Stevie Beck, Butch Thompson Trio, Katie Laur Bluegrass Band, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr. Vern Sutton,
Struttin with some BBQ (Butch Thompson Trio ) My melancholy baby (Butch Thompson Trio ) Buddy's habit (Butch Thompson Trio ) Maple Leaf Rag (Butch Thompson Trio ) Stage door canteen (Butch Thompson Trio ) Two o'clock in the morning (Katie Laur Bluegrass Band ) Crazy arms (Katie Laur Bluegrass Band ) You are my flower (Katie Laur Bluegrass Band ) White sport coat (Katie Laur Bluegrass Band ) When I am gone (Katie Laur Bluegrass Band ) Love me or leave me (Katie Laur Bluegrass Band ) She was a dental hygienist ( Garrison Keillor , Stevie Beck ) Down the brae ( Stevie Beck ) St Anne's Reel ( Stevie Beck ) The wind that shakes the barley ( Stevie Beck ) A rainy night in Rio ( Vern Sutton ) Deep purple ( Vern Sutton )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Bob's Bank Butch Thompson Music Corporation Chatterbox Cafe Fearmonger's Shop Fritz Electronics Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Sidetrack Tap
Well, so it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown. Often is. Well it is, you ask people up there what's been going on and people will always tell you. “Oh, not much really. Not much at all. It's been pretty quiet” and then sometimes they will go on to tell you about amazing things that have happened. Somebody caught the big lunker fish out in the lake or somebody saw a car with California plates or somebody heard God talking to him from a Raspberry bush. And then other times you ask him, and they say, “oh, not much. Not much at all. Been pretty quiet” and it turns out tThat they mean it. And this has been one of those weeks.
Clarence Bunson fell asleep in his backyard. That was news this last week. It was the kind of week it was. He was out back trying to dig out a lilac bush that had gotten kind of seedy looking back there by the garage and it was kind of a hard job. He fell asleep, curled up on the grass there. Thankfully, was fully dressed. But he did get a little sunburn on his wrists and his ankles. They don't switch to short sleeve shirts until after Memorial Day.
Bud, the village maintenance man or, Chief of Maintenance, Chief of Municipal Maintenance- I think he'd rather be called Head of the Department of Parks and Sanitation and Public Works- was working down in the Council chambers at the Town Hall this last week stripping paint and you could hear shouting coming from there from time to time during the week, cursing, cursing the name of Mr. Howgan who had preceded Bud in that job and held it for about 30 years. According to Bud, Mr Howgan must have enjoyed painting a lot and didn't have much better to do with his time than to add on a coat every year. So Bud was trying to remove it this last week. He says that when he gets done, the Council Chambers will be considerably larger than they were before.
Mr Howgan probably was a painter by nature, but Bud is kind of a stripper by nature, he believes in urban removal. He went out this last week and took out that whole big patch of brush up at the north end of the football field. He said teenagers were fooling around in there - just wiped that out. The week before he took out the apple tree behind the behind the town hall, which had been bugging him for years- having that thing there on account of the way it messed up the grass there to dump a big load of fruit on it every fall, you know? He got tired of it. He got out the truck and put the snow plow on the front of it and accidentally ran into it. The tree struck back at him, it gave him a cut on his nose where it hit him with the rim of the steering wheel, but Bud took a couple more runs at it till it cracked and then moved in to finish it off hand to hand with an axe. And just took that whole thing out. I don't think that tree has been seen the last of though they're what appeared to be little sort apple tree shrubs out behind the town hall where that tree had scattered its seed on the ground, and I think that those trees are aiming towards the Town Hall, little ones putting down roots reaching down there for the foundations, wanting to grab hold of it. I don't think that tree has entirely left the scene. It might calm him down a little bit and he could use some calming down. I mean he gets the grader out and people just blanch. There's no telling what he's going to do.
Sometimes you wish that he'd take off and go fishing along with the rest of the other old guys in town, but Bud goes at fishing real hard too. He's one of the few fishermen in town who has a boat on his motor and he's got the biggest one in town- it's an 18 horse. And he cranks that thing up, and it goes out there, and he'll sit in one spot for about 5 minutes and cast out with these immense lures that he uses. And then if he doesn't catch anything, he'll start up and move off to another place and just back and forth, back and forth across that lake all afternoon. Sometimes it gets to where he won't even turn the motor off, he'll just let it idle there. And sit there. And he’ll throw out those huge lures as big as meat hooks, just beat on the water with them, just flailing the water with his line out. The fish must be moving real fast under there to keep from being nailed by these things. Fish dodging back and forth. “Lookout, Wally. Here comes again.” They probably all get under the boat, you know, where it’s safe.
Most of the old guys in Lake Wobegon don't fish like that. They keep an old rowboat, an old green rowboat, down in the weeds behind Jack’s or down behind Ralph’s or over at Art’s Baits and they go ahead and shove off and row out little ways and just sit there. There just sit there, they just want to be out there. Be out there on the water. I mean they do put bait and everything on their lines, it's not just string hanging down in the water, but a lot of times they'll catch a fish and throw it back, even if it's a keeper. If they're not in the mood, you know. It's not like their life depended on that fish, they just want to be out there by themselves. Just sit and look at a bobber for a while out on the water.
There are cultures you know in which a man can sit and look at a tree or look at a flower for a couple of hours and nobody think less of him. But we don't feel that way here, but a little red plastic bobber, it's OK to meditate on that. And that's what fishing is, is meditation. Those are little chapels out there, little green chapels out on the water. Those old guys hunkered down in the boat under that big broad brimmed straw hat. They're thinking of a lot of things other than fishing. I know because I've been out there.
I remember a morning. It was a few years ago and it was in May right after fishing season began. Went out on the lake with my friend Arnie, and it was a very foggy morning. It was so foggy that you couldn't see the end of the dock. We got in the boat, a couple of poles, little bait pail, and a couple of sandwiches and a plastic bag. And we headed out into the fog before the sun came up. Couple of poles on the oars and we were out of sight of land. It was mysterious out there in this thick gray fog sitting in a boat in just a little sphere of the visible and then all beyond it was unknown. Could have been on the ocean. Almost felt like Columbus out there. Heard Bud’s motor coming. Came closer. And then it faded off again. He could have come 50 feet away from us. We wouldn't have seen it. It was lovely being out there. Finally, as the sun came up and burned off the fog, we could see that there were several other boats close by us and then we saw we were about 100 yards off from the shore. And then we saw the town. 2 steeples and the water tower. Caught 3 fish, sat there all morning. Ate the sandwiches. Talked about a lot of stuff, told stories, some fish stories, mainly other stories. Told some secrets. Some fishing secrets, but mainly others. And then we came back.
The three fish that we caught were all caught by me. The first one was a perch. And I could tell when it took the hook that it was pretty small one. And I just reeled it in and as it came up to the boat, I felt a tug on my line. And I looked out as it jumped and cleared the water and I saw that a big northern had come on and grabbed ahold of that perch, thinking that it was the bait. I fought it for a while and then there was another tug on the line. And this huge fish that turned out to be a walleye had taken a hold of the northern and I fought those three fish for the better part of half an hour, they went off down into the weeds and we just had to kind of follow him and wait until they wore themselves out. And finally I brought him up and got him in a landing net and there they were. The perch half swallowed by the northern and the northern half swallowed by the walleye. I was pretty exhausted myself by that time, and I tried for a while to get em apart and I couldn't and I didn't see how I was going to clean him that way. So I threw them back in. I thought I'll just let them figure it out.
Well, we were heading on in and Arnie said, “you know, you maybe ought to have kept them. People won't believe you otherwise.” And I said, “Arnie, I know it's true and you know it's true and I just don't care what anybody else thinks. And I'm not going to tell them anyway”, and I haven't until now.
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, every single one.
Moodism is really discrimination against shy persons. HM's book 'How to Tell a Tornado.' HM talks about his negative outlook. Fear of doing something stupid. Fearmonger's smoke bomb diverts attention. Poem about the invention of the autoharp. MBD poem about art and cold cash. Tomorrow is the Whippets opening day. HM talks about a Minnesota World's Fair. SD has a Dirt-o-rama to learn about soil.
Springfield Leader and Press May 27 1982
1982.05.28 Charlotte Observer / 1982.05.29 Cincinnati Enquirer / 1982.05.29 Montana Standard / Audio of the News available as a digital download.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto