Butch Thompson Trio, Richard Dworsky. Queen City Brass,
[undocumented]
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. The streets are all plowed out, the sidewalks are shoveled where there are sidewalks- skating rink has been busy down to the Nights in the Gardens of Spain Theater. Emily has been packing them in now this last week for showings of The Outlaw starring Jane Russell. A movie- back when it was released in 1943- brought a lot of ministers out of retirement, but nowadays seems pretty tame stuff. A lot of the young blades who snuck off to the cities to see it back in ‘43 now going back to see it again and bringing their grandchildren with them. Grandchildren think it's a western.
Over at the central building up the block from the theater up above Skoglund's Five and Dime there's been a lot of hammering and sawing going on this last week as Carl Krebsbach and his cousin Earl have been remodeling what used to be the Odd Fellows clubrooms above Skoglund's to make three apartments. They will be the first apartments in that town so far as anybody can remember. And they should be ready in April if anybody wants to live in them. I don't know.
They had to tear out the ceiling to get rid of the oder of cigar smoke from the old Odd Fellows days. Mr Skogland looked at it - all the beams were exposed up there- and thought for a while of leaving it that way. He had seen pictures of rooms but then he decided that everyone in town would think he was too lazy to finish the job. So they put the ceiling back up.
But he was down to the Chatterbox Cafe here on Tuesday of this last week and Dorothy was asking about it.
She said, “who in the world is going to live in those apartments?”
Mr Skogland says, “well, I don't know anybody who wants to.”
“Well, who would want to? she said.
Well, he thought maybe, maybe some older couples would who wanted to get out of their homes and not have all that to contend with. Well, I’ll tell ya, most of the older people in Lake Wobegon plan on contending with it, they plan to remain in contention. They’re not about to go sit in some rooms up above Skogland‘s.
But Dorothy said, “well where in the world are they going to have their garden?”
Well, he said he didn't know. He guessed maybe they wouldn't have one.
But not to have a garden- it seemed like such an odd thing to Dorothy, and about half the other people in Lake Wobegon. Not to have a garden would be like not having sheets on your bed or something else, I don't know what. Everybody would have a garden. Gardening is the big activity in Lake Wobegon. That's how they knew, you know, that Mrs. Tollerude did not have long on earth, was when she decided she wasn't going to put in a garden that year. When she said she wasn't going to put in a garden, they knew that she was dying. And she did. She died before the first little green onions came in- her favorite vegetable. She used to carry some onions around with her in her purse. We called her the onion lady.
Whenever she'd feel a case of the vapors coming on, she'd reach in there for some onions and chew on them. Her son always felt that if she had planted the garden that the sight of those little onion shoots out there might have given her the will to live. But she decided it was time to put her house and her garden in order, and she had the compost laid on top of it. And left it there to rest for the next person to come along.
Well, we'll see. The apartments are available in April, in case anybody is interested.
There's been some remodeling at the Sons of Knute Lodge too. Something people never would have expected. But it's all due to a mysterious bequest from a wealthy lawyer from out east who died and left some money to the Knutes.
The story was that he had come to Minnesota years and years and years ago on a fishing trip with some of his pals and he had not had much luck. And then he went to drive them to the train and Saint Cloud and they got lost in the back roads. And they were coming down the blacktop towards Lake Wobegon when they saw the S ons of Knute sign which is still out there. The sign that says “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength. Isaiah 30:15. Courtesy of Sons of Knute.” “In quietness and confidence shall be your strength” is the official scripture verse of the entire lodge. Though some people think that quietness and confidence are not quite the words to describe the Knutes that torpor and smugness might be better.
Anyway, they like the words quietness and confidence. And as it so happened, this lawyer needed a Q right at that moment- they were playing highway alphabet. And he got his Q. And then he picked up his Z on the “ez terms” sign on Bunsen Motors coming right into town. He happened to come right in by the Sons of Knute Lodge. He saw it there. He stopped to thank him. They were playing horseshoes alongside. They needed another player on one team. They invited him into play. As it turned out his side won. They took him indoors. They gave him a beer. They made him an honorary Knute and he left in a warm glow towards the Knutes and he put him in his will.
The check arrived two weeks ago. Now let me tell you that anybody who banks at the First Inqvist State Bank in Lake Wobegon knows that it is not a Swiss bank. Any large deposit made there, I'll tell you, your relatives and your creditors find out about it the same day. And no sooner was that check endorsed than everybody knew how much it was for- it was for $15,000. And no sooner was it deposited than people were coming up to tell the Sons of Knute what they ought to do with it.
Somebody thought they ought to donate it to the city. And some people thought it ought to go to build new bleachers out to the Wally Old Hard Hands Bunson Memorial Ballpark. The library wanted some of it. Father Emil even came up- Father Emil who does not particularly care for Knutes or for Knute-ism in general.
It came up and reminded the Grand Ohya, Mr Bergie, of the song in the Sons of Knute Songbook. The one that begins.
Do we share our earthly goods? You betcha, do we care for all the sick and poor? Are we kind and generous? I guess so are we Christian gentlemen ya sure.
And Father Emil was looking for a donation out of that $15,000 for the new Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Teen Recreation Center with a swimming pool.
Well, things just got so hot for the Knutes with everybody coming up and telling them what they ought to do for their money. They had to beat a retreat. I tell you back when they didn't have any money, nobody was interested in what they did with it. But now everybody was after him, and they found themselves spending more and more time there in their club rooms.
And as they looked around they noticed all sorts of things that needed improvements. And they decided to send $3000 to Lutheran World Relief to put $5000 into a burial fund, which should take care of all the current members and to spend the rest on a new billiards table, to fix the upstairs bathroom which hasn't been working now for years. To put a new blower in the furnace to put some new knotty pine paneling in the fellowship room and to buy 5 new recliner lounge chairs.
And that's it. It's their lodge. It's their money, and it was their Q that got it for him.
And 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.
1982.01.31 Star Tribune / 1982.02.05 Lexington Herald implies a rebroadcast: "Unusual program of songs by female vocalists, music from travels of Claudia Schmidt and Lisa Null... Helen Schnayer and Lisa Neustadt / 1982.02.05 Paducah Sun: seconds above 4 artists / Audio of the News available as a digital download.