Bon Temps Zydeco Band, Butch Thompson Trio, Mark Nelson. Phil and Vivian Williams, Queen Ida, Shakespearean Players, Nancy Spencer,
I get the blues (Butch Thompson Trio ) Sister Kate (Butch Thompson Trio ) Starry nights and candle light (Phil and Vivian Williams ) The trolley bus (Phil and Vivian Williams ) Union street jig (Phil and Vivian Williams ) Peter street (Phil and Vivian Williams ) Haste to the wedding ( Mark Nelson ) Lee's ferry ( Mark Nelson ) Midnight on the water ( Mark Nelson ) Banish misfortune ( Mark Nelson ) Six-part madrigal (Shakespearean Players ) Three by three (Shakespearean Players ) Zydeco music (Queen Ida , Bon Temps Zydeco Band ) Jolie Blanc (Queen Ida , Bon Temps Zydeco Band ) Saw medley ( Nancy Spencer )
Bob's Bank Bunsen, Clarence Chatterbox Cafe Colonel Tolerude Father Emil Fearmonger's Shop Ingqvist, David Jack's Auto Repair (Headstop Program for the Over-Educated) Powdermilk Biscuits Sidetrack Tap Sons of Knute Whippets
Well it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. From what I hear, the gardens are coming along. Looks like the Krebsbach’s are leading in the tomato sweepstakes. The Vacation Bible School has started at Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church and those spring graduates at Lake Wobegon High School have had a couple weeks now to think about their futures and to realize that their futures have already started and they've actually used up a couple weeks of it.
Memorial Day was on Monday. A large crowd turned out for a very nice service up at the cemetery, though it was a little bit pale by Lake Wobegon standards. Memorial Day is often exciting up there thinking about Memorial Day of a year... n, it wasn't a year ago it was, no, it was three years ago. You may remember better than I do, when Father Emil was the speaker. They all paraded up to the cemetery and Father Emil stood out there by the GAR Obilisk and delivered the Memorial Day address to a little crowd on the knoll there, actually a couple hundred.
He started in talking about our honored dead and about their last sacrifice and finally got himself around to the Civil War. His favorite war. Which he is sort of a scholar of, since he visits the battlefields on his vacation every summer. And he stood and started in talking about it. And about a half hour passed, and he had only gotten to the summer of 1862. There were three years left of it and he was showing no signs of tiring. Now Clarence Bunson managed to get down on his hands and knees and crawl around behind some people and get up over the hill and down into the trees and make a run for it. And a few others followed him. But then that left less cover for the others, so they had to stay because Father Emil does maintain terrific eye contact when he talks to guard against just that sort of thing.
So they stood and they bore up under it. And just got whatever amusement they could out of watching as one member after another of the Sons of Knute honor guard dozed off in a parade rest position. The Sons of Knute had marched in in their blue and yellow uniforms, carrying the flags and the rifles, but they took the wrong turn on the about face, so they were facing the crowd instead of the obilisk, the flag, and Father Emil. And Colonel Tolerud couldn't remember the command for turn around and face the other way, so they just stood there. And one by one as the talk went on, they dozed off standing, sort of like horses do- they locked their legs and they sort of swayed back and forth. And a lot of people in that audience were hoping that one of them would fall so that all of them could rush up there and take him home or something.
Well, Father Emil was getting good and warmed up like a lot of other speakers about the time that the crowd is checking their watches every couple minutes and shaking them and holding up to their ears, you know, he was just.. he was just getting into form. Now he was up to the summer of 1863 and up to the Battle of Gettysburg, his favorite battle. And his voice rose as he described how General Lee's army came around from the north heading towards Washington and General Meade cut him off. And the days of battle, and the great carnage. And then finally the high watermark of the Confederacy, which Father Emil has always sympathized with. When General Pickett led his man up to the fence on that July afternoon and they crouched down behind the log fence and General Pickett rode up on his big black horse and he pulled his sword out of his scabbard and he waved it overhead. And he gave the command to “charge boys, fire” and just then ten Knutes raised their rifles to their shoulders and delivered a 10-gun salute that would have wiped out the Ladies Auxiliary if it hadn't been for the fact that it took them a few seconds to get him off the safeties. So there was time for people to hit the dirt.
Well, their barrage cut a couple of branches off an old red oak tree. The tree in which the Olsen boy was perched with his bugle waiting to play taps. Well, he dropped about as fast as a person could drop. He was not hurt, but he wasn't sure what would follow next except he knew that the rifle salute was his cue to play taps. So he did. It didn't sound like taps, actually. It didn't sound like anything in particular. It sounded like somebody who'd never played a bugle before who just picked one up and was fooling with it. But he made some notes. And when he finally finished, or seemed as if he had, Colonel Tolerude gave the only command he could remember at that time, and said “company dismissed.” And 200 people took off over the hill about as fast as you could go on Memorial Day.
The Knutes gathered down at the lodge afterward for refreshments and one of them said, “you know, he said that red oak tree was about 50 yards off. I'd say, you know, and I think all of us hit it. That wasn't bad. It wasn't bad.” That was the Great Memorial Day massacre. This year the speech was the Gettysburg Address, a short one, read by Mr Krebsbach and in place of the ten gun salute there was a minute of silence and it was nice as I say, but it wasn't quite the same.
Another change that took place in Lake Wobegon this last week, a landmark of many years standing finally came down this week. Clarence Bunson got a crane to come up from Saint Cloud and took down the Allis Chalmers tractor that had been up on the roof of Bunsen Motors since Halloween night of 1958. Long time to leave a tractor up on your roof. But Clarence sort of enjoyed the fact that all these people had come to him over the years, saying what an eyesore and what a disgrace it was. Now most of them were men who were in their late 30s or early 40s who were old enough to have been teenagers back in Halloween 1958. And who now were old enough to have teenagers of their own, if you get my drift. And who would come up to Clarence and who'd say “That really is. That's a terrible eyesore, leaving that tractor up there like that and it really sets a very poor example for the youth of our town, there's no telling what ideas a kid might get seeing that sitting up there” and Clarence would look him in the eye and he'd say “I knew you were in on it, Wally. I knew you were part of that bunch.” And Wally'd say “Oh no, that wasn't anywhere around.”
Well, Clarence wanted to leave it up there for a while until the last of the culprits had stepped forward. But the thing was up on the roof right over his desk and the roof was starting to leak. It was all rusted into one piece so there was no question taking it apart. They just hoisted it down.
It's kind of funny to me when people my age get to be adults. All these kids that I knew in Lake Wobegon when they were nuts, now with kids of their own who were teenagers, and who now become real serious parents and give lectures on behalf of responsibility and playing by the rules and the moral tone of the community. I still remember them tipping over outhouses and sneaking around, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes down in the weeds behind Jack’s Auto Repair. It just is funny when people your own age get to be in charge of the world, you know. I suppose that person has to set a high standard and be strict when you have kids that get to that dangerous age. But I don't think they need to be so solemn about it. Like most of the things that they are warning their children against are either things that they did or else tried real hard to. Including a lot of things that they don't regret nowadays.
I think about those poor Luther Leaguers from Lake Wobegon Lutheran who left here on Monday on a bus, go down to Memphis, TN for a spiritual retreat at Southern Lutheran University with Pastor Inkvist driving the bus and Pastor and Mrs doing the chaperoning this year after the terrible thing that happened last year when Ed and Marilyn were the chaperones, the Nordbergs. Now Ed is hard of hearing and both of them could sleep through a tornado. And so they were down in Memphis with the Luther League kids and the kids got to whooping it up one night in the halls and on the strength of a six pack of beer split 14 ways they got kind of silly. And the next morning there was about 30 feet of girls underwear that was all tide together and run up the flagpole in front of the Bernadotte Memorial Chapel.
Well, Ed was awfully upset about it, he said “what were you doing last night?” The boy said, “not what you think we were doing.” They said, “well, why did you do a thing like that?” Duane Bunson said. “Well”, he said “it was kind of a clothesline. We thought of it as a clothesline.”
“But how could you do it? How could you do that?
“Well, it wasn't hard. We just ran it up there.”
Well, Southern Lutheran said that a thing like that had never happened before and never was going to happen again, and that any delegation from Lake Wobegon in the future was going to be on a short leash and considered to have two strikes against them. So Pastor and Mrs took off with the Luther Leaugers this last Monday. Children who were kind of little pale around the gills from all the warnings they had gotten from their parents and pastor about the terrible things that would happen to them if they so much as short-sheeted a bed.
Well, I knew David Inkvist before he became Pastor Inkvist. If he wants to be the voice of wisdom and moral rectitude in that community and frighten the bejesus out of a bunch of kids, I guess it's up to him. But I don't have to believe him. As long as there are still road signs around Lake Wobegon still standing that he perforated with his 22 rifle, and as long as there is that big water stain on the floor, walls, and ceiling of the boys lavatory at the high school where he flushed a couple cherry bombs down the toilet. Now he may never have run girls underwear up a flagpole but I can certainly remember when he claimed to have seen a lot of it with his telescope, that he had when he was a kid.
Now he's a good man. I take nothing away from him, but like everybody else, he's got a history. And I think if he stopped and remembered it, he might just let up a little bit. He might just let up.
I feel more like a kid now than I did when I was a kid. You know, back when you had all those all those adults putting the clamps on you. It's only when you get older that you have the freedom to be a kid. Which is not to say that I don't value the vacation Bible school as a sort of daycare center for small children. You send them to the vacation Bible school and Mrs Inkvist tells them about the angel with the flaming sword who drove Adam and Eve out of the garden for eating one apple. And about the flood that came on the world and those kids come back from that a lot better behaved and considerably toned down and less rambunctious.
Well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women is strong and all the nen are good looking and all the children are above average.
Poem by Margaret Haskins Durber about going to Oregon. Listing of the Festival plays since 1935. The Whippets lost their season opener 13 to 1. Strange pronunciation of words in Oregon identifies strangers.
Muncie Evening Press Jun 5 1982
1982.05.31 Lafayette Journal / Audio of the News available on CD.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl