Beausoleil, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Prudence Johnson, Kate MacKenzie. Peter Ostroushko,
Why (Beausoleil ) Port Arthur (Beausoleil ) Midland Two Step (Beausoleil ) Jolie Blanc (Beausoleil ) Love Letters ( Prudence Johnson ) Bring it back home ( Greg Brown , Kate MacKenzie , Prudence Johnson ) Sweet Home Chicago ( Greg Brown , Kate MacKenzie , Prudence Johnson ) Blue Bayou ( Greg Brown , Kate MacKenzie , Prudence Johnson ) If You Want To Go To Heaven ( Greg Brown , Kate MacKenzie , Prudence Johnson ) No particular place to go ( Greg Brown ) Take the A Train ( Prudence Johnson , Butch Thompson Trio ) Les Petits Yeux Noirs (Beausoleil ) La Chanson de Mardi Gras (Beausoleil ) Les flammes d'enfer (Beausoleil )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Bridge View Hotel Bud's Body Shop Chatterbox Cafe Fearmonger's Shop Minnesota No 3 Brown Dye Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Sidetrack Tap
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home. The Lake Wobegon Harold Star, I know you will want to know this, got cleaned up pretty well after that disaster with the frozen water pipes of last week and got things pretty well straightened around there. Although all that water that flowed out on those old wooden floors kind of warped them up quite a bit. But then they'd been warped before. So it just kind of changed the contours of the floor a little bit and where it had been dips kind of became humps in a way. Moved it around a little bit like it says in Isaiah, "The valley shall be exalted and the high places shall be made low." Was the way that Harold Starr looked at it anyway. And when he went in on Tuesday, hearing the boards creak as the floor rearranged itself, a wonderful thing happened. And that is that a lot of things that he had dropped on the floor over the past couple of years that had rolled off to the other side underneath the type chest came rolling back to him now. There were some pencils and there was a paste jar and some ball bearings and his lucky marble His old glassy that he said since he was a kid carried around in his pocket. Every time things really get awful, he's always taken it out and looked at it and thought, things are going to get better. And of course, they usually do at that point. But his lucky marble on Tuesday came rolling out and came right down to his feet. The marble that you see he had been missing when this disaster happened. But then it was the disaster that brought it back to him. So you think about that. I don't know what that means. It means something. Anyway, he had a pretty easy week compared to last week and got to do some fishing, which has been wonderful up there, and everybody's been out doing it, including the Sons of Canute Lodge. All the brotherhood has been out there in their fish houses just hauling in eel pout hand over fist. Which they need a lot of for their big February fish fry because they only fry up the cheeks of the eel pout, which are really very good. You ought to try them sometime. Some people also fry up the lips, but usually not the same people who caught them, you know, who've seen the lips without batter on them. So they just use the cheeks of the eel pout for the deep fry, fish fry in February, and then the rest of the eel pouts are given away and they're used for fertilizer, which they make very good fertilizer. And the fish fry is a benefit, of course, to raise money for the Sons of Canute Shining Star Award, which is a $250 scholarship given out to the high school senior who's considered most likely in the field of scholarship, leadership, and personality, which this year, I don't think there's any doubt, is going to be Carla Krepsbach, who, that kid, has got it all. And unfortunately, she's starting to become aware of it, and this past couple of weeks has gotten into it with her mother Margaret. Some of those everyone else gets to type of arguments and using a kind of a snippy tone of voice so that her Margaret would like to slap her sometimes. But of course she can't slap a shining star. A kid that talented. So Margaret just says, "Boy, I'd love to slap you right now." And Carla looks at her and says, "Yeah, that's your way of solving a problem, isn't it? Hit people. Hit people in the face." "Well, go ahead. You just slap me or you beat me till I'm black and blue, 'cause you don't love me. And you've never loved me. I don't think you know what love is." Is how that goes. It's odd to think of fertilizer this time of year, thinking about those eel pout. It doesn't seem like anything's ever gonna grow again. That's how I feel in January. I don't know about you, I don't mean to spread alarm or anything, but I look at this out there and I think, "This is gonna go on. This is it now. This is what it's gonna be like for the rest of our lives." And it's going to surprise a lot of people in June and July. They're going to say, gee, this is a long winter, isn't it? It's not going to surprise me because I predicted it. January 20th. This is going to go on. Which is how I felt about high school when I was Carla's age. High school was a lot like winter for me because I was not a shining star. I don't think my name even came up for the Shining Star Award. Didn't have much scholarship to speak of. My mother used to tell me, "Well, some people are late bloomers." But I didn't feel like there was anything in me that could bloom. And some people, you know, just get kicked in the bloomers. So I'd haul my bloomers off to school in the morning and feel as if high school was going to go on for the rest of my life. I was going to have to sit there until I got it. And I wasn't getting it. And I didn't think I was ever going to get it. I was not a shining star. Personality? Well, we won't even talk about that. Leadership I don't think I had the ability to lead a group in silent prayer but I did feel and this may sound silly to you I did feel that I would be a lot better person if I had more outstanding clothes and especially some outstanding sweaters Now, of course, at this time of year, I always had my Christmas sweater. I got a sweater every year, though I usually had to exchange it because my mother was a little bit behind on fashion. She didn't realize we didn't go for those dark plaids that were so popular in her day. She didn't realize that charcoal gray was the sweater to have. That was kind of the keystone of your clothing collection. And if you had enough money to diversify into other sweater holdings, you might go in for some cashmeres, not the pastels, but probably a gray and a black and a tan and a brown and kind of an off-white wool pullover, maybe a ski sweater and a brown vest sweater. But in my case, living in a large family, and because my arms grew about eight inches a year, I only had the one, just the charcoal gray. And it was pretty snazzy for a few weeks, a charcoal gray sweater and a pink button-down shirt. That was fashion. But after you've worn it every day for three weeks, you start to feel not so outstanding anymore. And you start to feel like who you really are and sort of pathetic. So I'd bring it up at home, the sweater gap. And of course I got told the same thing you may have been told. You have a whole closet full of clothes. Which was true in a way, but it was a small closet. And a lot of those things have been handed down from my older brother who is five years older. Fashion changes a lot in five years. And a lot of it came from older uncles. And dated back to, Lord, World War II. Khaki stuff. And the Depression. I'll say it did. A lot of it came from the Depression. But when I brought this up at home and argued a little harder about it, they either said, "No," or if I was lucky, they said, "We'll see," which was about the best you could hope for. And sometimes they would quote scripture, which meant that the argument was over. It was a passage from the Sermon on the Mount. And if I remember it here, it's because I heard it so often. And if I don't remember it, it's because I tried so hard not to hear it. But it's the passage that begins, "Take no thought for your life what ye shall eat or what ye shall wear, or for your body what ye shall put on. For the life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment." Consider the lilies in the field, how they grow. They toil not, they spin not. And yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If God so clothed the grass, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" "Okay," I said. "I'll wear lilies if you want." "Is that what you want me to do? I'll go to school, I'll wear lilies. I'll wear two lilies." Or I'd say, "Take no thought for what you shall eat." Well, you take thought for that all the time. We don't sit down at the table and just pray to God that he'll open up the fridge himself, you know, and bring out all the Tupperware dishes now, do we? No. A lot of different ways to misinterpret that, you know, if you work at it. But mainly I thought, why can't we be like other people? Other kids, their parents don't quote the Sermon on the Mount to them in regard to sweaters. Other kids are happy and their parents can't do enough for them. Other kids have wonderful, like kids in books, for example, have parents who just can't give them enough. Like books like the Sears Roebuck catalog, for example. Look at those kids in their clothes that they've got on. They're so happy. They got terrific personalities. I'll bet they're good in scholarship and leadership too. And their parents, their wonderful, handsome parents, who are up towards the front of the book, and some of the parents in their underwear, but I like to look back at the... At the parents who were with their children in the Sears Roebuck catalog back in the recreation section were happy families, were playing with their croquet sets, were playing badminton, were playing with their Sears family game table, which had chess, checkers, backgammon, caroms, and 50 other games and had convenient little slots where you could put your poker chips and little recesses where you could put your drinks in. Why couldn't we have one of those? I thought, knowing all too well why. Why did we have to be so different from other people? In my house, almost everything that I looked at had scripture verses on it. They bought stuff by the ton from the Grace and Truth Scripture warehouse outlet in Erie, Pennsylvania. We got a shipment once a month. The idea being to witness, of course, that you always ought to have these verses around so you could see them and they'd teach you, even if you didn't want to be taught. We had scripture verses on our welcome mat. I forget which one. We had a clock that said, "Now is the time of salvation," across the front of it. We had placemats and napkins in all four series that came from them. We had the parables of our Lord. We had the miracles of our Lord. We had the Bible families, and we had scripture prophecy. And I ask you, would you want to invite a friend home for supper? If your mother had put out the scripture prophecy placemats and right there in front of him was a picture of the beast with the seven heads and the seven seals and the seven horns, I doubt it. We sent out birthday cards. They all said, "Ye must be born again," on the bottom of them. Other kids got to go to school with big red Indian chief tablets. Ours were scripture tablets, and on the front of them they said, "Be still and know that I am God." My father had an "I am the way, the truth, and the life" compass on the dashboard of his car. How would you feel if you took a girl out on a date on a Friday night? You borrowed your dad's car and right there in front of you was the "I am the way, the truth, and the life" compass. Well, you could hang your hat on it, I suppose. But then right there on the glove compartment, it said "The wages of sin is death." And those were glow-in-the-dark letters. You think that'd put a kink in your evening? You bet it would. One thing that the Grace and Truth Scripture Warehouse Outlet did not sell was the family game table with backgammon, chess, checkers, caroms, cribbage, and 50 other games and the convenient slots to put your poker chips in and the recesses to set your drinks in. Just in case you might have thought that they did offer it. They didn't offer it. It wasn't in there. I remember a Sunday. I'll close with this. I remember a Sunday when we went into St. Cloud for morning meeting. And because it was too far to drive back to Lake Wobegon for dinner and then come back to St. Cloud for afternoon Bible reading and prayer meeting, young people's and gospel meeting, We went out to eat at a little restaurant that my dad had heard about from a friend of his in the post office called Phil's House of Good Food. We were not restaurant goers. There were six children. Most families of eight are not big restaurant goers. Members of Cafe Society, even Chatterbox Cafe Society. My parents' philosophy was, "Why pay good money on food you can make a lot better for less at home?" So we walked in. And the restaurant was fancy. They had tablecloths on the tables and indirect lighting. It was all actually kind of dim in there. And candles in those little red glass tumblers on the tables and menus with tassels. They put two tables together, seated all of us around the long table and handed out menus. And we opened them and we blanched to see that a chicken dinner was $2.25 and the beef dinner was $2.75. And my father was multiplying as fast as he could and said, I'm not that hungry, he said. Maybe I'll just have some soup. Well, the waitress came over to our table. We weren't sure, you see, because we'd never been in restaurants that much. We weren't sure about the custom and whether, say, if after you'd been brought in and seated there at the table, if you could get up and leave. We didn't think so. So we were going to make the best of it. The waitress came up and stood by my dad and said, Sir, can I get you something from the bar? This was Sunday, the Lord's Day. He turned deep red because I guess he thought that if she asked that question, there must be something about him that looked as if he might be a drinker. But we were shocked. It was almost as if she'd offered to take off her clothes, dance on tables, bring us a drink on the Lord's Day. My dad said, "No, thank you." Then she went down and stood by my mother. Right now I was thinking to myself, I'm not really here. This is not happening. I'm not with these people. I'm miles away from here. She said to my mother, "Ma'am, can I get you something from the bar?" I thought, "Mother, please don't quote her a scripture verse." I thought, "God, just make me invisible." My mother looked down the table at us and she stood up and she said, "I think we better go." A man came out of the kitchen as we were putting our coats on and he asked if anything was wrong. My mother looked at him and she said, "I think we're in the wrong place." As we left and everyone stared at us. Except me, I was invisible. I was just an empty parka going out the door. Until we were out on the sidewalk when I came back into my physical being and I said, "Why do you humiliate me like this? I feel like some kind of leper. Why do we have to make such a big production out of everything?" "Why can't we be like other people?" And my mother said, putting her hand on my shoulder, "Be not conformed to this world." I knew the rest of it by heart. "Be not conformed to this world, but rather be transformed by the constant renewing of your minds to know what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God." So we went six blocks down the street and ate some sloppy joes at a Maidwright stand, which we were kind of aware of through Bible reading, prayer meeting, young people's Zen gospel meeting, but it didn't kill us anyway. It didn't kill us. Why can't we be like other people? Now I've taken all my time and more asking the question I don't have time to give you the answer. Not that I'm so sure that I know it, but I've been studying it. Why can't we be like other people? It's a question that everyone has asked many times. And I suppose the fact that everyone has asked it is part of the answer. Other people aren't like other people either. 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.
The ceiling of the World Theater threatened to collapse. They moved to the Orpheum Theater at the last moment. Dorothy is on vacation and Cousin Flo will fill in. Department of Folk Songs: It ain't gonna rain, I don't mind my face, Skeeter bite, All hail to thee, President's names, Glory how peculiar.
Star Tribune Jan 21 1984
1984.01.21 Berkshire Eagle / 1984.01.15 Star Tribune / Rebroadcast Jan 28, 1989
Archival contributors: Frank Berto