Scott Alarik, Bruce Allard, John Anderson, Lake Wobegon Community Choir, Tom Lieberman, Peter Ostroushko.
[undocumented]
Well, sir, it's been a quiet in Lake Wobegon this last week. Quiet week for Christmas.I guess the quietest part of it was Christmas Eve, I found myself up there in Lake Wobegon for the first time in a long time for Christmas. Went for a walk on Christmas Eve after the sun went down, her body was up at church- Lake Wobegon Lutheran or up at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. Everything is absolutely quiet. Saw shepherds and angels walking through the streets on their way up to the Christmas pageant up at Our Lady. Thought of going up there for a while to see it. But then I thought, no, I thought. The pageant that they did four years ago for which Jack loaned them the hoist for the heavenly host to come down. Nothing could beat that. I'd rather remember the pageant that way.
So I walked around for a while. As it was getting dark, litlle snow is coming down through the trees. Street lights were on Main Street. Christmas lights hung between them and they were exemplary. They were beautiful. Stopped and looked in Skogland’s front window. They were closed, of course. And you know there was stuff in that front window that if they'd been open, and if I could have had it, I never would have wanted it. But somehow it being unavailable made everything in the front window seem magical and beautiful. And yet looking at them there, on Christmas Eve, I felt if finally I could have some life would be different for me in some way. Mornings would just be more cheerful.
I used to feel the same way about becoming a Catholic. I was raised amongst pretty plain people as far as worship went, t was a fundamentalist outfit- the Lake Wobegon Assembly of Saints. We never did much for Christmas. They didn't believe in a lot of pomp and display. I always envied the Catholics up there on the hill with the bells and the incense and the candles. And the robes and singing in the Latin language. And there we were sitting around in a room pretty much like the waiting room of a bus depot. Just a bunch of people. Sitting there in natural light. Our sacrament was a loaf of white bread that came from Ralphs Pretty Good Grocery, unsliced please, and a bottle of wine, but one of the elders went down to the Sidetrack Tap in the back door and got once a month.
When I was 14 years old I got up all my courage and went to the rectory and told Father Emil I wanted to become a Catholic. He looked at me as if I had said that I wanted to learn to fly. He said “I don't blame you.” But he said “you're a little bit young. You're a little bit young to be running away from home.” He said “it's always a good idea to know where home is before you leave it.”
Well, it was 25 years ago. I'm still trying to find out exactly where home is. It's a, it's a hard question. From time to time, I think that home is here with you. But what kind of a home is this? I mean, there's no, no kitchen here, no bedroom or anything you know. And you'd feel kind of funny if you looked up and there were 800 people looking in through your living room window. You might call the police. Though if you saw 800 people looking in through your living room window week after week, you might start to feel honored by it you know. Said maybe they were looking at something. You might turn to your true love and say “Darling, we must be doing something right. We must be putting on quite a show?”
What was I talking about here? I was talking about.. talking about home, a lot of people came home to Lake Wobegon for Christmas. It's always startling to me, you know, because I stand here week after week and I talk about Lake Wobegon as a small town in the exact center of Minnesota. But every Christmas, where every big holiday it absorbs a lot of odd people who come back with their spouses who are from Lake Wobegon- people who moved away and who married a lot of un-Wobegon-like people and bring them back to the family for Christmas.
There was a fellow who was seen on Thursday walking down the street in Lake Wobegon, with a giant pair earphones clamped over his ears. Never before seen in that town. Walking down the street out there. People along his route called on ahead to alert their neighbors, “Ingrid look out your front window you won't believe it.” It was somebody’s husband, you know, brought back for Christmas. Obviously wanted to be somewhere else.
There was another husband. one of the Olsen girls married and he came back for Christmas with curly hair this year. They're all talking about it down at the Chatterbox Cafe. Last time they saw him last Christmas he had straight hair he looked like himself. He's kind of big fella built like a linebacker and here he came back this year looking like Shirley Temple. People try hard not to stare.
The Tolerudes- there son-in-law came home for Christmas. Came down to breakfast on Thursday morning in a pair of designer bib overalls. Wanted to go out to the barn and help Harold with the chores. Well, Harold didn't know what to say. Took him along. Went out and fed the pigs. Fellow was talking a blue streak about the about the rural lifestyle and how wonderful it was . Wouldn't shut up. Drove Harold about crazy- put him to work shoveling silage. Put him in the silo and he still kept on talking in there. Harold had to leave. He had to go into the house, couldn't stand it anymore, walked across the yard. Hear a sort of a rumbling inside the silo. This man was talking about the urban lifestyle and how it separates us from reality. Made a kind of low muffled noise in there. Sound kind of like an engine going in the silo. Like the honey truck comes to pump out the pig tank. Harold went in had some coffee. Waited for his son in law to come back. Took him a long time. I guess he had a lot to say.
The Bunsen's had their big Christmas reunion, all of them together for the first time in years. Clarence and Arlene their four children, all home for Christmas. For the first time in a long time, Clint and Irene came from across the street with their two and two grandchildren and Bud and Marilyn came in from the farm they got 3. And they all got together at the Bunsen's at Clarence and Arlene's.
I guess because Arlene had said last November, it would be a nice thing to get together even though they don't have the largest house, she was the one who sort of suggested it, so they all came to her house. Before she knew there were people calling around the phone asking what they could bring. “Bring where” she said, but they had it. They had to bring the ping pong table up from the basement and sort of put it onto the end of the dining room table into the living room to have room for all them sit down to eat which meant that there wasn't room for them to sit around in the living room, so they all had to sit down in the basement on folding chairs.
The route to the basement stairs is through the kitchen where Arlene, for some reason was cooking a goose for Christmas. I suppose maybe last November she mentioned to Clarence maybe it would be nice to have a goose for Christmas and before she knew it, she had one. Well, those of you who've ever cooked a goose know that its main byproduct is grease. It pumps grease out. You have to keep draining off the grease by the bucket full. She spilled part of a bucket on the floor. People went by, down to the basement, back upstairs, back downstairs. Each one went by she said “Lookout” and sometimes it was a little bit too late.
Clint went down a couple of times. Reached over to the counter to steady himself. Caught the corner of the mashed potatoes. I tell you her floor took on a wonderful shine.
But they had a good time. They all sat down finally to some kind of dinner and all sat down around the table and before the blessing, Clarence stood up and delivered the traditional Bunson family toast, which is a wonderful line. It was uttered years and years ago by Grandpa Bunsen may he rest in peace who had called up Arlene to say that he couldn't come to their house for Sunday dinner he was going to stay home because he was suffering from a case of the trots as he called it.
He said “I got the trots, think I'll stay put.” Arlene said she thought, well, maybe that was a good idea. And Grandpa said “yeah”, he said, “you know he said there's no place like home when you're not feeling well.” It was a wonderful line. Full of meaning. You have to think on it a little bit. People repeated it to each other over the years and it came to be the Bunson family toast. Wherever Bunsen's get together, the oldest Bunsen stands up and they all say together, “you know there's no place like home when you're not feeling well.”
That's how I felt walking around Lake Wobegon on Christmas Eve. I had been feeling poorly about a lot of things. But it felt good to be home. And now that I feel good, I don't think I'll go back for a while.
That's the news from Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong all the men are good looking and all the children are above average.
Boston Globe Dec 21 1981 Star Gazette Dec 26 1981 Tampa Tribune Dec 25 1981
1981.12.25 Binghamton Press / 1981.12.26 Missoulian / Audio of the News available as a digital download.