Philip Brunelle, Dale Warland Singers, Gayle Johnson, Phil Johnson, Vern Sutton. Thompson Brothers Ragtime Orchestra,
Little wonders (Thompson Brothers Ragtime Orchestra ) Pastimes No 2 (Thompson Brothers Ragtime Orchestra ) Purple rose of Cairo (Thompson Brothers Ragtime Orchestra ) The Chrysanthemum (Thompson Brothers Ragtime Orchestra ) Elite Syncopations (Thompson Brothers Ragtime Orchestra ) Creole belle (Thompson Brothers Ragtime Orchestra ) St. Catherine ( Vern Sutton , Philip Brunelle ) Where is the life? ( Vern Sutton , Philip Brunelle ) Audience Thanksgiving song ( Vern Sutton , Philip Brunelle ) Hillbilly gaucho with a rumba beat ( Phil Johnson , Gayle Johnson ) You don't miss your water ( Phil Johnson , Gayle Johnson ) Gone gone ( Phil Johnson , Gayle Johnson ) Ship of the evening ( Phil Johnson , Gayle Johnson ) We gather together (Dale Warland Singers ) Praise and thanksgiving (Dale Warland Singers ) Let all things now living (Dale Warland Singers ) America the Beautiful (Dale Warland Singers )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Christmas trees for cats) Infidel Health Club Ingqvist, Virginia Jack's Scraps for Dogs Mr. Celery Weight Loss Program Powdermilk Biscuits
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Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my old hometown. Holiday this last week and the return of the exiles come back to their home. Children grown up, moved away, had families, learned how to complicate their lives in all sorts of new and interesting ways. Come back every year to Little town so much the same it's hard to look at it and not believe you're still 12 years old. And that's how some of the returning children behaved too. I came back. A lot of them drive up from the cities with their families. And they make a last stop at the Crossroads Lounge about ten miles down the road. Kind of the last jumping off place, you know, for the final ascent and have a last drink before they return to their parents. And as they come up over the rise and down into town, the last drags are taken on a lot of last cigarettes. And the first of a lot of breath mints are popped into their mouths. And the last warnings are issued to their children, the grandchildren in the back seat. Not to talk about you know what in front of grandpa and grandma. Like cigarettes and smoking and stuff like that. And remember that at grandpa and grandma's house, before we eat, grandpa bows his head and we're all supposed to be quiet. That's called asking the blessing or saying grace. And grandpa is talking to God. So you remember to be quiet then and close your eyes and don't say a word. One of the Olson boys was giving this speech to his children coming into town on Wednesday, explained all of the rules, and was surprised to hear a little voice pipe up from the back seat. His daughter said, who is God, Daddy? Now the Olson boy left town about 20 years ago, more or less shed the Lutheran church like an old set of clothes, but He tries to keep up appearances for his parents. Sort of shocked him to hear his own flesh and blood say, "Who is God, Daddy?" He said, "Jesus Christ, what am I gonna do now?" Two blocks from home. Little late to get this kid shined up so she looks Lutheran, you know, for the parents. Well, I don't know why you should be so surprised. Who is God is a legitimate question. A lot of Lutheran theologians have asked it over the years. Don't see why a kid couldn't. But the returning children were not the only ones trying to get things shined up. I tell you, it was a week of intense housekeeping in Lake Wobegon. Parents trying to put a high gloss on the old home place for the benefit of the children and the grandchildren. A lot of those vacuum cleaners were running right up to the moment the car pulled in the driveway. A lot of homes that had gotten along on tuna fish casserole and and meatloaf and hamburger hot dish. I'm doing some pretty fancy cooking here this last week. They had hors d'oeuvres at the Tollefson's for Thanksgiving. Hors d'oeuvres if you can believe it. It was just little wieners on sticks, little liverwurst and Ritz crackers, but food on the coffee table. I've never been seen in that home before. And their dog was kind of surprised by it. Figured it was for him. Had a little bit of it, but of course it wasn't. It was for Claudia and for her husband Todd, who drove up from Chicago, where they are quite active in the arts. Mom and Dad wanted to do what was right by them. The Inkvists, Yalmer and Virginia, were... Glad to see their three home for Thanksgiving, though they were a little surprised last week when their son, Yalmer Jr., Chip Inkvist, wrote to say he would be bringing his friend, Pamela, with him for Thanksgiving. Thought it was nice he had a friend at his age. Who was she exactly? They didn't know. They weren't sure they were going to find out. Everybody arrived on Wednesday and when it came to 10 o'clock Wednesday night, the armor in Virginia stood up and yawned and said, "Well, we're going to bed, but you don't bother to come now. You just, well, you take care of yourself. There's plenty of bedrooms up there. You just pick one, whatever you want. Just make yourselves at home." There was Thanksgiving Day service at the Lutheran Church on Thursday morning, which had been canceled for this year, but then that's happened so many times before nobody was really surprised by it. Every year it happens that the women in the Lutheran Church get together and the deacons get together and they all decide... But a service on Thanksgiving Day morning, it's just too much. Everybody's busy and has a lot of stuff to do. And a lot of the members of the church, their children have to go back to work on Friday so they can only race up on Thursday morning. So you've got the Wednesday night prayer and Bible reading, so you don't need to have a Thanksgiving Day service. So everybody's agreed on that, and it's canceled. And Pastor Inkvist agrees to it, and everybody knows it, and it goes into the church bulletin. And then every year, about the Wednesday night before the week of Thanksgiving, one of the older brothers stands up in the meeting. Usually this last week it was Brother Hauge. Stands up and reads from a psalm, let us give thanks unto the Lord. And he clears his throat. And he says, how often, brethren, are we too busy to give thanks to the Lord as we should? How often are we preoccupied with the little tasks of life? All the women start gritting their teeth, "Little tasks?" "Does he ever fix dinner for 12 people? Does he know what this is like?" But he sails on. Some of us are feeling that it behooves us on the one day of the year set aside for Thanksgiving that we surely should be able to devote one hour to worship. They'd all just like to shoot him on the spot. But there it is, one more year. Going to have a Thanksgiving Day service. And everybody's got to go or else no good reason why that they can tell Brother Hauge the next Sunday. And everybody goes down there even though maybe Thanksgiving dinner have to be postponed till five o'clock. The turkey be falling off the bones and shreds. Everybody goes. Clarence Bunsen got out of it because he has a sprained ankle. But Arlene went, came back. Clarence asked her how it was. She said it wasn't bad, but I could smell something burning all the way through it. I think it was me. Virginia Inkvist for the turkey this year tried out a new recipe, one that involved de-boning the turkey breast and peeling back the skin and making kind of a dressing pate and scooching it under the skin and then pulling the skin back over it and wrapping string around this thing, which she had seen a woman do on Good Morning America in about 45 seconds flat with a couple little twists of the knife. But it was a harrowing experience for Virginia. Once she got done with it, her hair was hanging down around her face and she was cursing under her breath. Turkey looked like he'd been in a head-on collision with something. Put it in the oven, squirted some juice at it from time to time and took a later look and had it all falling apart and just lying there in a big heap. Wouldn't have been recognizable to its closest friends. But she's a valiant woman. She pulled it out of there, whacked that meat apart, tossed it in a casserole dish, dumped a little cream in it, a little sherry, whatever spices were close at hand, tossed in some flour and squeezed an orange into it, threw it back into the oven, cooked it for another hour, brought it out and served it in bowls. Chip's friend was in the kitchen with her. Virginia said, it's turkey a la range. It's an old family favorite. He'll love it. And they did. It wasn't bad. Turkey in bowls. Maybe you haven't seen it before, but the ingredients are good. And it's still provender, you know. Put the hay down where the goats can get it. And if your children come back to you on Thanksgiving, not the same children that you so carefully raised and nurtured. Well, we're all strong people, you know. We can put up with a whole lot, especially at Thanksgiving when we're not to be critical about all the little details. At the Bunsen home, they finished their turkey, cooked the regular way. Clarence, he's got the sprained ankle, you know, he went up to bed afterwards. Brother Duane went across the street to hang out with the cousins for a while. Barbara Ann Bunsen came up from the cities with her husband Bill. Bill sat down in the living room to read a magazine, kind of exhausted from the dinner. From an hour of sitting and listening to family reminiscence, a lot of names he didn't recognize, a lot of private jokes, kind of like he'd wandered into the wrong class, you know. Had to stay for the lecture. So Barbara Ann Arlene cleared off the dinner, worked on it in the kitchen, worked at the wreckage. Barbara Ann just as glad that nobody else had offered to help. Been a long time since she'd been alone with her mother in a kitchen. Kitchen where they'd spent so many hours together over the years. Working together, you know, with your hands busy in the kitchen, you can say a lot of things that you might not be able to say to each other at the table. If you said it at the table, it'd be too blunt, be too dramatic. Everybody would stare at you. But you can work around in the kitchen, there's kind of a close silence there around you, working at things, and without looking at someone, just make a little announcement, like, "I'd like to go to Chicago, I need to borrow some money." Or, "I went to see the doctor last week." There's a little announcement you make. Am I good looking? Am I smart? And more than once, her mother, over the years, working hands in the dishwater, without looking up or anything, just said, I want you to know how proud we are of you. It's better if it's said in the kitchen, see? Just release these little sentences out into the air. Well, Barbara Ann dried the dishes. Her mother washed. They got to doing the dishes and her mother started to sing a song they'd always sung over dishes. It was always the first. It'd be followed by a medley of other stuff. Tell me why the ivy twines. Tell me why the stars do shine and then join in in harmony. Tell me why the sky is so blue and I will tell you why I love you. And as they sang and did the dishes, Barbara Ann was surprised to find that she still knew where everything went. The platter went up on top of the refrigerator. The sieve nested in the mixing bowls down to the left of the sink. The spatula went in the little drawer by the stove, and the wooden spoons went in the drawer with the silverware. And the gravy boat went up behind the cereal boxes. And the little centerpiece, the little plaster pilgrims standing by their plaster cabin with the plaster pine tree and the plaster smoke coming out of the chamber. It was wiped off with a damp cloth and put away in the china cabinet until next year. 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... All right, buddy.
Christmas shopping season began on Friday. Christmas is really a very' simple holiday - a festival for light in the darkest time of the year. Poem to the Flying Dutch woman.
1982.11.27 Louisville Courier / 1982.11.27 Orlando Sentinel / This is a Berto tape. Complete. Audio - Good. It was rebroadcast on November 4, 1989
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl