Lou Berryman, Peter Berryman, Butch Thompson Trio, Charlie Maguire, Howard Mohr. Stoney Lonesome,
How to tell a tornado ( Howard Mohr ) Waiting at the end of the road (Butch Thompson Trio ) On the red iron range ( Charlie Maguire ) Do you think it's gonna rain ( Lou Berryman , Peter Berryman )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Mega Brute (Tractor for the 80s) Olsen, Magnus Powdermilk Biscuits Whippets
Well it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, the Whippets benefit dance was last Saturday night in the Town Hall and I want to thank everybody who managed to make it to that one. The Boosters club regrets that the door prize was not what a lot of people expected it should be, but they did feel that most of the money ought to go to the Whippets baseball club and so the winner of the stepladder is still Carl Krebsbach and he can pick that up anytime at the feed and seed. The dance raised $28.15- not enough to pour concrete in the Whippets dugout out at the Wally Old Hard Hands Bunson Memorial Park, but it will come in handy and thanks once again to all of you who came.
There will be a benefit smelt dinner for the Lake Wobegon Whippets 2 weeks from today. That would be the 22nd of May in the Town Hall. These will be fresh smelt- not frozen from last year, depending of course on how Sonny and Bob do this week up at Lake Superior. So let's all keep that date in mind- the 22nd in the evening- fresh smelt, pan fried, beer and setups music for dancing and all come out and support our team.
The weather's been good this last week. The Norwegian Bachelor farmers have the wheat all in and put in the last of the corn this last week and on towards about the middle of the week. They were spreading horse manure on their fallow fields. The wind was out of the west, so the news was unmistakable. But it's a lovely smell. It's a lovely smell. They always try and get that finished up every year by Syttende Mai- Norwegian Independence Day, the 17th of May, which is coming up soon.
Here's some people right down front who are gonna to go up for the big parade and celebration in Lake Wobegon.- the Big Norwegian Independence Day holiday.
It's a holiday that was not celebrated in the early days of Lake Wobegon partly because Norway wasn't -was Norway independent then?- I'm not sure. It wasn't celebrated so much in the early days because the subject of Norway was a painful subject for many of the early settlers in Lake Wobegon who left the homeland in their youth and made a terrible voyage across the Atlantic and found themselves up there on the edge of the Prairie. It was America- it was the land of promise, and it was good to them in many ways. But when you learn a language in middle age you can never be quite so smart again and or quite so graceful or quite so romantic. And you can read in the letters that the early Norwegian settlers sent back home there's sadness that would sometimes come on them very suddenly. Yalmer Inkvist remembers his grandfather, Christian, suddenly breaking into tears, standing beside his team of Big Black Belgians- breaking into tears, tears running down his cheeks that looked like Elm bark and singing in a loud voice.
Oh, Norway, Norway. Land of my youth. Thy green forests and my mountains that I will never see again. Oh bird, flying in the sky. Go back and tell them all my loved ones that my heart is filled with unspeakable longing and sorrow.
That is a rough translation. Those people were not in a mood to carry the Norwegian flag up Main St. None of them would have been able to do it without breaking into tears.
Well, that was the first generation. There was another generation or two that came along that didn't care all that much about Norway, never having seen it- being embarrassed by the old people who broke into tears. And then a younger generation came along. I'm thinking about Bierget Ingvist who got the celebration of Syttende Mai going again- I guess it was about 18 years ago, about 1965, she returned to live in Lake Wobegon after spending 20 years in Dallas, Texas. After 20 years in Texas, her Norwegian heritage suddenly seemed wonderful and even exotic to her.
Biergit went to work for the Mist County Historical Society, collecting all kinds of letters and personal papers of the old timers and personal effects and artifacts, anything that they'd ever touched or used she collected and brought into the museum. Much to the dismay of Mrs Halvorson, whom before Birgit came back to town, had been the Mist County Historical Society.
Mrs Halvorson, one day looked in a box of historical materials that Biergit had collected and found 10 pairs of ladies underwear. And that was it for her. “Underwear”, she said “now we're going to have underwear in the museum. We're going to have some kind of a glass case. Fill it up with underwear, are we? Why don't we collect Thunder jugs? Why don't we? Why don’t we go around the county, get all the outhouses, put em out back at the town hall here. Have an outhouse museum.”
So Biergit left the society and formed her own group called the Daughters of The Pioneers. An historical group, if there ever was one. Membership limited to women whose ancestors had arrived in Lake Wobegon prior to 1896. A date chosen because it eliminated Mrs Halvorson. And she set about to organize Syttende Mai, Norwegian Independence Day. They were going to have a big parade from the statue of the Unknown Norwegian up the hill to the cemetery. Which is where most of the Norwegians are. And it would be led by the Daughters of The Pioneers, followed by the high school band, followed by the Sons of Knute Lodge, followed by Mrs Halvorson’s bunch, if they wanted to be in it.
And the question arose, who would get to carry the flag? Who would get to march first in the procession? The committee decided that they would choose seven daughters to be in the honor guard and that the seven daughters would be made up of the seven women whose Norwegian ancestors had arrived first in town. So they went back to the archives to establish credentials. And they kind of wish that they hadn't, after they found out some things in there that they would rather not have.
They found a little pack of the letters from somebody’s old trunk. It was a packet of letters that had been mailed by a fellow named Magnus Olsson back to his family in Norway that the family had brought over to America with them. And what was clearer than day in these letters was that Magnus Olsen was the first Norwegian to arrive in Lake Wobegon. Arriving there in 1863. And that he was a deserter from General George McClellan's army.
He'd arrived in New York in 1861. Not speaking very good English and he had been paid $200 by a man to take the man's place in the Union army for what Magnus understood would only be a few weeks. Well, whether the man was dishonest or just optimistic, he didn't know. But after a few months in the army, Magnus knew it was no place for a Norwegian. Army life was brutal. The officers were rough. The men were ill mannered. The food was not fit for beasts and he who scarcely spoke English was continually being put in places where people were shooting at him.
He admired General George McClellan because McClellan showed not much inclination to pursue the Confederate army. That was fine with Magnus. It was President Abraham Lincoln, for whom he reserved his harshest words. He had written Lincoln several letters in Norwegian, explaining the odd circumstances that had brought Magnus into this war, that he wanted no part of and never got an answer.
He is a butcher, Magnus wrote. He is a butcher. He does not care about us. The family got another letter a month later from Kentucky and then one from Indiana and then one from Wisconsin. Magnus had stolen an officer's horse and was trying to get as far away from the war as he could. And he wound up in Lake Wobegon at the point at which the horse collapsed underneath him. He had children. He farmed just north of town. His children had children and there is not many family trees on the Norwegian side in Lake Wobegon that do not include the name of Magnus Olsen.
Well, the idea of an honor guard was quietly shelved. Margaret Magandanz, the drum majorette for the high school band, carried the flag the daughters all marched in a group. That was back in 1965. Clarence Bunson said at the time, Clarence, who often gets the last word he said “I don't know how you can hold it against your ancestors for not getting themselves killed.” He said “if all our ancestors were heroes, then where would that leave us?”
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.
Daily News May 7 1982
1982.05.07 Star Tribune / This is a Sliker tape. The first hour is missing. / Audio of the News available as a digital download. John Hall states that this date was an in-studio fundraiser compilation.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto