Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Rose Maddocks, Mando Boys, Peter Ostroushko. Tom Paley,
Let it rain ( Greg Brown ) Happy, happy birthday ( Greg Brown ) Speed trap boogie ( Greg Brown ) Ain't we crazy ( Greg Brown ) I think you're wonderful (Butch Thompson Trio ) Some of these days (Butch Thompson Trio ) Going down down ( Rose Maddocks ) Cold in California tonight ( Rose Maddocks ) Charlie Dan ( Rose Maddocks ) Tramp on the street ( Rose Maddocks ) Sally let your bangs hang down ( Rose Maddocks ) Katrina's waltz (Mando Boys ) Fat boy rag (Mando Boys ) Yardbird suite (Mando Boys ) Spanish fandango ( Tom Paley ) Franklin Tennessee ( Tom Paley ) Devil in the bush ( Tom Paley ) Poor Bill ( Tom Paley )
American Crouton Council Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Fritz Electronics Home Defense Hardware Krebsbach, Florian Krebsbach, Myrtle Powdermilk Biscuits Sidetrack Tap Skoglund's Five and Dime Teen Theatrical Supply House
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wolbegon, Minnesota, my hometown. Of course, I say that every week, don't I? It's not always true. Some weeks it is, however, and it's even hard to find words to describe how quiet it was. The sirens went off at noon and six o'clock every day this week, which for many people was kind of the highlight of There are days, I tell you, especially on Tuesday, you could have stood right in the middle of Lake Street there, which is the main drag. You could have stayed there about as long as you wanted to. Nobody would have minded if you hadn't. You wouldn't have been in the way of anybody. If you stood there, you would have heard kind of a distant muttering coming from out in the country as the Norwegian bachelor farmers were combining wheat this week in their antique McCormick combines, the old six-footers that they use out there. They got new combines now. The 20-footers take in a whole 20-foot swatch of wheat, but they use the old six-footers out there. The bachelor farmers, too, they don't care to get their work done early. It just would mean a longer wait until bedtime, don't you know? Ancient old combines clattering around in the fields. I've seen grown men go out there, stand in the ditch, watch them with tears just running down their cheeks to see it. Of course, it would take a grown man to weep at something like that. Younger men wouldn't have the background to weep, you see. Wouldn't be able to stand there and listen to them and watch them and recall old days of glory out in the green field when you were a little boy among giants and you'd be out there and suddenly One of the giants would hoist you up under your arms and lift you way up over his head, sit you down on top of, and you'd ride along behind your uncle with your arms around him hanging on for dear life, smelling him, smelling that musty smell comes off a man when he's working hard. Lord, I wept at the time when I did it. I had hay fever. The grain was an emotional experience for me. But I rode on those combines every chance I had. And now, all those giants are gone. Everybody's about my height or a little smaller. And... You seldom run across anybody who's strong enough to lift me up over his head or who would be interested in doing it, you know. There's not so much I'm interested to be lifted up to. Sad thing, getting old, I tell you children. Postpone it as long as you possibly can. I had boring times when I was a kid in Lake Wobegon, but you know, boredom is different when you're a child. It's kind of an exquisite suffering. It's a sharp pain of boredom. So you can hardly stand it. It's a boredom that inspires goofy adventures to relieve boredom. But you get old and you find that you can be bored for long periods of time and never even notice it. Weeks, months even, go by and you think back on them and you have no clear recollection, no clear memory of what happened to him. Whereas you see Lake Wolbeckon, I have a very clear memory of Lake Wolbeckon. And if I stand here and close my eyes, I can imagine that I'm standing right in the center of Lake Street and be all right there, as clear as it could be. The street that runs east and west. You stand in the middle. You look one way towards the lake. You look the other way. It goes up over a rise and goes up out across the prairie. Sun rises at one end, sets at the other. It's a wide street. It's very wide. Those old Yankee promoters evidently thought that people would throng to this city that they were laying out on the prairie and they would need a wide thoroughfare to handle the crush of traffic. But all the buildings are in tight to each other. I'm talking about the ones on either side of that one block of Lake Street, which is what we called uptown, which is actually two words. "I'm going uptown to get some socks," we'd say. Sometimes three words, "up to town." "I'm going up to town to get sandwich." Buildings are all tight in there. There's six two-story brick buildings over on one side of that block. There are five on the other, all built about the same time. Brick buildings all built about 100 years ago. You look up towards the top of them, you see sandstone or marble blocks set into them with the name of the building up there and oftentimes the date of its construction. With names like Olsen Block, or Inkvist Block, and Security Block, and Union Block. Why they named buildings blocks, I don't know, but they did. These buildings have new fronts on them. The stores do aluminum or sort of a fake stucco front. Sometimes a steel canopy has been added. But it only goes up about one floor. And above that, it's brick. It's the original brick. And if you look up towards the top of the building, It's a beautiful brickwork up there, bricks in sort of a lattice shape on some of them, and up at the very top, bricks that are suggesting balconies and balustrades and battlements along the top, and little brick towers built at the corners to make it just slightly palatial, don't you know? And there's the central building there down on the corner, three stories high, the tallest building in town aside from the green elevator. With those triple windows on the second floor and above each set of windows, a sandstone block set in with carved scallops, carved seashells in them. And then very tall tower, brick tower at the corner of it. From which they hung a man once. I think it was in 1892 is what I've heard. He took it well. 'Cause they hung him by his belt. He was stealing stuff and they were just tired of him stealing stuff. So they tied the rope around his belt and they hauled him up there and he stayed there for a few hours. He was quiet about it. He was grateful to be hung that way, not the other way. Let him down about sunset and he went off somewhere out of nowhere. It's something that you would notice about Lake Wobegon if you visited would be belts, men's belts. The number of men who no longer have their belts around their waists, but who now wear them under their bellies. Tremendous bellies in Lake Wapakon. You wouldn't see that in the city, I don't think. I think down here, men think they ought to suck it in, you know. But up there, men let it all hang out. Either they're not vain or else they have a different idea how men ought to look. 'Cause you'll often see men stroking his belly. Patting his belly. Like it was an old pal of his, you know. Like he's one of those friends who's been with you at all the most wonderful moments in your life. You almost expect him to talk to their bellies. Some of those bellies big enough to have names of their own. There is vanity. And like Waldo Grumbet, it's something sweet and almost childlike about it. You see three, four old women coming down the street, four ladies in their 70s. Here they come on down towards the Chatterbox Cafe, have a little tuna sandwich, a little tomato soup for lunch. Three of them wearing black, sensible old lady shoes, flowery print old lady dresses with the wastes right under the bosom. And they've got that thin, wispy, white old lady hair. And the fourth lady is wearing a purple pantsuit. And she's wearing purple pumps. And she's 72. But she's wearing a jet black wig. So she doesn't really look 70. She looks like maybe somebody who's 34 and just had a real hard life. "Well, that's Carl Krebsbach's mom. That's Myrtle Krebsbach. Everybody knows her. Everybody's used to her. It's said of Myrtle that every night she has herself two pink daiquiris. And after the first one and before the second, she stands in the kitchen and she sings "Tiptoe Through the Tulips." And she does herself a little dance that won her first prize at a Knights of Columbus talent show in 1936. Everybody said that about her all her life. They said, "Mertle's got a natural musical talent." And I guess she does. Now, this is her husband here. He's coming down. You see him coming down here, pulling in in front of the Lake Wobegon Clinic here on Main Street, pulling in in his green 1966 Chevrolet, pulling in up to the... There's diagonal parking here, of course. A lot of pickups parked along here, a lot of old cars, dusty old rusted out cars, a few new ones. And then Florian Krepsbach in his green 1966 Chevrolet. I tell you, looks like 1966 was yesterday. It looks like he just drove it off the showroom floor. Back seat looks like nobody ever sat in there unless they were gift wrapped. He's coming down to the clinic because he's had stomach pains and he thinks it's probably cancer. He thinks he has a predilection to cancer. What you most fear, that's what you get. That's what Florian believes. But even though he thinks that he may be dying, He goes around to the trunk and he opens it up and he takes out a clean rag and he pours a little gasoline on it out of a little plastic bottle. And he goes around to the front and he opens up the hood and he wipes off his engine. He says, she runs cooler when she's cleaned off like this. He said, doesn't take long. He said, it's easy to clean it off. You don't let the dirt bake on. Car has 42,000 miles on it. I think everybody in town probably been told that twice. It's a nice looking car therefore yeah it's got 42,000 miles on it you know 1966 Chevy. And it is sad I know for a man to be proud of not having gone very far. I don't feel sad about it. I don't feel sad about Florian. I hear people talk about wanting to take control of their own lives. Florian Krepsbach has had strict, tight control of his life ever since he opened his eyes. I tell you, a man who keeps his engine clean, there's something to be said for that. A lot of men don't know they have engines at all, you know. Something up there under the hood's all there where a Florian grabs Bach Then he'll come out of the office in a little while. He'll pick up Myrtle. He'll drive home four blocks at about trolling speed And they'll come right up to their driveway and she said well aren't you gonna tell me what the doctor said he said well doctor wasn't sure wants me to go in have tests and Florian thinks it probably is cancer. It's probably it. I don't think so. I don't think he'll ever die. I think he's like those combines. I think that if I ever get to be 70 years old and go back home, I'll find him there on Main Street with a little gasoline-soaked rag cleaning off his engine. Except now I'll have 46,000 miles on him. Well, I thought this was going to lead to a story, but I don't think it is. And I'm sorry. It looked as if you could use one. I'll tell you this. I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I hope you enjoy the stories about Lake Wobegon. They're meant for you to enjoy. But it gets harder and harder to tell them for a storyteller. Because the more you tell them, the more you realize how far wide of the mark you really are. I know that I've said probably two or three things now in just about the last 15 minutes. They're going to bother me. Inaccurate things. I'll think about them tomorrow. I'll think about them all week. It's sort of God's judgment on people who are ambitious about telling lies, you see. It doesn't bother you when you start out telling lies. You know, you're just grateful to be able to get through them without fainting up here. But when you become as accomplished a liar as I am, then you're troubled by inaccuracies in your lies. Because, see, the reason that you tell lies about a wonderful place is that you believe that if you get every detail right, absolutely right, and every character in that story has exactly as many hairs on his or her head as she's supposed to have, or him, that if you get it absolutely perfect, that you will be lifted up out of this life and you will be set down in that wonderful place that you've told lies about and all your lies become true. Now you see, what you don't realize, so many of you, is that not only is Lake Wobegon made up, but Minnesota isn't made up, too. I invented it. A lot of people invented it. There is no such state. I hate to be the first one to tell you. But I keep on telling stories about Minnesota in the hopes that if I get it exactly right, that I'd be lifted up out of here in East Los Angeles and be able to live there. Someday I might. Well, I'll tell you, if this seems a little complicated to you, it's gone by pretty fast for me, too. That's the news from Lake Wolbegahn, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, all the children are above average.
GK riding to school on jam-packed bus.
1983.08.20 Louisville Courier / 1983.08.19 Star Tribune
Archival contributors: Frank Berto "Sliker and Berto both have this tape. This was re-broadcast on August 19, 1989. (First part has poor reception)"