. And your mind keeps talking to you every so often. It says, you know, this is great what you're doing. This is really wonderful. You haven't smoked in almost a week now. That's terrific. People really respect you and admire you a lot for what you're doing. Because you're really showing a lot of character. And this is great. This is tremendous. You ought to be real proud of yourself. And you've made your point. So let's go have some cigarettes now. Well, the little girl's eye is better. The stitches have been taken out. You can hardly see it. Florian had a bruise on the inside of his thigh where that bike hit him. And at his age, you know, these things don't heal up real fast. But the pain is gone and he can walk without a limp now. A week later, and Lyle is full of pain, full of shame, full of guilt, and still not smoking. He feels terrible. He feels miserable. Don't ask him how he feels. He'll tell you how he feels. And when he feels at his worst, then he goes out and he runs, which makes him feel even worse than that, which makes him feel better in a way. He's not a runner, and if you see him out there on the roads, you can tell that he's not. He's overweight, he's kind of flat-footed, and he moves slowly when he runs. But that's what he's doing. Because he hates to run, he has Mavis drive him a couple miles out of town and drop him off on a road, and then he runs home. Which kind of gives some purpose and meaning to running. You run somewhere, you run to go home. It's not, you know, this kind of mindless gerbil activity that it is for a lot of people. But if you see him out there, if you see him out there on the road in the dusk running down the road in his old gray warm-up pants and his old leather jacket from high school, which doesn't fit anymore, he can't zip it up, but he's hoping to someday, and the two little red bike reflectors on the heels of his sneakers. When you see him out there running down a gravel road, old Lyle, don't feel sorry for him. Don't feel bad for him. He's in misery, he's suffering, he's feeling pain, but it's okay. He's just one of us, just one of us sinners, you know, trying to make his way home, trying to prove to himself That this is not all permanent, you know. This condition that we find ourselves in. Things can be changed. People are unhappy about things in their lives. A lot of things can be changed, really. They really can. We can, we can. There's a new life waiting for us, which we'll find. When we want it badly enough to feel a little guilt and a little pain to get us moving in that direction. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. For all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, all the children are above average.
Demolishing the St. Paul High Bridge. Lives of Great Musicians: BT at the Co-Op. Cousin Flo's menu.
rebroadcast on February 3, 1990.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto