Sandy Bradley, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Sharon Isbin, Vern Sutton.
Yellowstone ( Vern Sutton ) Geography songs ( Vern Sutton ) Carolina rolling stone ( Vern Sutton ) Folk songs ( Vern Sutton ) Green tomato pickles ( Greg Brown ) Welcome to St. Paul ( Greg Brown ) Ragtime life ( Sandy Bradley ) Blow your blues away ( Sandy Bradley ) Shanghai rooster ( Sandy Bradley ) My fate is in your hands (Butch Thompson Trio ) Blue room (Butch Thompson Trio ) Sunny Side of the Street (Butch Thompson Trio ) Barios Paraguayan waltz ( Sharon Isbin ) Laro's Ses por le recho ( Sharon Isbin ) Laro's waltz ( Sharon Isbin )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Krueger, Sylvester Lake Wobegon Leonards Powdermilk Biscuits Sidetrack Tap Societe de Radio Publique Announcers
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon Minnesota, my hometown- been kind of a cold week up there too. Porches all emptied this week- kind of a hint of woodsmoke in the air. Leaves probably be changing in another week or two. Some movement toward taking off the screens, putting up the storm windows up there. Talk of it anyway.
Up to Sidetrack tap, Evelyn was on another one of her campaigns to get that old place spiffed up as she does ever so often without many results. She threw out the big glass jar full of pickled turkey gizzards up behind the bar- said it was disgusting to her. Put in a big jar of carrots and celery instead. I didn't notice anybody taking any. Said she was sick and tired of the place being so dim, so she opened up the drapes on the big front window. About five of those old guys almost passed out from sunstroke. It was good for them it was a cloudy day otherwise it they would have been done for.
She got a new set of beer mugs, 2 his plastic ones, which she said were better looking than the old ones and also a lot lighter than the old heavy glass ones, and they certainly were too. I tell you Mr. Burgie reached for his beer here the other day and put it right up to his forehead almost knocked himself out. Beer all over him. He was disgusted- threw it on the floor it jumped up, bit him in the shin.
He said “that's it now, I’ve had it. I'm never coming in this place again” and actually stood up and took one step towards the door. And then it occurred to him that if he never came in his place again, where was he going to go? Because there is only one in town.
And he said “Don't try my patience. Don't push me any farther or I won't. Oh, bring me another one in the glass one this time. Don't make it so cold. It's cold enough outside”, he said. And he pulled the drapes shut.
School started- started the Tuesday after Labor Day as it has in Lake Wobegon forever. Going back to when Adam was a boy, I think, school began on that same Tuesday. My grandfather started school on that Tuesday after Labor Day. My father did. I did when I went to school. All of us on the same day of the year, and all of us in the same old school building. And Lake Wobegon was almost unchanged in all those years. Same desks, same rooms ‘cept for new coats of paint. Same floor wax on the floor. Particular kind of floor wax I think they only use in school. That smell about it. Same blackboard. Same portraits of Washington and Lincoln up front and center up over the blackboard. Washington on the left, Lincoln on the right. Looking down on us all these years. Like an old married couple up there on the wall.
I sit there at my desk, you know, bent over the paper trying to make big fat vowels, so the tops of them would just scrape the little dotted line. Make the tails of the consonants. the p’s and q's, and the g’s and the f’s so they hung down there. Sit and memorize arithmetic tables. Memorize state capitals and major exports of many lands.
And whenever I was stumped, I always look up to see their pictures. Usually looked at Lincoln, he looked more sympathetic like he might give an answer to a kid you know. If you looked at him long enough, you might see his lips move.
“Say 8.”
Washington looked, I don't know, he looked like he had a headache or something. Mouth was set in that sort of prim line- his eyes were kind of disapproving, always thought maybe it was because people had made fun of him on account of his hair, which was white and frizzy like our teacher’s Mrs Myer’s hair.
But she told us that he had bad teeth, so I guess that his teeth hurt. She told us that during dental hygiene class. It was kind of a lesson to us, the father of our country, to brush after every meal. Not to eat sweets.
My desk was an antique. Ancient is what it was actually, though I didn't think of it as an antique it was just what we had, you know, in a town where they don't have a lot of money you’re apt to hold on to things longer and this one they'd held onto for a long time. Was the kind with the iron scrollwork on the sides and the top was hinged and would lift up. There was a shelf underneath to put your books and papers. And a hole at the upper right hand corner where an inkwell could be put, though they didn't trust us with one of those. And underneath the desk there was little lumps of petrified gum under there. And names and dates of other kids who had sat at the same desk- 'cause Bill the janitor didn't sand underneath it. I remember seeing Clarence 1937 under there and James 18. And there was one that was carved in so deeply you could feel it with your fingers. You can read it.. said “94.” Some kid had sat in the same desk in 1894 was amazing.
Made me think. How old I would be in 1994. And who would take my place? What child would sit there? I thought of writing a note to that child, you know. They'd be interested to find this one day. Write a note on a tiny slip of paper and put it in a crack. Write it in very tiny handwriting.
“Hello”, say. “September 8, 1951 I'm in the 4th grade. It's warm and sunny. And we had wieners for lunch. We're studying England. I like school and hope that you do too. If you see this please find me and tell me. PS I am 52 years old.”
Well, that's kind of incredible, wouldn't it? Be 52 years old. Never thought I'd be that old. Most amazing one note was a signature which was right up on the top of the desk. That said “Sylvester Kruger 31”. Because I found his name also written on the brass plaque that was on the wall by the library door. That said at the top in memoriam. And underneath it said. “Greater love than this hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.” And underneath there were names and there was Sylvester Kruger. Who died in France in 1944. Which made me feel so proud to be sitting in this desk. Where this great Hero, had sat as great a hero in his own way as Washington or Lincoln. And yet he’d been a kid that sat in the same desk. And thought the same stuff that I had thought. Did the same school stuff. I was so proud I told Mrs Myers about it, which was a mistake. Because she remembered him or said she did, she had had him as a student, Sylvester. And she remembered what a good boy he always was. What a good student and how he never made any trouble. Always was good and she said “That gives you a lot to live up to, doesn’t it.”
And she kind of made me feel as if Sylvester was looking down on me from heaven. And that if I didn't toe the mark that it would almost break his heart up there. And there were a great many times that I didn't toe the mark. And she'd look at me. And she'd say, ”you know, I just might have to move you from that desk.”
She said “I don't know that you deserve to sit there.”
And tears would come to my eyes for the shame of it, having let down this great hero who'd sat in this same desk when he was my age so many years ago. She said it to me one time when somebody put a big gob on the doorknob of the classroom. Which Darla Ingvuist touched with her hand. But I didn't do it. She thought I did because I was the one who laughed the loudest. But if you'd known Darlene Ingvuist, you would have known how right it was that she should be the one to put her hand on that 'cause she was the most stuck up person in our class -used to wear better clothes than anybody else ever did. She always bragged about how much money she had in her savings account. And once she brought a $10 bill to school to show off to people.
And I wasn't going to give her the pleasure of wanting to look at it, you know, but I was curious 'cause I'd never seen a kid with a $10 bill before- it just utterly amazing to me and there she was with the whole gang of girls around her in the playground and just letting the certain ones touch it, you know? So it was exciting that day when she was the classroom monitor, so she had the privilege of opening the classroom door. And to watch knowing what was on the doorknob, watch her reach for it. And then see her yank her hand back after she knew what was on it.
And I was punished for it. I was sent to the cloakroom even though I hadn't done it. Where I took a little slip of paper and I put wet white paste on it and put it in the pocket of her coat hoping she'd think it was more of the same. I got in trouble again and almost got kicked out of my desk.
When we had trouble with Miss Conroy, who was our music teacher. She came twice a week for an hour each time to lead us in singing- to take over Mrs Myers class she was an unusual woman 'cause she's so thin. Miss Conroy was. She came from Saint Cloud. She didn't live in Lake Wobegon. She was very thin and very well dressed.
Most of our teachers were kind of plump- we kinda expected them to be for some reason. Like Mrs Myers was plump, she had two. She had. She had little bags of fat under her arms that danced when she wrote on the blackboard and we kind of enjoyed watching them.
As I remember, we gave them names. One was Bob and one was Hoppy- watch em move around. Miss Conroy was skinny and she was extremely nervous woman. So that she would jump whenever she heard a loud sound. Now it doesn't take long for a class of kids that age to discover a tendency like that to jump when you hear a crash. So we got to where we looked forward to her visits twice a week. As I say, she'd only stay for an hour, but during that hour at least four or five times one of the boys dropped a book on the floor. And she jerked like a fish on the line. She just... ahhhhh! And they would they learn to drop them flat to get the maximum whack out of them. And right when the books hit, they'd say sorry Miss Conroy and she'd leap up. If you slammed a door, it would make her jump to, so there were always boys trying to get permission to go to the toilet so they come back and give that a whack. Or if you slammed a window shot. Once my friend Jim dropped a book on the floor that made Miss Conroy drop a whole stack of books that she had, so there was kind of a double jump there. Was impressive to see.
We divided her jumps into five classes. And we graded each one off. There was the jerk: That was just a little twitch, and there was the jump where her shoulders moved, and there was the high jump where she almost seemed to come off the floor. And there was the pants jump when she let out a little whoop. And then there was the loop, de loop what we called- that was that was the big one. That was a big jump and a shriek, and she'd run out the door.
First time we got that was when somebody dropped the globe on the floor. It's one of those big steel globes with on the crescent arm and the big heavy base, you know, so it sounded like a car crash when it fell. She left the room for about 5 minutes.
Well, I tell you, for a college graduate, she wasn't thinking real well. It took her a long time to figure out that this class of 4th graders were kind of working her like a marionette. Trying to startle her, and when she did find out about it, she didn't tell us about it. She went, told Mrs Myers, a regular teacher who came in and she looked at us boys. And she said, if there were any more loud noises that all of us boys would stay after school for 1/2 hour.
“And I'm not kidding”, she said.
We said “why us? Why not girls?”
She said “Girls wouldn't do this.”
So there it was. That was the last of Miss Conroy's jumps, except for the last one which wasn't really my fault. She had told me to come up to the front of the room and to stand up there because I was whispering- and as I headed up by the windows to go up to the front, she turned around to write something on the blackboard and my foot caught the leg on the table. And I didn't know the leg was loose. But it was the table that had the big cage on it that had Mr Bugs- a rabbit- inside. So when it came down sounded like the roof fell in. She jumped, she whooped. She ran out the door and Mrs Myers came in and I was the only kid standing up. And I was standing there trying to pick up Mr Bugs.
So not everybody had to stay after school, just me sitting in my desk. Writing 500 times, I will make no noise. Over and over. Wondering what was going to happen to me next. But she let me sit in that desk. Right through the end of the year, sit in Sylvester Kruger’s desk. And I remember that toward the end of that year, I think it was around Arbor Day, we had a ceremony in the school yard and we planted a tree in memory of Sylvester and all of the other boys who died for freedom.
Darla Ingquist was the one who got to read the Gettysburg Address. She was chosen for that and then we put the tree in its hole and we tapped down the dirt around it. Just a little sliver of a tree. Didn't even have any leaves on it. Didn't look like it would last long even though we watered it every day and it didn't last long either. Because we had put it out in deep left center field of our softball diamond. And so even before the school year was out. It got stomped on by somebody during the baseball game at the all school picnic.
A game in which by the way I hit a double. And it was a real double. It was a clean double. Went right down the right field line. And it would have been a triple except I trapped. So life goes on.
And 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.
Butch Thompson performed an open heart surgery and won the PGA golf open on his two-week vacation. He returned to the program because they needed him. The LW Leonards lost their first game. Dentist that care and care about their patients. Geographical songs. Department of Folk Songs
1984-09-22 1988-09-24 1990-09-15
1983.09.23 Orlando Sentinel / 1983.09.24 Orlando Sentinel / rebroadcast on September 24, 1988 and September 15, 1990.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto