Roy Blount Jr, Butch Thompson Trio, Guy Van Duser, Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys, Klezmer Conservatory Band, Lisa Neustadt. Billy Novick, Jean Redpath,
You are Driven Me Crazy (Butch Thompson Trio ) Michigan Water Blues (Butch Thompson Trio ) Boston Jazz ( Guy Van Duser , Billy Novick ) The Best Girl I Ever Had (Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys ) Voice From Montana (Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys ) A Word for the Singing Impaired ( Roy Blount Jr ) I 'm Just a Bug on the Windshield of Life ( Roy Blount Jr ) On The Grey Funnel Line ( Lisa Neustadt , Jean Redpath ) Jewish Reel (Klezmer Conservatory Band )
Krebsbach, Betty Krebsbach, Carl
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So I'm not up on the latest news, but I will tell you something that happened a week ago Friday with the Krebsbach family, talking about Carl and Betty Krebsbach. Carl works down to the grain elevator. And because they have 11 children, he also does little carpentry on the side for people, including a lot of free work for his relatives and for Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Church. He gets down there and Father Emil calls him up and he says, "Say Carl, we got some plaster on the floor here. I wonder if that leak in the roof come loose. You wouldn't have a tar bucket up there, would you?" And Carl says, "Yeah, I suppose I would." So next thing you know, he's down there spending the whole afternoon not getting any money for it. They're poor. They're poor people. And there are others in Lake Wobegon. Though I do think that being poor is not quite as offensive to people in Lake Wobegon as it may be elsewhere. And it may be easier to be poor in a town like that where you don't have to spend money to impress people. Because people there are not easily impressed. You'd probably have to spend thousands of dollars to impress them. And even then they wouldn't be. And so most people don't bother with that. "Poor Krebsbach's" is what people say about it. Poor little Krebsbach kids, 11 of them, going around town in a gang. People stop and give them a nickel. Ask which one are you because it's hard to tell them apart. They all have that Krebsbach nose and those big brown Krebsbach eyes. Could be little Francis Xavier Krebsbach. Little Frederick Otto Krebsbach. John Fitzgerald Krebsbach. Could be Mary Margaret or could be Maria Teresa. Could be Magdalena Marie Krebsbach. They're all there. They all wear dark clothes so not to show the dirt so they can wear them two days in a row to save their poor mother the trouble. All the girls wear their hair in braids, real tight braids so they last a couple days. And they all go to school in their dark clothes and the boys' haircuts look like they're wearing little black caps on their head. I think Betty cuts their hair with a colander or something. They're the only kids in that school who don't have lunch boxes. They all still carry their lunches in lard buckets. Only kids in school think of what that's like. One of the little boys painted a picture of Roy Rogers and Trigger on the side of his lard bucket. Wrote "Roy Rogers" by him. But it didn't look like a horse and a cowboy. It looked kind of like a spider, big brown spider with a Parker House roll on his back. Poor Krebsbachs. Well, they got one luxury, if you want to call it that. It's their camper, which Carl built himself out of plywood on the bed of a 52 Chevy pickup. It's got a door in the back and a window on the side. And you know, no matter how big your house may be, with 11 children, there's no house big enough. Mother and father got to get off by themselves sometimes. And that's what they did last Friday night. They got in the camper and they went on out the county road about a mile out west and pulled into the gravel pit there. You know, to go out camping. Spend the night. Got in the back and then they noticed that there were a lot of teenagers' cars out around there. Teenagers sitting there in the dark telling secrets to each other. It was too much for Betty. I mean, everybody knows that she and Carl go out in the camper overnights. But this was a little bit obvious, so she wanted to move. And Carl said, well, he said, do you want to move? He said, you move it. So she got up behind the wheel. But you know, she never did get the knack of that clutch just right. And just at the moment when he'd takenhis trousers off and was reaching over for his PJs, she popped that clutch kind of hard. And he popped out the back door. And he landed down in the gravel. Without so much as a handkerchief on him. And she took off down the road. Those taillights went right out. Well I'll tell you, no sooner. Headlights came on and horns started honking. To his great credit, he got up and he didn't run. He got up and he walked. And he walked on up the road. Until the gravel hurt his feet. And he sat down on a rock. And he hadn't sat there long. Before he realized that a person could freeze to death. Out there this time of year in Minnesota. Without even thinking about it. He started to feel cold. And he took a couple of sumac branches. Sort of for camouflage. And he headed up to where he could see the lights in the farmhouse. Even though he knew perfectly well whose farmhouse it was. It was the Christensen sisters. By the time he got up there, he was shaking so hard he couldn't talk. He was dying. All he could do was pound on their screen door. And just yell. Just make noises. And they looked out the window at him. Well now if you put yourself in that house. And you imagine that you're 70 years old. You're single. You've led a decent life. You look out, see a naked man pounding on your screen door. And yelling a lot of gibberish. Your first thought is to call the sheriff. And then they thought, well my goodness what's that man doing out there? He'll freeze to death. And then they thought, well we can't let him in. He doesn't have any clothes on. And then they thought, but we got to let him in because he's dying out there. He is freezing to death. Well thank God they had enough courage to just pull back the curtain a little bit. And look him in his face. And they saw it was Carl Krebsbach. And because it was Carl Krebsbach and for no other reason. They went up to the upstairs bedroom. And they got some clothes and threw them out the window to him. A black wool dress and a shawl. Which he accepted. And headed on down the road. To meet the headlights coming this way. And it was his wife Betty. And he was rescued. Well, the poor Krebsbachs. And yet I think about it and I think... There's a man who's seen the edge. You know we all think a lot about the edge. But looking over the edge is a privilege you really can't buy. You may not be able to see a lot when you look over the edge. But you have some idea about it. And I think maybe after you do get a glimpse over the edge. That maybe you don't think about it so much afterward. Because you've seen that now. Now you know that's there. Well he saw the edge. That man up on the roof of the church with the broom and the tar bucket. Everything smells good to him this week. Every one of his children is intelligent and graceful and absolutely beautiful. And his wife is the finest woman God put on earth. Everything looks good to him. Christensen sisters saw him outside of Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery here on Tuesday. Asked him if he'd return the dress and the shawl. He looked him straight in the eye. And he said it's down to the house any time you want to come get it. That's the news from Lake Wobegon. Where all the women are strong. And all the men are good looking. And all the children are above average.
Courier Journal Oct 4 1981
1981.10.10 Berkshire Eagle / 1981.10.10 Lexington Herald: "live from Boston" / Ticket stub by Lenny Markowitz / Audio of the News available as a digital download. First live road show b’cast outside Midwest, at Boston Conservatory of Music,
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl