Butch Thompson Trio, Don Hinkley, Garrison Keillor, Lilianne Labbe, Red Maddock, Mary McCaslin, Jim Ringer. Tannahill Weavers,
Rag (Butch Thompson Trio ) Rag Bag Rag (Butch Thompson Trio ) Sweet and lovely (Butch Thompson Trio ) Love Nest (Butch Thompson Trio ) Hello Arthur ( Garrison Keillor ) Happy 8th birthday Brendan ( Red Maddock ) The prisoner of London ( Lilianne Labbe , Don Hinkley ) The wandering Canadian ( Lilianne Labbe , Don Hinkley ) Young man's song ( Lilianne Labbe , Don Hinkley ) Farewell to the north country ( Lilianne Labbe , Don Hinkley ) Sing the blues Momma Lou ( Jim Ringer , Mary McCaslin ) Pass me by if you're only passing through ( Jim Ringer , Mary McCaslin ) Old friends ( Jim Ringer , Mary McCaslin ) My illusive dreams ( Jim Ringer , Mary McCaslin ) Bagpipe music (Tannahill Weavers ) The trooper and the maid (Tannahill Weavers ) Loveliest of Trees- AE Housman ( Garrison Keillor )
American Shyness Society Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Evans Thompson & Maddock Investments Hair Division of State Consumer Affairs Jim Ringer Designer Folk Clothes Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Sidetrack Tap
Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota and a pretty warm one too. It was in the 30s most of the week, which turned the ice rink to slush the week before the big 4H club skating party, which now I guess is going to have to be a dance in the high school cafeteria- as if the school cafeteria was where they wanted to dance. I doubt it.
The fishing houses were mostly brought in off the lake yesterday and this morning- and none too soon they were about to become rafts. There was a big open stretch of water opened up here on Thursday morning out towards the northwest corner of the lake up around the Lake Wobegon piles- the two outcroppings of scrap metal out there, the remains of the Frigidaire's and the stoves and some old cars that were dumped in the lake to try and plug up the hole that was caused when Uncle Charlie Crisp lost his temper after 30 years of trying to catch the same walleye and went out there and dropped a couple sticks of dynamite in. And that's where the open water was out there- I guess maybe the piles are the are the reason for it.
The fishing wasn't that good this winter. Not that most of those old guys noticed anyway. I think most of them go out there and sit in the dark and drop a line down the hole in the ice just to get out of the house. It's kind of a cure for cabin fever for them. They figured that if you go sit in a tiny dark shack for four or five hours, your own home will seem bigger to you when you get back to it. Well, as we all know, there's only one cure for cabin fever, and it's still a month or two away despite this thaw- more winter yet to come.
People in Lake Wobegon just sitting reading their seed catalogs and hoping for the best. It's an illness- cabin fever is- it is a lot like adolescence. It's a sort of an adolescence that all of us go through every year. When the house seems to close in on you and you start climbing the walls. Thanks to all that good insulating you did last summer the house is airless and stuffy and quiet as if you're in your tomb. And you just want to get out of there. You just want to break out and start living your life. Make your move. But the world isn't ready yet. It's not ready for spring. And if you're an adolescent, it's not ready for you. It's like you're waiting for your ride to come to take you to the dance. And you stand by the window waiting. Years pass. Your parents tell you to relax, sit down, take it easy. Don't worry, just take it easy, but you can't take it easy. You want to get out. Leave this town and start your life.
I remember when I was that age I wanted to get out so bad it almost made them wish I would. It was all I could do to keep myself from running away for a while. I tell you if it hadn't been for the fact that the meals were regular and good, and the laundry service was the best you could get- I would have left in a minute.
Sort of considered myself a romantic at the time, but I had my practical side, you know. I knew to keep my fires banked and not to go around throwing myself off of precipices unless they were real small precipices- 4-5 feet maybe- with soft ground at the bottom of it.
But I remember when I was that age lying in bed at night looking out my bedroom window and dreaming of the day when I could leave and get rid of all these small, narrow-minded people who didn't appreciate me. And find some true friends. And some true lovers of art who would admire me more or less full time. And who would appreciate my work which at the time was poetry. I had written many poems which I felt were as good as A.E. Housman's. And in many ways were identical to A.E. Housman's. I had sort of picked up his career where he left. All my poems featured sensitive young men who were about my age- ‘bout my height, my color hair. Quiet, sensitive young men who were in possession of a great secret which they did not tell anyone about, because how could anyone else have understood it? And who seemed to be doomed to a tragic fate that was too awful to mention. And so I didn't.
There was a lot that was left unsaid in those poems. I figured people would either got them or they wouldn't. I wasn’t about to spell things out for a bunch of dumb readers. I lay in bed and looked out my bedroom window and far off in the distance I saw the flashing red light atop the Lake Wobegon water tower and over the years that light became a pure symbol to me, of all of the excitement and the mystery and the beauty of life that was waiting for me on the outside as soon as I could get out of this prison.
And my mind would go over one of my favorite A.E. Housman poems, which was so simple that I never tried to duplicate it. It's a poem that went
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now is hung with bloom along the bow. It stands along the woodland ride, wearing white for Eastertide. Now of my three score years and ten, twenty will not come again. Subtract from seventy Springs a score- it only leaves me fifty more and since to look at things in bloom fifty springs is little room along the woodland I will go to see the cherry hung with snow.
I wanted to do a little blooming myself- to look at things in bloom. Even though I was only 17 and had a few years to go until I was 20. But I knew that I couldn't. I knew that if I tried to, my folks had asked me where you going. And I would say “Along the woodland I must go to see the cherry hung with snow.”
And they would say, “Oh no, you're not. You're gonna stay right here and do what I told you to do 3 hours ago.” Or they'd say “those aren’t cherries, those are crabapples.”
Something like that. That was the sort of ignorance I had to contend with. And misunderstanding in those days.
Well, now I am the same age that they were then. Now I have a son who is going to turn 13 years old this spring and who is ready and has been ready for a long time to get a car and an apartment and to start living life. I remember when I was his age. I used to think to myself when I become a parent I'm going to do things differently. And now for the life of me I can't remember how I was going to do it. All I can tell him, all I can tell you, or all the other people who are suffering from cabin fever or adolescence, waiting for winter to end, and trees to bloom and true love to walk in the front door. Is just to take it easy. Just hold on. It's not here yet. It's coming. It's on its way. But it hasn't arrived yet.
So the 4H club dance is tonight in the high school cafeteria. You are welcome to bring your own records, but remember that Mrs Tollefson is still in charge of music selection.
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, every single one of them.
The Shyness Hall of Fame will be a motor home that will move from city to city. Margaret Haskins Derber's poem about the first seed catalog. How to deal with a poor haircut.
1982.02.19 Lexington Herald / 1982.02.20 Wisconsin State Journal: 'special for pledge drive' / Audio of the News available as a digital download.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto