Alistair Anderson, Stevie Beck, Butch Thompson Trio, Country Gazette, Garrison Keillor. Dave Van Ronk,
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Air Minnesota Hedlund, Roger Hotel Minnesota Kramer School of Speech Communication Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Reruns of Themes by Luanda Beck Yards by Barbara Garden Carpet
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. It's been a warm week, too. In fact, been a kind of a warm winter, according to Jack, who keeps track of these things. Temperature has very seldom dropped below zero. And when it did, didn't stay for very long. Which is odd in a state that is known for its cold weather as Minnesota is. In fact, if you're from here and you go someplace else and you tell people that you are from here, that's what they always say. They say, "You get some cold weather up there, don't you?" "Yeah, we used to." "Didn't get it this year." And it's kind of odd. It's as if you woke up one morning and all the Lutherans were gone. There's some things that you just come to count on, you know, and it removes one of your moorings not to have it. Some of the old guys hanging around the barbershop have been grumbling about it up in Lake Wobegon. It's too warm for the wool long johns, and it's not time to take them off yet. So they sit around and scratch and feel unhappy. Talk about ice fishing, which has been bad this year, which they think is due to the mild winter that we've had. They believe that freezing cold water makes fish hungrier and it also weakens their discrimination as to food and maybe weakens their will to live too. A lot of those fish probably grab onto that hook as the only way out. But thanks to the fishing being poor, attendance was good on Uncle Virgil Bunsen's funeral on Monday. He died at the age of 87, to the surprise of almost everyone who didn't know he was still alive. He left Lake Wobegon 65 years ago, I think, about that, in some kind of argument with his father, went off to Arizona, and never kept in touch. So when they shipped him back for the funeral, there was hardly anyone in the crowd who knew enough about him to feel as sorry as they thought they ought to. But a lot of people went to be sociable. And because Clarence Bunsen, Virgil's nephew, sort of beat the drums and tried to work up a crowd, get some people out. And also because there hadn't been a funeral in Lake Wobegon for a long time, six, eight months, I think. So they went. People who wept at Uncle Virgil's funeral did it just because he didn't want to pass up the chance, you know. Because he was a stranger. It was last week that Clarence got the call from Virgil's daughter, his cousin Luann, Virgil's only child. From down in Arizona. She said Uncle Virgil had died. He had always wanted to be buried back home in Lake Wobegon, which he'd left when he was in his 20s. And that she knew that Clarence would understand if she, Lou Anne, didn't make it back for the service. Because she had to go to Hawaii. They had planned a vacation for a long time, and she was going to go. And she didn't see what good it would do anybody if she came for the funeral and the burial. She didn't like funerals anyway. They're morbid, depressed her. She believed in just loving life and holding on to it. And besides, she wanted to remember her father as he had been. So it was Clarence had to get a pickup truck and drive on down to the airport to the freight terminal to pick up Uncle Virgil. Sign a receipt for him. And then they took one look at the pickup and they said, "Well, you can't take that casket in that." Clarence said, "Well, I don't see why not." He said, "Uncle Virgil's ridden in one of these before." But no, sir, he had to call a funeral director and get a big black limousine hearse, carry Uncle Virgil back home in style. At least back to the Bunsen garage, where he was put in the parts room until the funeral on Monday. And it was Clarence who had to persuade Pastor Inkvist to give Uncle Virgil the benefit of the doubt and provide him with a Christian burial. He had to round up the flowers. He had to round up a sons of Canute honor guard to serve as pallbearers. Get together an audience for this. And then he had to go out on Monday morning up to the cemetery with Bud to help dig. And it was a lot. Especially for a relative whom you couldn't remember. The only memory Clarence had of his uncle Virgil was of a family trip years and years and years ago down to Arizona to visit him when Clarence was just a boy and of a walk one evening And the air was kind of warm and it kind of smelled of flowers and spices and a whole bunch of them set out from Virgil's house, walking down the street. And they were going along and then suddenly Clarence noticed that his uncle Virgil was about 40, 50 feet out in front of him. Just walking along ahead of him as if he'd forgotten who he was with. It seemed to be something that he did a lot. Because his wife and daughter didn't pay any attention to it. It was like he'd gotten all wrapped up in his own thoughts and just walked on ahead of the others. And he disappeared. And then came back to the house later. And whatever it was that was on his mind, he never bothered to tell him. He kind of kept to himself. That was the only memory he had of his uncle. That and a vague recollection of an old argument back before Clarence was born between Virgil and his father, Clarence's grandfather. An old quarrel that had something to do with cattle and that led Virgil to leave home angry. But it was never patched up. It just hung on and hung on. And so Clarence went all out on the funeral. He just knocked himself out to give his uncle the best he could. Despite the warm weather, the ice fishing season was still in full swing, even on Monday after the funeral, and right up, in fact, until Thursday afternoon. Which was when Carl Krepsbach's pickup went through the ice. All those ice fishermen, I guess they just were so intent on somehow trying to make something out of the ice fishing season, which has been so bad. You know, having gone to all that trouble, take the ice houses out on the ice last December, they just kept at it, thinking maybe today it would be better. And they'd finally latch on to the old lunker walleye that had been swimming around in that lake for years and years with baits dangling off his lower lip. And they so intent on fishing, they sort of forgot where they were. Until Carl went through. And then they remembered. They were on ice. They were not ground. This was ice. And this was a Thursday afternoon in March. And the temperature was up in the 50s and it had been warm for quite a while. And ice does melt, you know. You may forget that after you live in Minnesota for a while, but it does eventually melt and sort of weaken. Well, Carl didn't even think about it. He just drove out on the ice. Other people had driven out that day. There were pickups, station wagons, cars out there, a couple snowmobiles. He just headed out, and then all of a sudden, the pickup sort of came to a stop. And he gunned it, and nothing happened. And he looked out the window, and she seemed to be riding a little bit low. He thought maybe he had a flat tire. Opened up his door, looked down, couldn't see the tire. They saw water bubbling up. They say Carl never moved as fast as he did right there. He jumped, ran, fell, scrambled about 50 feet in about 0.2 seconds and got away. But that didn't solve his problem, of course. He said to somebody later, he said, "I knew my wife would be glad to know that I was safe, but I didn't know how glad she'd be when she found out about the truck." And there it was with its nose down and its tail up, sinking like the Titanic, except there was no band playing and there was nothing noble or tragic or majestic about it. It was just something dumb he'd done. He never felt so foolish. He remembered having yelled at his kids for a lot of things less dumb than this. Well, it was Clint Bunsen who saved his skin. Clint was right behind him by about 100 yards, just about to drive out onto the ice. He was going out to drag John Soderbergh's ice house in. He saw Carl go through. He stopped. They got a couple chains out of the back. Carl managed to put a chain around the rear axle of his truck as it was slowly sinking, which was kind of a desperate act. But when you've just done something for which there is no good explanation, you do desperate things. And they hooked it up to the winch and they winched it back and got it back on shore by which time a crowd had gathered as crowds always do when somebody else is in trouble and they were watching this with a great deal of amusement and then they were watching the guys who were still out on the ice who were standing by their pickups and their cars Little guys way out there on the ice. They weren't jumping up and down or anything. They just realized what had happened to Carl. They looked like they were walking on eggshells out there. None of them was standing next to his pickup, I'll tell you. They looked kind of lonely. It must be a strange feeling to be out on ice that you've just realized isn't nearly as strong as you had no right to think it would be. It must be like that moment when the airliner comes down, descends from 30,000 feet, and it comes down through 7 and 5 and 2,000 feet, and the no-smoking light comes on. And suddenly everybody realizes this is not a lounge that is suspended from a skyhook. This is a machine with a lot of moving parts. And somebody's flying it. Maybe somebody you went to college with. Laughter You hope it's not an old English major up there. Anyway, some of these guys out there by their ice houses, I'll bet they wanted to fly. People standing on shore thought this was awfully humorous. Oh, they said some funny, funny things. Somebody yelled out, "We'll go get a rod and we'll cast out, try and hook you and reel you back in." Thank goodness it was too far out to where those guys were for them to hear it, otherwise they might have come charging in and bussed somebody. After a while, they just started to disappear, going the other way. They drove slowly, about 50, 75 yards apart, heading east in the other direction. Evidently, the ice looked better over that way, or maybe it was just the way the light hit it. So they drove away and didn't have to face their audience of comedians took the back road home got home and by the time anybody saw him and made some funny remark about them being out there they said oh that ice perfectly strong we weren't there was no trouble whatsoever you know nine-tenths of it is below the water that's just the tip of the ice that you see there But I did notice that by Friday night, every ice house was off the lake. And fishing season is over now until May. And on Friday, Clarence went up to the cemetery with Bud again to help fill in over Uncle Virgil, who had settled a little bit during the week. Which ordinarily i guess would be buds job he is the village maintenance man village maintenance supervisor now i guess you got the magnet dance boy working for him after school but it's customary in lake wobegon for the next of kin to help out up at the cemetery it's like bud says he says they don't pay me enough have the right to treat me like a servant And his wife said, but servants always get paid less. Bud said, yes, there's the problem right there. Clarence was glad to do it, though. An elusive relative finally returned, back in the ranks of the family up there on the hill in a row. And an old grudge buried along with him. Good riddance to it. They put in a couple of barrels of dirt, shaped a nice mound over him, and came back home. So rest in peace, Uncle Virgil. Settle down for once. And be forgiven for whatever it was that made us mad at each other so long ago. And you kids stay off the ice. No matter what the grown-ups do. They're crazy half the time. You kids stay off the ice. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, all the children are above average.
Last week, a bat flew around the World Theater. Butch Thompson plays clarinet and piano on same song.
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl