Stevie Beck, Butch Thompson Trio, Dale Warland Singers, Kate MacKenzie, Peter Ostroushko. Stoney Lonesome, Becky Reimer Thompson,
Earl's breakdown (Butch Thompson Trio ) If I had my way (Butch Thompson Trio ) I've endured ( Kate MacKenzie , Stoney Lonesome ) I won't be alone ( Kate MacKenzie , Stoney Lonesome ) Take me back to my Lake Wobegon home ( Stevie Beck ) Benjamin Britain carols (Dale Warland Singers ) Hark the herald angels sing (Dale Warland Singers ) Am I losing you? ( Becky Reimer Thompson ) When you and I were young, Maggie ( Becky Reimer Thompson )
Ajua! Hot Sauce Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Lake Wobegon Council of Churches & Chamber of Commerce Lundeen, James Lundeen, Mel Northern Life Support Systems Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Skoglund's Five and Dime
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my own hometown. Strange as that may seem to some of you, it being only seven days before Christmas- lights still are not up on Main Street. Nobody seems to be terribly excited about it. Which seems strange to some people in Lake Wobegon. They say “Well, it doesn't seem like it's one week before Christmas, does it?”
Nope it doesn’t. Person would expect they'd be running around like poisoned rats trying to get all everything together, but they haven't yet. They may- maybe Wednesday Thursday Friday. Saturday morning. But they haven't as yet.
Of course it is the little town that time forgot, and in a town like that there are a lot of people who forget what time it is. And are not easily roused up into a white heat or a frenzy, but maintain a sort of calm pretty much year round. Which back when I was young and lived there was the most aggravating thing about that town to me. And now that I'm older and don't. It's one of the most appealing.
Certain calm prevails in Lake Wobegon in the face of Christmas and other turbulent events that promise to get us roiled up. And Christmas is sure one of those. I don't know of another time of year when the feelings of so many people lie so close to the surface as they do.
This next couple weeks. I think back to a Christmas Eve service at Lake Wobegon Lutheran. That I went to this a long time ago- this back when I was in college. I was back from on my vacation from fall quarter. I had just taken all of my final exams so I was you might say at my most intelligent and my most critical and perceptive you see. Having filled all those blue books with my thoughts a wide range of stuff. And I got up back home and looked around and everywhere I looked I just saw failure and boredom and misery. You might not have been able to see it if you'd been there, but I'd just taken my final exams. I was in the humanities. The failure of- the failure of Jeffersonian agrarian democratic humanist idealism or whatever you want to call it, it was just all- all over there in that town.
The only thing that really gave me any hope was the fact that the oldest Ingvuist girl and I had been carrying on a warm correspondence over fall term and my hopes were up. I went to the Christmas Eve service at her church with her so that her parents could see that I was a nice young man and not make a fuss about our seeing each other a lot, which I certainly hoped we would be doing because she was a fabulous young woman at the age of 19. She's tall and slender and she had hair the color of oak. She was one of the few women you could honestly use the word willowy to describe. I followed her into that church like a dog. Sat down beside her in the pew- beside her and her parents to the other side of her. And my mind was not on Christmas.
Well, the service went along pretty well and they came up to the last of it. It was almost midnight. Children came and passed out long white tapers to the congregation. And then they turned out all the lights and people lit candles. And the organ back up in the loft -started playing Silent Night. And then the voices of a children's choir came out over our heads. Singing Silent Night in Norwegian. Maybe the only song they knew in Norwegian. All memorized phonetically.
But in this congregation, first one person started weeping and then somebody else did, and it sort of caught on. Until everybody was crying, there was something about this song that unhooked their memories and old times, including old times they'd never experienced came down on them. And everybody was standing holding candles and weeping- the tears rolling down their cheeks. Thinking of I don't know what- Norway- the old country. Mother and dad, home, loved ones, and some who died.
Everybody was weeping except me. She was crying next to me. And I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry right along with her. Do everything she did. And I tried to bring tears to my eyes. And I reached down for my handkerchief, and I went to blow my nose. But there was nothing there- she could tell.
Well, we left the service- we were walking down the street and I said something I don't even want to remember what it was. Some witty intelligent thing. And she turned and looked at me, and she said, “you are the coldest person I've ever met. You've got no feelings at all.”
And that was it. She went home. I went home. I knew I'd never see her again. That's when I cried. I cried at home. I lay in bed and cried. Wanted to call her up and have her hear how congested I was. There didn't seem to be any point in it. And yet even I remember these people standing, crying, holding candles. Sobbing. There was still a kind of a calm about it. It was a peaceful sort of weeping. They were all there with their families except for me. And they just let the tears run down their cheeks. They just didn't care. And the lights came up, they all smiled, went downstairs for coffee.
There's a calm about Christmas in Lake Wobegon, which is the calm that I used to think was caused by stupidity. But which is a calm that actually is a result of being in the right place. And knowing it. And is... comes naturally to some people and has to be learned by others.
And when I think of that calm in Lake Wobegon around Christmas, I think of a story. I was told to me by a guy I grew up with whose name was James Lundeen. And I'm not sure I can tell it as well as he told it to me, but I'll try.
Now James, we never called him Jim, he's always James for some reason. Maybe because he was quiet. Was the son of Mel Lundeen, who was the mail carrier who came down our road about 1:22 ½ pm every afternoon Monday through Saturda. Driving his old green Chevy- steering from the passenger side, which I thought was a great feat. Stop by our mailbox, put in the mail and roar off.
And one day didn't come. And we learned that he'd been hurt. Mel had been out in the country at his cousin's farm, helping shingle the barn roof. And he was up on the scaffold when his cousin said “look” and Mel looked down and the cousin was pointing up and he looked up and there was a great helium blimp floating across the sky. Mel stepped back to look at it and he plunged straight down and his head hit a concrete apron so hard that they heard it in the house, and they all came running out. And they thought he must be dead.
Well, the Lundeen's- Mel and Clarice- and their eight children lived in a little green house, which was down just outside of town on the shore of the lake. House that I remember being full of bunk beds and little kids. And the telephone rang there about the time she was reaching into the oven to pull out a macaroni and cheese hot dish and set it down on the table for supper where the children were sitting round. They weren't going to wait for Mel.
She answered the phone. And the kids could tell right away from her silence, and then from the tone in her voice that something terrible had happened. Because her voice was so strong. See, Clarice was always nervous. She's just a bag of nerves. She's always worrying about her kids. Eight of them. What they might be doing, and what terrible things might be happening to them. And her kids knew how to make her nervous. And they enjoyed doing it. They'd say things like “Say mom do you know where my bike light is? I was going to go out biking... well, never mind. I'll go without it, that's alright,” and they’d go out the door and she’d “no come back. Don't no don't.”
“You haven't seen the life preservers have ya? we're going to go out and, well, we'll just we won't go far out” and they run out the door and she running after them in a flutter “Don't no! put on your life preserver.”
But now something terrible had happened. And her voice was absolutely strong. And she put the phone down. She turned to them and she said, “your dad's been hurt and he's been taken to the hospital. And I'm going to go and I will call you when I can.” And she put on her coat and her scarf, and she went next door to the neighbors to borrow the car. And then she went.
Kids just sat there couldn't eat, couldn't talk, couldn't do anything. Their dad had fallen and for all they knew he might be dead. They didn't know. Well, this was in late November. He didn't die. But he was in the hospital for almost 4 weeks. And during those weeks - in the early part of December- Clarice took the kids aside 1 by 1 not once but several times. And she spoke to him, and she said. “I want you to know that we may not be able to afford much Christmas this year. So I don't want you to get your hopes up. We just may not have the money to have any Christmas.”
Well, the little kids didn't really understand that because they didn't think of Christmas as something that you afforded or not. I mean, it just was Christmas just happened. Stuff appeared on Christmas with your name on it. They didn't know it involved money, but James knew. James knew. And his face burned when she told him that- not to get his hopes up. They might not be able to afford it because his hopes were up to where he couldn't bring him down anymore.
See, he'd been dropping hints for about six months campaigning for a Lionel model train. In the Ward’s Christmas catalogue from the year before. A model train with a locomotive and four cars and a caboose and two switches and a depot with a stationmaster who would come out and raise the semaphore automatically just as the train was approaching. And a little livestock loader that when the cattle car would pull up next to this livestock loader- the little cattle would move up the ramp and into the cattle car and all go in there and then door close and train’d go off. It was amazing. What a wonderful thing. And he wanted it so bad that he could not imagine not getting it. Much as he tried. He thought as the days went by, that maybe some rich person would have read the story about his dad's accident in the Herald Star and the rich person would think “Well, I'm going to see that those kids get the biggest, best Christmas they've ever had” and go out and buy him a lot of stuff. And wondered if maybe he ought to write a letter to the Herald Star. In case there were a rich person out there who wanted to give these kids the biggest, best Christmas they ever had. To let him know exactly how he could do that with the purchase of a Lionel model train set.
Well, he didn't. It was a hard time. Clarice was gone about half the time off to the hospital w hich was in Saint Cloud. She often stayed overnight when Mel was feeling bad. The oldest girl, Betty, had to pretty well take care of the others, but she couldn't really do it. A couple of the youngest kids had to be farmed out to relatives. Neighbors came in to bring food and bring a little pity you know which you get tired of pretty quickly. Relatives come and visit.
One night, James was lying in bed and he heard his sister crying in the bed. And he asked her what was wrong. And she had to repeat it a few times before he could understand what she was saying. But she said “Dad's never coming back. We're going to be adopted.”
Suddenly he thought about it. He had considered being adopted now and then in the past. Maybe being adopted by a rich person who loved trains, had a big layout down the basement. And who liked kids. But the actual prospect of it scared him. To go off with somebody else, pack his bags and go off with somebody else and be their son. And change his name. And be a different person. It was frightening. Would he have to go with his uncle Hal? And his aunt Agnes? Who lived in the cities and who'd come up to visit him once. And she'd walked into the house and sat down in a chair and kind of looked around at their messy house and sniffed and sort of held her hands on her lap- kind of afraid that something would touch her. What he have to go with then?
On Sunday at church she saw a back on the table where the Hymn books were. He saw a shoe box with a hole in the top and on the side it said Lundeen family Christmas fund. And he was so ashamed. When everybody was down in the basement having coffee after church, he came up and he took it and he hid it in the cloak room so nobody would ever give it to them.
Well, Mel came back- came back two days before Christmas. He was kind of thin and he was kind of weak and he got dizzy when he walked. But he was back home. He spent most of the day lying on the couch in the living room. And they had some kind of Christmas. They had a little tree, not a big one. Little one up on the coffee table with lights on it. And there were some presents. There weren't many.
James got a new pair of boots and a hunting knife and a game with stadium checkers. And Mel managed to pass out all the gifts, just as he'd always done. Of course, they all realized that he was the real gift. He was a gift.
It was a very cold Christmas and there was a lot of snow on the ground. And out on the lake it had blown up into great drifts. And the hard crust was on it, so you could walk on top of the crust. And just as it was starting to get dark, he put on his new boots and he walked out across the lake, walking on the drifts like walking on waves of water. And walked all the way to the other side of the lake a nd turned around to walk back. And saw his house, his little house, tiny lights. And the little town behind it. And some lights up on the hill. And felt as if he was standing in a Lionel model train layout. A marvelous layout with realistic snow and little sponge trees that looked real. And houses with lights in em that look so real. One of those perfect model train layouts that when you sit down and put your face down by it you feel like that's the whole world right there.
And that's what he felt. That this was the whole world right in front of him. And that Christmas was what was in that house. Whatever they did in that house, that was Christmas. And all of the other things that he thought were Christmas were not really. Christmas was in that house. And that as long as they were all there together that would be all that they would need.
That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Shy people make up for their failings by purchasing major appliances at Christmas. If you owe somebody something, the gift won't be a surprise. It's hard to remember Christmas in Dallas because the weather is warm. Christmas in the land of the Apostrophes.
1982.12.18 Johnson City Press / 1982.12.18 Louisville Courier / The first ten minutes are missing on Berto tape. It was rebroadcast on December 19, 1987
Archival contributors: Frank Berto