Philip Brunelle, Butch Thompson Trio, Phil Gazelle, Tom Paxton, Robin and Linda Williams. Vern Sutton,
[undocumented]
Bunsen, Barbara Ann Pastor Ingqvist
Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon Minnesota, Thanksgiving came and went without any major mishaps. Every year at this holiday season, you know there are car loads of former Wobegonians who motor on back to the old town that time forgot. Along with their spouses and their children to be reunited with families and loved ones. And it's always a volatile situation. One that could explode at any moment, but it didn't seem to this year. Nobody screamed at anybody else or threw anything at anybody else, even though of course we'd all like to sometimes at some of these occasions. Barbara Ann Bunson came back with her husband Bill, back to Clarence and Arlene's for Thanksgiving.
This was a year when Arlene went on strike. She has fixed 26 turkeys annually for 26 years and it sort of had lost its fascination for her. And she said she wasn't going to do it this year. So Clarence made the dinner and did a pretty good job. Made a pork roast and made the mashed potatoes and the sweet potatoes and made the cranberries himself. And did well, except that he didn't- wasn't able to have them all ready at the same time. The mashed potatoes were sort of the first course and cranberries were second. They more or less had the pork roast for dessert. But it went well enough and nobody said anything.
Barbara Ann went upstairs to look at her bedroom. She's not lived in that house for seven years now, but she spent her first 18 years there. She went up and opened the door to her bedroom and saw her amazement that it all been changed. It’d been made into a guest room. She was hurt, of course to think that they would do this without saying anything to her. That room been kept more or less like a museum now for seven years with everything right there in place or bulletin board and the desk, and her scrapbooks and things that she did in grade school and stuffed animals and the bed, all made just as she'd always made it, where the pillows all rolled up into little tubes. And here it was a guest room. Everybody could sleep in there. Anybody, anybody who come to the house she'd have no idea who was sleeping in her bed.
Well, she was hurt, of course, but she didn't say anything about it. Thank goodness people practice a little restraint on these occasions. I think about Dorothy and her daughter Marie who came back. Marie, who's grown now has four children of her own, has managed to run her own household for years without any help from her mother. And yet, when she gets into her mother's kitchen she is unable to whip the potatoes without direct supervision, don't you know? Dorothy kind of leans over her and says “now make sure you don't run that beater so fast you get potatoes all over.” The implication is that back in Maria's kitchen you know the walls and the ceiling are covered with big white, moldy lumps of potatoes that are stuck there that they throw food around in her house.
But she didn't say anything. She says, “all right, I won’t. alright, alright mother, I won’t. I was going to. I was going to but. You talked me out of it, I won't do it.”
Her husband is sitting out with her dad Al, and Al is giving him an earful about what is wrong with the country, most of which has to do with labor unions and her husband is sitting there and he's a carpenter and there are some things that he might say. But he doesn't say all of them. He only says some of them, and with a smile.
That's Thanksgiving in Lake Wobegon. I think about Pastor Inqvist and his two oldest boys came back with their wives and their children for Thanksgiving and brought with him a little brown attache case which they opened up in which had a couple of shot glasses in it and a bottle of Canadian whiskey. First bottle of that sort ever seen in that house. And there it sat on the dining room buffet. Their father knew he ought to say something. But he didn't. He tried not to look at. The boys went into the kitchen. They asked their mother for some ice cubes. Their mother, who has been president of the WCTU now for the past five years. She said “well, she said you can look in the freezer but I don't think I have any. I only make them in the summertime for iced tea.”
Boys went out and broke an icicle off the gutter outside, brought it in, put it in glasses, sat down in the living room, talked to their father. They're good boys and they loved their parents, but they decided, I guess that they're too old to try and cover up their sins. Might as well sin right out in front of their parents. Father sat and talked to them like he would talk to somebody who didn't have any clothes on. Maintaining eye contact. Not looking below the eyes. Not looking at anything else because it's Thanksgiving.
Along with Christmas and Easter, it is a family occasion when people ignore a lot and don't say what they might say. It's kind of Olli Olli in free, don't you know. The game is over and everybody gets home free on these occasions. Amazing things have happened on days like Thanksgiving, everybody sitting around the table eating and Uncle Joe starts talking about something and he gets going into treacherous waters. This conversation heads off in directions that you would rather it didn't go. And he says something about women and about the ERA and about what's wrong with the country all in one big sentence. And you can hear tongues being bit all around the table as about 4-5-6 people are deciding whether to stand up and walk out, whether to stand up and pick up big handfuls of mashed potatoes and throw them at him. And of course, they ought to say something, they ought to stand up for their principles, but they don't. They swallow their principles. We all swallow our principles on occasions like that, and they say something, but they don't say everything that they could see.
Or some child comes back home for Thanksgiving dinner and this child brings with him or her another person with whom the child apparently has a very close personal relationship but one that is not recognized by state law. Tongues are bit until the blood comes. But people swallow their principles and they keep the peace on a day like that. Thank goodness they do. Thank goodness they do.
Sometimes honesty is not the best policy. Sometimes honesty is just a stick that we beat each other over the head with. Sometimes mercy is a better policy. Mercy with a little selective ignorance. And that was Thanksgiving in Like Wobegon, I think they're all home safe now. And I'll remind those children who went up there and who enjoyed a good Thanksgiving that the Thanksgiving weekend is almost over. On Monday it's a different regime. Different rules apply. You may expect to get some letters.
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.
1981.11.27 Charlotte Observer / 1981.11.28 Missoulian / Audio of the News available as a digital download.