Sean Blackburn, Philip Brunelle, Butch Thompson Trio, Janis Hardy, Dakota Dave Hull, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr, Rio Nido. Vern Sutton, Troista Musica, World Theater String Quartet,
Strike up the band (Butch Thompson Trio ) Basin street blues (Butch Thompson Trio ) All that I ask is love (Butch Thompson Trio ) Wine, women & song (World Theater String Quartet ) Strauss waltzes (World Theater String Quartet ) Come skate with me (World Theater String Quartet ) New Year's wishes ( Garrison Keillor , Janis Hardy ) Ukrainian new year's songs (Troista Musica ) Christmas Bells (Troista Musica ) Living in hi-fi (Rio Nido ) Every day (Rio Nido ) Tennessee Choo-Choo ( Dakota Dave Hull ) Rolling along ( Dakota Dave Hull )
Ajua! Hot Sauce Bob's Bank Butch Thompson Music Corporation Chatterbox Cafe Chuck's Pharmacy Fearmonger's Shop Powdermilk Biscuits
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon- New Year's Eve notwithstanding. It never was a big celebration back where I come from, I always wished that it were- wished there would be some gala party somewhere in town, but they didn't seem to be capable of gala parties. Anybody who stayed up on New Year's Eve to see in the New Year could pretty well assume they had the sight to themselves. Most of them turned in at their regular time- were willing to wait until morning. But when I was a kid I remember how badly I wanted to stay up till midnight New Year's Eve, and I begged my mother to be allowed to. And finally she gave in. And I found out that the hardest thing was not getting permission, but actually doing it. Managing to stay up until midnight when you're 12 years old.
My dad could not do it. He was in the habit of listening to Cedric Adams and the 10:00 O'clock news on WCCO the good neighbor to the Great Northwest for years and years and years. And when Cedric Adams said goodnight, it kind of flipped the switch in my dad and his lights went out. And he'd sometimes have to race up to bed to get there before his eyes shut.
But my mother and I tried. I remember, we drank a gallon of coffee. When we turned the radio up, so we'd stay awake. And we tried to keep ourselves awake by playing old maid and Authors. But you know, after a couple of hours of playing those with just two people you tend to lose some of the subtlety and the excitement of those games. And we'd come up towards 11:00 o'clock, and Ben Grauer would be on the radio doing New Year's Eve from Times Square with that big crowd on the radio- sounded like water running into a bathtub. And the light would fall and it be 11:00 o'clock. And both of us yawning resting our eyes. And she'd say, well, we'll just celebrate Eastern Time. And we'd go off to bed.
We had to take a run at it a couple years straight before we finally made it over the top into the new year. Wouldn’t you know when we did it, we got so engrossed in the game of Rook that it was about 10 minutes after 12 when we looked up and saw the time, it's kind of like when the odometer on our ‘48 Ford was about to turn over 100,000 miles, you know, we piled- all the kids piled into the car, and some neighbors wanted to come along and we drove out into the country and we just got interested in playing Alphabet, I think, highway alphabet. We missed it. All those zeros rolled up and we didn't see it. We looked down in just a 6.
But even at 10 minutes after 12, it was still exciting. She said “Happy New Year. Happy 1954.”
And we went to the fridge and we got out a pitcher of grape Kool Aid and a couple Jelly glasses. And we filled them up. And she said, “well, here's mud in your eye.”
And we lifted our glasses. We tossed it back. Good kool aid. And then I was excited. So excited it could hardly go to bed. Thinking of all the fabulous things you know that might come along in 1954. As it turned out, there weren't any but if you were 12 years old and very tired and drinking grape nectar, you could imagine some fabulous things that might come along in the new year.
Such as television. We didn't have one. Though I had been campaigning for one for a couple years. Making mention of it any appropriate occasion. Including New Year's Eve when Ben Grauer came on the radio from Times Square and the light was coming down, the illuminated ball was coming down the flagpole. I said to my mother “boy, it should be nice seeing this on television.”
And she said “no, she said radio is just as good.”
But she knew that it wasn't. She knew that it wasn't. Be fabulous to be able to see those things. Fabulous things taking place in New York on New Year's Eve, and of course I had never seen them before because we didn't have television. But from listening to on the radio, I could tell how fabulous they must be. If only you had a little screen there where you could see it all. And see Guy Lombardo. Young and slim and beautiful. With the sash across his chest and the sabre on a belt by his side. There on the stage of the Waldorf Astoria ballroom with the Royal Canadians and their scarlet Mounties tunics. Musicians playing saxophones on horseback there in the ballroom, the horses- great black horses standing and the Royal Canadians all sitting in a row. The clarinets and the trumpets, and the trombones and the drummer up there. And then the great lighted ball as big as a blimp coming down out of the sky with Ben Grauer sitting on top of it. Descending. You could imagine it on radio. Oh to have a television. And to be able to see it in your own home.
“Well”, she said “there's no point in even talking about it 'cause, you know, we're not going to get one, and you know why? Because having the television is the same thing as going to the movies, it's the same thing as Hollywood, and it's got no place in a Christian home.”
Which was a line I'd heard many times before. This is kind of an old conversation. One that we went through over and over. It's kind of like little dance that we did. She'd say it has no place in a Christian home, and I'd say, “but Uncle Bob and Aunt Maisie had the television and they’re Christians.”
And then she'd say, “well, that doesn't make it right.”
And then I change my line of attack to come at it from a different angle. And I'd say “Maybe we could just try out having a television for a little while, and if it didn't work out, we could always take it back.”
And I'd say “it sure would be nice to have one for the tournament of Roses parade.”
That got her. She got up from the table, then she turned away. She didn't have any answer to that 'cause she loved the tournament of roses parade. She'd heard about it years before from relatives of ours who spent the winter out in California. This beautiful parade. These great bands and Palomino horses riding down the street under the palm trees and flower beds on wheels going by. And she had seen it on television the New Year's Day before, when she went over to the neighbors to borrow a cup of flour.
She stood in the doorway of their living room and she watched it on TV with a cup of flour in her hand. And they said, “why don't you come on in sit down, watch it” said “no I gotta be going”, but she watched the whole thing. I knew that if appliance stores stayed open on New Year's Eve we'd have a television set.
Well, we got one. Couple years later my dad went out and got one. It was at the end of a month during which all the kids were sick at once. With about three or four different things we had mumps, we had chickenpox, we had some kind of flu and there was something else we didn't have a name for. And there are a whole bunch of us. We'd have one sickness, and then we get over that then we'd catch something else from somebody else.
It was a long month. And he brought home a TV set. Thinking it would make us feel better. And it did. Though I've always associated television since then with lying in bed, sick with a high fever. People running into the bathroom to throw up. It's always been my feeling about it.
But it was fabulous, you see, before we ever got one. Like all those other things that seemed fabulous to me at that age. They were all beyond my power, see, they were all out of my hands and I had no power to make them happen, which was what made them fabulous.
And now years later all those things I thought would be fabulous have all come true. I got to drive my dad's car. I got out of school and I didn't have to go to class anymore. And I moved to a city with a big library and I had my own library card and go take out whatever books I wanted to take out. Those were all fabulous things when I was 12. And now they don't seem so fabulous anymore.
What seems fabulous to me that might happen in the year to come, and it's so simple you almost hesitate to mention it in in front of people. But what seems fabulous to me now is all has to do with people. And love and affection and friendship which we have no power over either and which we cannot make happen.
And that's the new year I wish for all of you. If for no other reason than just the fact that we're so much fun to watch. I saw a kid a few days ago button up his jacket. Go out his front door and he stood there. And he took a deep breath. And you could just see how that breath of air excited him, he was excited by air. It's was a cold day – exciting in its own way.
But you could see that cold air just race through this kid. And all of his nerve endings, sort of lit up like will happen to kids sometimes. And his engine fired up and he was off that pitch in about 2 leaps and down onto the walk and scooped up a big handful of snow and he threw a perfect strike at a stop sign and hit it right in the O. And then bam... he was off down the street and out of sight.
Impressive to see somebody get out of the starting ate like that?. Most of us are too old to be excited by the air that we breathe. And even if we were, our engines wouldn't start up like that necessarily. But we'd still be excited by people. You're never too old to get pumped up by people. And just having them around, and the sound of talk. And the smell of and the heat of people and the touch of people.
And that's the main pleasure of life in Lake Wobegon Minnesota. It's not the scenery I'll tell you that. It's not the recreational opportunities. It's people. In a town where loyalty runs so deep, it counts for almost everything. Almost incomprehensible. Where people have a whole lifetime just to study each other and they never quite come to the end of it. And where the main recreation is talk- lovely talk, those soft flat midwestern voices. Rising and falling. Stopping. Starting up again. Going on and on, I can hear them down in the kitchen. Around the kitchen table as I head up to bed.
I can hear them as I get undressed and I jump in between the cold sheets. I can hear those voices down there, those people. I can hear them in the last minute before I go to sleep. In that last minute when I'm dreaming of what a fabulous thing it will be when we get a television set. And we can see Guy Lombardo and his orchestra on horseback from the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City.
That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
Minnesota showed the nation that 16 inches of snow was no problem. They just stayed home. Man who used to buy one mint was given a whole bag for Christmas. Pine needles from an alien planet.
Tampa Bay Times Jan 23 1983
1983.01.23 Tampa Bay Times / Berto: re-broadcast on January 2, 1988. / Berto: It was re-broadcast on January 2, 1988
Archival contributors: Frank Berto