Butch Thompson Trio, Garrison Keillor, Joel Mabus, Sally Rogers. Stoney Lonesome, Trapezoid,
Happy birthday Celeste ( Garrison Keillor ) Just plain love (Butch Thompson Trio ) I left my love in Avalon (Butch Thompson Trio ) Chinatown (Butch Thompson Trio ) Moon shining in the valley (Stoney Lonesome , Garrison Keillor ) Let's be sweethearts again (Stoney Lonesome , Garrison Keillor ) A textbook romance (Stoney Lonesome , Garrison Keillor ) Take me home ( Sally Rogers ) It's a long time traveling ( Sally Rogers ) Nothing for a farmer in Florida ( Sally Rogers ) Fiddle reel (Trapezoid ) I'm just a poor girl (Trapezoid ) Ratatouille (Trapezoid ) Down home rag (Trapezoid ) Blind Mary ( Joel Mabus ) Irish bagpipe tune ( Joel Mabus )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Jack's Auto Repair Powdermilk Biscuits
Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Of course, I say that as a person who is selectively deaf. And when there is turmoil, I sometimes have a way of looking away from it because it's none of my business, you know.
Have you ever been a house guest at somebody’s home when the couple got into a real fight? That's how I feel sometimes in Lake Wobegon. It's happened to me though in people homes where the couple go at it and I sort of put my hands in my pockets and I go strolling around, looking at the walls and the ceiling and examining the many interesting architectural details there in their home. And sometimes they'll even follow you into the next room when they're really in a big fight.
And they'll say, “did you hear what he said to me? Could you believe what he said to me?”
And I just look up at the walls just look up at the ceiling and say “boy that's interesting. The way the- I like the way the walls join with the ceiling there up in the corner. That's what we call a real good join in the carpentry business. That's really- that's really wonderful”.
Then later they're sitting in the kitchen, silent. They're glaring at each other. Your two friends, whom you both love, and you're right in the middle of it. And you walk in and see them and you say “boy, it's sunny out today, isn't it? Paper said it was going to be cloudy today, but no, I see it's real sunny outside. I think maybe I'll go for a walk up to Duluth or Winnipeg. I'll be back in a week or so.”
It's embarrassing, and so I don't report all of the turmoil that occurs in Lake Wobegon, and because I assume that you know about that. One fight is pretty much like another. The dialogue is about the same. I've never denied that people yelled at each other. And we're unhappy at each other and Lake Wobegon. But I just never felt that I had to say anything about it.
Oh, there was some interesting turmoil this last week here on Tuesday at the Barley home- Harley and Nina's- and their children. It started when their youngest boy put about 3 pounds of toilet paper into the toilet and then he went to flush it with a predictable result. And Harley had had a hard day and he accused Nina of being kind of lax in her job as supervisor of children. He was a little upset 'cause he was down on his hands and knees in the bathroom and doing some work that his life insurance underwriter course had not prepared him for. But he happened to say this to her at just the very moment when she was feeling that she was about at the end of it that she had held this household together by sheer willpower for months now.
And she shot back at him. And so they yelled at each other for a couple of minutes. And then she said something to him that she had been saving up for a long time. And it connected of course, as she knew it one.
And he said, “that's it. I don't have to take this anymore” and he marched from the bathroom through the dining room through the living room to the front door and he turned around and he said, “that's it. I can't take this anymore” and he put his hand on the doorknob and he opened the door and a blast of cold air hit him in the face.
Well, she was standing just a few steps behind him and she was saying “That's all right go. I don't care.” And a little bit behind her were the children who are kind of peeking around the corner at all this. They don't get to go see movies that feature that sort of dialogue. They only go to family movies so this was quite a show to them.
He opened the door and there was a blast of cold air that hit him and he turned around on his heel and he repeated his exit line. He said “that's it. I don't have to take this anymore” and he went back through the living room and through the dining room and back into the bedroom to find his long underwear and his warm socks and his boots and his gloves and his scarf and his hat and his warm parka.
It kind of took some of the drama out of it, you know, the script kind of sagged at that point, you know, because that was his exit line. That was his exit line which he was supposed to March out into the snow. But he went back into the bedroom and he was rummaging through the drawers and looking for his long underwear and his socks and his hat.
She stood in the doorway and he kept sort of repeating his exit line. “A man can only take so much. I've taken about as much as I could take. I'm bout come to the end of my rope. A man has his limits. About reached the end of my limit. That's it. I've had about as much as I can take.”
Well, this went on for a while. The kids sort of drifted away. She went into the kitchen and started making some coffee. He kept yelling. But he knew that he had sort of lost it. A few minutes before when he was standing there at the front door, he had been sort of a romantic hero in a drama, and he had a great exit line, and now he's sort of blown it. Now he was just another guy looking through his dresser drawers for underwear.
She made some coffee. She came in, asked him if he'd like a cup of coffee. She was going to ask him if he wanted it to go, but she decided she was... And he guessed that he probably would. And so he went in, and they sat down in the kitchen. After a while he said, “you know, sometimes I don't know what keeps us together.”
She said, “well, I sometimes I don't know why we stayed together either.”
Well, I'll tell you one thing that kept them together was the fact that it was winter. If had been summertime, he would have been out that door and gone.
Anyway, that's the story of turmoil in Lake Wobegon and it happens all the time and I usually don't report on things like that. And now you can see why it's not that interesting. The dialogue is always the same in almost every case. Some people accuse the old storyteller here of kind of glossing over this stuff in Lake Wobegon. But I don't. Every storyteller is selective in the details that they choose to tell. And when a storyteller gets to be my age, which is a little beyond mid point of the story- you ought to figure out by the time you're my age, whether the movie that you're acting in is a tragedy or a comedy. You have to make up your mind. And I sort of feel as if I'm in a comedy.
There are people I know whose lives aren't all that much different from mine, who feel that they are acting in a terrible tragedy. That life is tragic for them. Some of us look at the same facts and decide that it's funny. I don't know why we make those decisions.
I think about the Lundbergs, though in Lake Wobegon when I think of tragedy. The Lundbergs who by day are a pretty placid lot of people. Pretty quiet family and real good eaters. And all of them built like fire plugs and all... they all look as if they're just looking around for a place to sit down and take a load off their feet and take a nap.
But by night the Lundbergs when they go to sleep are chased by demons. They are always falling off of buildings. Carnivorous beasts come into their homes and back the Lundbergs into corners and chew on their hands and on their feet. When they are asleep, their lives are tragic. And if you ever walk by the Lundbergh’s home at night you can hear them calling out to each other and yelling, and sometimes you'll hear crashing noises as the Lundbergs roam around their home escaping from the beasts and the demons who are after and the tragedies of their dreams.
And then they get up in the morning and they're real quiet again. Kind of exhausted almost from all that they've been through the night before.
Well, you see, if their life story were written by any one of a number of screen writers there would be real beasts in their home and they would fall off of real buildings or one of them would get up in his sleep and light the whole house on fire and it would burn down... see... the way a lot of writers would write the the Lundburg story.
But you see. God is the writer in their case. And God writes a lot of comedy, you see? God writes an awful lot of comedy. And one of the problems is that God has such bad actors to work with. God has terrible actors sometimes who take this very funny material that's given to them and who make it into Death of a Salesman or they make it into soap opera or the invasion of the body snatchers or some Grade B zombie movie, you see?
God is not to blame for that. God is not to blame for that.
The Barley’s were just bad actors. He was a bad actor. Their life isn't a tragedy, it's a comedy. And one of the things that makes it a comedy in my mind is that their fight and all of the yelling that they did took place under a plaque on the dining room wall that was executed in needlepoint by one of the participants. And the plaque is of passage from the Psalms, which reads
How excellent is thy loving kindness, O God? Therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings. They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. For with the is the fountain of life in thy light shall we see light.
Now that's the basis of comedy. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are strong, and all the men are good looking, all the children are above average.
Watching the Schmidt Beer sign. Shy people write their dialog before they go on a visit. Margaret Haskins Derber's poem about cars sliding on icy roads and cooking dinners.
1982-02-13 1989-02-11
Kenosha News Feb 12 1982
Audio of the News available on CD.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, musicbrainz