Blue Flame Revue, Butch Thompson Trio, Jimmy Driftwood, Dakota Dave Hull, Glenn Ohrlin. Sally Rogers,
Linger Awhile (Butch Thompson Trio , Dakota Dave Hull ) Sweet Substitute (Butch Thompson Trio , Dakota Dave Hull ) Lady Be Good (Butch Thompson Trio , Dakota Dave Hull ) Want a Little Man of My Own ( Sally Rogers ) Lord Franklin's Search for the Northwest Passage ( Sally Rogers ) The Old Violin ( Sally Rogers ) The Mary Ellen Carter ( Sally Rogers ) Charming the Leaf Off of a Tree ( Jimmy Driftwood ) The Battle of New Orleans ( Jimmy Driftwood ) The Mixed Up Family ( Jimmy Driftwood ) Pig Latin Serenade (Blue Flame Revue ) Are You Afraid To Die (Blue Flame Revue ) Rumba Rumba Room (Blue Flame Revue ) Cajun medley (Blue Flame Revue ) Boomer Johnson ( Glenn Ohrlin ) I Wish I Was Single Again ( Glenn Ohrlin )
Chatterbox Cafe Chatterbox Cafe Powdermilk Biscuits Sidetrack Tap Skoglund's Five and Dime Tolerude, Daryl Tolerude, Marilyn Whippets
Well it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, the little town that time forgot, that the decades cannot improve. This half hour brought to you by the Sidetrack Tap where they did forget about the time a couple weeks ago on a Saturday night and Ollie Olsen and his Ole Ranchera Band were playing. And they looked up, and suddenly it was 2:30 in the morning of a Sunday. The town council does not look kindly on that. They are going to be drinking coffee and soda pop at the Sidetrack Tap for about the next month or so.
Actually, there's been quite a bit going on in Lake Wobegon. I don't know quite where to start. Seems like everything happens there when we go on vacation. It's same as always.
Thinking about the Tollerude family though- Daryl and Marilyn- and their children. Daryl who farms with his dad, out just west of the town dump. Went into farming with his dad when his dad was 65 and talking about retirement. That was about 20 years ago. Hasn't been any talk about retirement since, or of drawing up papers or partnership or who will get what. But I guess that's their business.
Darryl and Marilyn moved into the old Tollerude house, which is up at the northeast corner- the quatere section that they farm- It's that little house that his dad and mom lived in for a few years after they were married, before they started to have children and then built the bigger house down the southwest corner. So they've been in a little house- Daryl and Marilyn have for about 20 years. Got six children. In a house that wasn't meant for that many people.
And they're lovely children, but they're also very lively. And sometimes it's like when you compress molecules into a smaller space, they start to bouncing off the walls. And the situation becomes explosive as it did here a week ago last Sunday. And Daryl and Marilyn had about all they could take, and though it was a Sunday night and they were expected at prayer meeting, they decided they would go to a movie instead. And they did. And they left the children behind in the care of the oldest girl, Diane who eventually got him all to bed and she sat up and watched television.
It was a movie as best they could figure out afterwards, it was a scary movie. And you have to understand that in Lake Wobegon the reception is very poor, so that when you watch television really, you're listening to radio. And as you may remember, if you ever listened to horror shows on radio, it was a lot scarier than television ever could be.
Well, they'd come to a part in the movie in which the young couple are driving their car across the desert and it just so happens that a couple of miles away from there- giant, slamming prehistoric creatures are coming up out of eggs in the earth and are heading for the highway. They stop and they've got a flat tire.
Well, she was holding onto the couch pretty hard. And it was at about that time that the cows discovered that the gate was open. And the cows headed out for greener pastures, which included the lawn around the house which had not been mowed for a couple of weeks. So that as she sat there, straining her eyes to see the movie on TV, she heard sticks breaking and the sound of giant creatures moving in around the house which sounded prehistoric enough to her.
She ran upstairs, got the double gauge, got the kids out of bed and they all sat huddled in the bathroom until Daryl and Marilyn got home and it was a long time before they could calm them down and put them to bed.
Well, the next day was a Monday. Darrell had not quite recovered from it. He got up early put on water for coffee, turned on the radio, and was trying to listen to the hog market report when all of a sudden the children descended on him once again and they were asking for lunch money and one of them wanted the use of the Chevy and they were talking to each other and they were talking about what had happened the last night and he couldn't stand it any longer. And he just yelled something over his shoulder as he headed out the kitchen door and he stomped off down the driveway and he went into the grainery and he slammed the door and he started picking up fistfuls of oats and just throwing them against the walls. And yelling at the top of his voice. Yelling a lot of things about his dad and his kids and a lot of things that they would have been quite interested to hear if they'd been there. Pretty good acoustics there in the grainery.
And finally he got it out of his system and he went back to the house. Except he didn't quite. Because when he got to the door, he found that the latch had gotten stuck on the other side. It was a latch that he had always meant to fix. But it was too late now. Because the door was between him and it. He thought for a while that if he pounded on the door in just the right place, it would loosen it so he could open the door and get out. But he couldn't loosen it. And then he looked out the little window. And he saw his children come out of the house and down the driveway to head off, catch the school bus and he stopped pounding.
I guess he knew that if he kept on pounding one of them probably would have heard it and would have come over and opened the door for him. But for reasons that a lot of you fathers can understand he decided he'd rather not have them find him in that situation. And he knew that Marilyn would be going to work at Skogland’s Five and Dime in a little bit. So he kicked out a pane of glass in a little window, and he waited for her to come out and she came out. She got in the car. She turned it around. She headed down towards the driveway towards the grainery. And as she came up he yelled and he stuck his arm out the window and he waved.
And she yelled, and she waved, and she went on. Well, it was going to be about 8 hours before anybody got home. Now Darryl is a farmer and he mostly works outdoors. And it really wasn't until that moment when he came face to face with claustrophobia. That he recognized what a powerful force it is. He kicked out the rest of the panes of glass, but the window was too small for him to squeeze through and he took a couple runs at the door with his shoulder, but he just hurt himself, and so he knew he had to get a grip on himself so as not to go berserk there 'cause he had too much time to be berserk in. So he made himself go back and lie down on the feed bags and he closed his eyes and he curled up. And that was where his father found him about an hour later. His dad shook him, he said, “Darryl. Said”, I thought you'd be out combining,” he said”, and here you are laying down here, taking a nap. It's 9:00 o'clock in the morning.”
Daryl said “I was locked in.”
His dad said “that's a dumb fool thing to say. I just walked in, open the door, it's open. All you had to do was open it up, look” and he shut it.
Well, there they were. There they were. And none too happy about it. Of course, you might look at it another way and say that they had never really had the chance much to talk together over the past few years as father and son. Though what they did have to say to each other and the first while was none too pleasant. But they managed to stick it out. They talked over a lot of things, I guess, that needed talking about.
Thank goodness Marilyn got home early. Got home before the kids did. They hollered and waved at her, and she came over and opened the door.
She said “what she been doing in here all day for?”
Daryl said “it was locked. The door was locked on it.”
She said “no that, no that can't be” but he caught her in time. He caught her in time.
They went up to the house and they had some coffee and they sat around for awhile and recovered a little bit and he went in the living room and he took the TV set and he took it upstairs to the closet and he stuck it in there and he locked the door on it. And he said “we've had about enough drama around here. We don't need anymore. When things quiet down a little bit, maybe we'll bring it out then, but not until.”
So once again, I guess things are quiet Lake Wobegon. 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.
Red Maddox and his wife p1an to divorce 'as soon as the children die.' The Spirit instructs according to truth. Loving thy neighbor includes a lot of jerks. Dorothy is remodeling the Chatterbox. The LW Whippets ended their season with 2 wins and 13 losses. Poem to two newlyweds from Margaret Haskins Durber.
Audio of the News available as a digital download.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto