Scott Alarik, Sean Blackburn, Butch Thompson Trio, Tom Hegg, Dakota Dave Hull, Lake Wobegon Community Choir, Lieberman Fogel & Bay, Charlie Maguire, Peter Ostroushko. Vern Sutton, Pop Wagner,
A cup of Christmas tea ( Tom Hegg ) Blue room (Butch Thompson Trio , Peter Ostroushko ) Over the Rainbow (Butch Thompson Trio ) Blue skies (Butch Thompson Trio ) Walk with me ( Scott Alarik ) Away in a manger ( Scott Alarik ) WPA (Lieberman Fogel & Bay ) Whispering grass (Lieberman Fogel & Bay ) Jingle bell rock (Lieberman Fogel & Bay ) Jesu sweet ( Vern Sutton ) Rudolph in Latin ( Vern Sutton ) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen ( Vern Sutton ) If you love me ( Charlie Maguire ) If you're leaving me ( Charlie Maguire ) Greensleeves ( Pop Wagner ) Good King Wenceslas ( Pop Wagner ) All night long ( Pop Wagner ) Silent Night (Lake Wobegon Community Choir ) Deck the halls (Lake Wobegon Community Choir )
Chatterbox Cafe Hoagland, Einer Nordberg, Wendell Norwegian Bachelor Farmers Pastor Ingqvist Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Vroom Auto Accessories
Well sir, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my old hometown. The municipal lights finally got put up here on Thursday down to the intersection down on Main Street- no thanks to Bud full-time village employee who is employed elsewhere.
Thursday night a bunch of the guys, Dutch and Ernie and Wayne Deaner and Wally Krebsbach down at the Sidetrack Tap- drinking some schnapps and kind of admiring Evelyn’s amazing display of bubble lights there in the mirror over the bar. And it was Ernie who said, “you know,“ he said” I don't think Bud is going to hang him this year.”
And Wayne says, he says “naw he always, you know Bud, he always says he isn't gone and then he goes and does it.”
And Ernie said, “well, this may be the exception that proves the rule.” And he sat and thought about that for a minute. Six days on the road was on the jukebox.6 days on the road and I'm going to see my baby tonight. An old Christmas song and they started to think about it. Wayne said Ernie said he said, “I'll go do it if you'll go do it” so they went and did it.
They got Ernie’s pickup and they went down, they got out the illuminated angels and the stars out from the rafters up over the warming house and they got an extension ladder from Dutch’s house and they went down and they hung em up on the light poles down on Main Street.
And of course Bud happened along about that time when they were about halfway through. He said “you can't do that. That's town property. You can't. You're not supposed to do that, and I was going to do that. I was going to do that as soon as I got around to it.”
But they had halfway done it, so they went ahead and did it. Bud stood down in the street down below and he said, ”yeah. You're a little high over there you want to come down on your end here want to come up on your end a little bit... over there on that angel over there.”
But they got them hung. Not as even maybe as in years past. Not as high as in years past. They had put up a couple of truck detour signs at either end of town. Said “Christmas use alternate route.”
But the angels were hung up over Main St. And they're up there shining. Though it's not easy to tell that they're angels, they're used angels. A lot of the paint has come off them. Actually they look more like sort of like little illuminated clouds up there. But oftentimes, if you look at clouds hard enough, you will see angels in them. And that's the case with these clouds. So it's Christmas.
All of the major Christmas events came off beautifully up there. The pageant at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility, they said, was beautiful. I didn't see it. They said that the three sheep, Surely, Goodness and Mercy stood still through the whole adoration. Stood there eating one handful of oats after another. And the high school choir concert they got through that tricky hautier. From the beginning to the end without stopping. Amazing, but they managed to do it in all four sections of the choir, more or less finished in a dead heat. So that was successful.
And the lutefisk dinner at Lake Wobegon Lutheran- they said the lutefisk was never better than it was this year. What they mean by that I guess it's a relative sort of a thing, but... It was evidently quite good, and some of the people from church took what lutefisk was leftover and took it out to the Norwegian bachelor farmers as part of their Christmas baskets as they do every year. Which is a major event in itself. Major event, just trying to catch those old guys and make him accept something. They don't take to that easily there- a lot of them would rather run out the back door even if not dressed for the weather. Some of em would rather lie on the floor and pretend they're not home rather than have somebody give him a basket. Cuz what do they say then what are they supposed to say? These old guys live out in shacks by themselves. They don't say thank you very often you see it, it's foreign to them. It's like a foreign language to say anything sort of sweet.
I saw a Norwegian bachelor say thank you once and he almost choked on it. He said it and it was like he found something strange in his mouth, a hair or a pebble or something. Ed Hoagy that was, we went out with a Christmas basket for him once. And he said thank you and then he cleared his throat. And he said, “what's in dere then?
We said “it's lutefisk, Ed, it's lutefisk in there and it's potatoes. Hot boiled potatoes and tinfoil, and there's little lingonberry jam in there and there's leftsa and there's an orange and peppermints.”
And he said “There's no beans den this year? I was kind of hoping there’d be beans this year.
No, no beans in there yet, but we hope you have a Merry Christmas. “Yeah”, he says, “well, let's see about that.”
So we started the car. We hadn't gotten out of the car we were in the car with the windows rolled down, 'cause his big dog was coming at us like he's going to kill us and Ed didn't call him off. We got the car started and we got it turned around- we're headed off out his road and we heard him yell after us.
He said “there was too much salt in the fish last year.”
That's your Norwegian bachelor farmer. A lot of women have found that out who’ve married Norwegian bachelor farmers. They stayed bachelor farmers even after marriage. They're not sweet people. They're kind of salty in their own way, but they're here for a reason. Maybe to make up for the rest of us, you know- who are the sugar of the earth. They're here.
The only major public event that there was much grumbling about, and it wasn't everybody, it was just a few people was the Christmas Eve service last night at Lake Wobegon Lutheran. And it wasn't many who were sort of griping about it afterwards. I'll tell you it was mainly just the Nordberg family. Who were murmuring to each other when the service was over saying ”Einer, why did they have to get Einer? Of all the people they could have gotten, they had to go and get Einer.”
Now Einer is Einer Hoagland who if you've ever been to Lake Wobegon Lutheran, you probably have seen him. He's the usher who takes the collection along the eastern aisle of the church. He's a little bald man with no chin. If you've seen him, you know it. He’s had that eastern aisle now for about 30 years. Used to have the center aisle. But it made him nervous to have people on both sides of him. So he got transferred to the eastern aisle where there aren't people behind him, you see and where the sun comes into his windows- he likes taking the collection on that aisle.
I don't know that he actually attends church to come to think of it. I mean, in the sense of sitting and listening to it. You only see him during the offering. For all I know, he may be down in the basement with the other ushers playing pinochle, you know. Waiting until they hear the end of the sermon.
Say “yep, about time, get up there and do it.”
Come downstairs with the offering- plays more pinocle, I don't know. But he was chosen as a lay reader for the Christmas Eve service. They've had lay readers there to read Scripture part of the services now for years. And this year, finally, Pastor Inkvuist put the finger on Einer to read. And Einar didn't like the idea, but he was so scared, you know, he couldn't say no. He didn't know what to say. So it's sort of preyed on his mind for weeks. Mrs Hoagland wake up at night and find him missing from beside her. And then she'd listen and she'd hear his voice. He was down in the furnace room and his voice came up the hot air registers.
Sayin “and it come to pass in those days that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.”
Going over and over it 'cause he'd never done this before- stood up in front of people. Well, I think maybe it sounded better coming out the hot air registers than it did in the pulpit. Because he walked up there as if he were going to his execution. He walked up and he mounted the stairs as if up to his scaffold, and he made a right turn towards the pulpit and he dropped his Bible and hit the floor.
Blammm!
Which meant of course that he’d lost his place. So then it took him a while to find it. The second chapter of Luke, and then he had to find his glasses. And then his glasses fogged up right away from the humidity. I know the feeling. It's happened to me. I'll tell you, you get up out of an audience and stand up in front of a group of people, it makes a man lightheaded. Which I'll bet is why he said what he said then, he said “Stop me if you've ever heard this before.” Which was meant as mad as a joke, you see.
But nobody laughed. I know the feeling. So he lit into the Gospel of Luke and he raced through it at top speed, and because his glasses were fogged up, he had to bend down close to see the page and so his mouth was long ways away from the microphone and all people heard was a kind of a murmur. Kind of a hum going along until finally he finished everybody drew a long breath of relief. And he came and found his way back to his seat, and sat down exhausted, as if he'd run for miles.
Now the Nordbergs were upset about this. They thought it would have been a more meaningful service, you see, if they'd had somebody read the gospel who was good at it and the one they were thinking of was Wendel Nordberg, who came home from college where he majors in speech with an emphasis on oral interpretation. And now he was available to read the Gospel. He would have done it if asked. And why Pastor Inkvuist couldn't have ask somebody who could have given a little depth and a little richness to it- the Nordbergs did not understand.
Well, I've heard Wendell read before. And he's one of those people who sounds like he's got a big cardboard tube stuck down his throat. Like you'd find in the middle of a toilet paper roll, you know, so that his voice echoes when it comes out his mouth. I thought Einer did well. I thought it was very meaningful. In that chapter, you know the shepherds are sore afraid. I thought Einer brought that part out very well. Never saw anybody do sore afraid like Einer did sore afraid for us.
And then when it came to the verse about the shepherds, glorifying and praising God, you could just hear the happiness in his voice 'cause that's the last verse in the story. From there, the story skips on to the circumcision and the christening.
And afterwards people came up to him, and they said “You did good Einer” and he said “yeah well” he said “you know my glasses fogged up. I was kind of flying by the seat of my pants there for a while but it wasn’t that bad was it?”
They said “no it was real good Einer.”
Which I'll bet is what the shepherds said to when they got back and told their pals about what had happened. And their pals said, “were you sore afraid then when they came down the host and everything out of the sky?”
They said “no, we weren't afraid. We talked to they, they were angels, but they angels but they were nice guys and we talked about stuff.”
Oh, that's Christmas in Lake Wobegon- Einer Hoagland reading the second chapter of Luke to me, I'll tell you. That's a town where people don't try so hard at things that they don't get the fun out of it, you know. Lot of gimpy things can give us pleasure if the spirit is there. As well, I know having done a lot of gimpy things over the years.
I tell ya, you talk about the people you've known all your life and you never quite get it right but...
That's the news from Lake Wobegon where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking, all the children are above average.
Finally have snow. Tom Hegg reads his poem, "A cup of Christmas tea." Vern Sutton memorized the first chapter of Mathew. GK reads Margaret Haskins Durber's Christmas poem.
1982.12.19 Louisville Courier / 1982.12.23 Lafayette Journal / Audio of the News available on CD.