Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Garrison Keillor, Magical Strings, Peter Ostroushko, Peter Schickele. Becky Reimer Thompson,
Casseroles ( Becky Reimer Thompson ) Making believe ( Becky Reimer Thompson ) Caring fire ( Becky Reimer Thompson ) I don't want to hurt anyone ( Becky Reimer Thompson ) This silly game ( Becky Reimer Thompson ) Shreveport farewell (Butch Thompson Trio ) Fidgety feet (Butch Thompson Trio ) Sunday Rag (Butch Thompson Trio ) Balloon ride music (Magical Strings ) Dennis O'Connor (Magical Strings ) Hunger ( Peter Schickele ) No one but you ( Peter Schickele ) Life's Railway To Heaven ( Becky Reimer Thompson , Garrison Keillor ) Mozart's In The Closet ( Peter Schickele ) The Raven Fa-la-la ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Becky Reimer Thompson ) Little Owlet ( Becky Reimer Thompson ) Cheese And Crackers ( Greg Brown , Peter Schickele , Becky Reimer Thompson , Peter Ostroushko ) Birds In The Wilderness ( Greg Brown , Becky Reimer Thompson , Peter Ostroushko ) Leave The Dishes In The Sink ( Greg Brown , Becky Reimer Thompson , Peter Ostroushko )
All Things Inquired (Public Radio - All Things Inquired - Later tonight on these Public Radio Stations) Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Isolation booths for cats) Bob's Bank (Your money is on the move) Chatterbox Cafe (Lake Wobegon Sponsors - The car went through the ice on Lake Wobegon on Tuesday, April 10, ending the Sons of Knute annual contest.) Folk Learning Systems (Guilt, the gift that lasts forever - How to give it) Grandma's Croissants (Croissants, if she knew what they were) Holm, Charlotte Minnesota Fruit Council (Investment Corner - All a joke - Bananas are mellowing) Momma Drama (Theatrical sound effects for the home) Pastor Ingqvist Powdermilk Biscuits (No expert on shyness / How I won the position of host of the show) Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Sidetrack Tap
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's been warm this week. They got a good rain. And the last of that dirty gray snow melted. That last stubborn patches of ice out in the woods all melted this week. Grass turning green. And last Saturday, it was the sound of the first rototiller was heard in town. Sound of spring. The first one, my, they were amazed. They couldn't believe it. People looked out their doors, went up the street, see who that was. It was Lyle. And he was plowing up his garden. Well, they said to themselves, they said, that's dumb. Goodness, can't plant anything for a few more weeks. He ought to know that. maybe he can maybe he knows something that we don't maybe he's got some kind of technique for planting ermine and it bothered him I thought about it all the time and I listened to that rototiller going because gardening is a very competitive sport in Lake Wobegon people are very friendly about it and they're very generous you go up there in July or August you want zucchini you have all the zucchini you want you Tomatoes, sweet corn, they'll just lavish it on you if you go up there. But it's earlier in the summer when you see how seriously people take this and what a cutthroat sport gardening is in Lake Wobegon. You sit around with people and you look out and you say, my, this is good tomato weather we're having here. Boy, mine is starting to turn red. I'll bet I'll be picking tomatoes in a couple weeks. And they look at you and they say, Well, let us give you a bag to take home. We got more than we can use. You help yourself to all our tomatoes that you want. And you say, you've got tomatoes already? And they say, oh, sure. It's the end of June. We've had tomatoes since Memorial Day. And you kind of want to ask, how do you do that? But you're afraid that they'll tell you. And so you say, no, I don't care for early tomatoes. I don't know, they taste mealy to me somehow. They don't taste like tomatoes. No, I raise the late tomatoes. They taste more tomatoey to me. But you've been beat, and you know it. You've been humiliated. It's as if they said, how's your kid doing? How's your boy? And you said, oh, it's funny you should ask. He's doing great. He won a driver training award here from the Lions Club. He's going up to Fargo. They're having a big parallel parking contest up there. A lot of kids entered, but we're hoping he comes out good. And they say, well, that's nice. They say, that's nice. They say... Todd and Jennifer are in Vienna studying international relations. They're over there this summer. They're going to go to Cairo and then to New Delhi and I think to Hong Kong, honey? Yes, Hong Kong. They're going to Hong Kong and Tokyo. It's something that Harvard gives out. Every summer, just four awards across the country for talented high school students. And I don't know, our kids were just lucky, I guess, and won two of them. And I suppose you ought to say, oh, that's great. That's wonderful. I'm glad to hear that. But they know it's great because that's why they mentioned it. When somebody puts down four aces on your pair of three, you don't say, oh, that's a good hand you've got there. They know it's a good hand. They're taking your money. There are a lot of very competitive people in Lake Wobegon. I don't know if I ever told you about this aspect of life up there. And I don't mean the whippets either. In fact, I especially don't mean the whippets. I don't mean the whippets. A lot more competitive people than that. And it usually takes place in the spring. I think of spring as the time for it. Every spring the Thanatopsis Club gives the annual Lyceum and they bring in a big out-of-town lecture. And I'll tell you that poor celebrity goes home with big ugly red marks all over her body, squeeze marks. from Thanatopsians grabbing onto her and saying, come on over here, sit over here with us. Sit down, have some coffee with us. Here, come over here, I want you to meet my husband over here. My, they pull at her. It's the time when there are intense campaigns to make yards outstanding, better than your neighbors. There are about 20 yards in Lake Wobegon where people do that, and it's just intense and bitter. people walking around after dark to look at the competition. And then there's high school graduation in the spring, and if you don't think that's competitive, you've never been there. Those children, my poor things. It was about six years ago when the school decided that they would cut out the speeches by the valedictorian, the salutatorian, and the class orator at graduations. Because, well, they all tended to sound about the same, you know. And also the school thought that graduation ought to be fun. And most of these student speakers were a little white around the gills and tended to sway a little bit at the podium. And their eyes glazed over. I saw the no speeches six years ago. But that was the year that Charlotte Holm was the valedictorian and her cousin, Helen, was the class orator. So those Holmes went down to school in force. I mean, that was the year that the organic material hit the ventilating device and they went down there. They wanted those children of theirs to be up there on stage with gold tassels and with words coming out of their mouths and they didn't care what they had to do to get their way and they got their way and they won. And Charlotte delivered a speech on service to others which was based on Christ's admonition to the rich young man. Give all that you have to the poor and follow me. And it was a good speech. The Holmes thought it was the greatest speech ever given. I'm not sure that they even heard it. For being as proud of her as they was, and her dad especially, who was all over the place taking eight millimeter film of this event. In color. Silent, however. Well, I suppose it seems silly to you, but it's easier for me to forgive the Holmes for being as proud as they are, knowing what they went through, that family, the humiliation that they suffered. A long time ago, 1926, and they've been trying to kind of forge forward and hold their place ever since then. 1926 was the year that Norwegian royalty visited Lake Wobegon. And Mr. Inqvist, who was Hjalmar's dad, Johnson Inqvist, who owned the bank, was the one who brought all this about. He was a big contributor to the Republican Party and he knew the governor. knew him well enough so that the governor once came to Mr. Inqvist's house and drank a cup of coffee with him, which a hundred schoolchildren stood out in the Inkvist yard and watched him do it. It was a big day. And it had rained that morning, so that lawn was not so outstanding after that. They had to... Resigned it, but he knew the governor, Mr. Inkvist. So when he heard that King Håkon VII was coming to America and was going to make a motor tour of Norwegian settlements in Minnesota, Mr. Inqvist got on the horn and he put in his bid with the governor and he got the king of Norway. For May the 14th, 1926, for two hours in the afternoon from 2.30 until 3.40, for almost two hours, 2.30 to 3.45, the King of Norway would be there. Boy, after that happened, you saw some lawn work, some yard work being done in Lake Wobegon. People were out working on their yards, their flower beds, planting trees, planting new grass. This was in 1926, which was in an era of pretty casual lawn care. Kids played in yards. That's what they were for. Kids played there and dogs dug up yards and the standards of turf maintenance were fairly low. In 1926. Most lawns had a little pit in one corner of them. That was home plate. Nobody bothered to fill it in. Crabgrass was just another variety, you know. But they got to work. They learned about the visit in April and they got to work. Even the German Catholics. Although they kind of poo-pooed this whole thing when they first heard about it, they told the Norwegians that King Håkon VII was not even a Norwegian. That he was a Danish prince whom the Norwegian parliament had invited over to be the king of Norway when Norway split off from Sweden in 1905, which is true. Technically. Technically. And they also said, the Germans said, that this is America, this is a democracy, and one person is as good as another, and what's the big deal about a king coming? Which is also true, technically. But when those Norwegians thought about the king of Norway coming to Lake Wolbegan, they just had to sit down. They almost got dizzy at the thought of it. Because, you see, their ancestors in Norway were dirt poor. They never saw royalty, let alone hung around with them for a couple hours. And so the king's visit was a sign to them that they had done good in America, that they'd made something of themselves, that they were worthy of this. But you know, in making good in America, they had started to forget about Norway. And so the king's visit was also like their past was coming to greet them as if your grandfather were to rise up from the dead and walk towards you with his hand out and say, you've done good, I'm proud of you. Oh, the king of Norway. They were painting their houses, they were fixing up things. putting in new grass, working, buying new clothes. That was 1926. Farmers were still driving into town in horse-drawn wagons. They cleaned up Main Street and they said, no more horses. Till after the wizard, you parked down by the tracks. They created a Lake Wobegon Norwegian children's choir where there had never been one before. And they drilled 40 children in six Norwegian songs so well that those children who are now pushing 70 can remember every single one. And each Norwegian in Lake Wobegon imagined the day the king came what it would be like the long black car pulling up right in front of their house and the door opening and this tall man in a blue suit and a crown of some kind getting out and coming towards them with his hand out and them bowing and him coming into the house and sitting down at their table and eating krum kaka and having coffee And saying, oh, smakase good, very so good, very so good. Torese snella, torese snella, manga daku, manga manga daku. Tastes so good, oh, it's so good, you're so kind, thank you, thank you. Oh, what a wonderful day it would be. And then they got the bad news. Mr. Inkvist decided that since the king's trip was so busy, and he'd have to see so many different things, his schedule was so crowded, that the neighborly thing to do, the sensible thing to do, would not be to show him things that he'd seen a thousand times before, children's choir, these Norwegian songs, the king had heard these before. The kind thing, the Christian thing to do would be to have the king come to the inquest's home, they'd sit, they'd have a little coffee, and then he could go upstairs and lie down and take a nap. That would be the friendly thing to do. Give him a bed upstairs. Let him lie down and snooze for that almost two hours. No bands, no choir, no parades, none of this hoopla. And he had invited the king. So that was it. That was his decision. No more to be said about it. There wasn't any committee. It was just Mr. Inkvist. When people heard about that, they were so hurt. angry. Because, of course, then Mrs. Inkvist decided, well, she would have the Tollefson's, her brother and sister-in-law. And then the Bergies got in on it. They were old friends. And a couple of others. So then there would be 12 people who would have coffee with the king and sit downstairs quietly while he went upstairs and took a nap. And the Holmes were left out. She was an old friend of Mrs. Inglis. They went way back together. They were just like that. They were so close and they weren't invited. And the Ringnesses, Paul and Florence, were not asked. Florence was Mrs. Inkvist's cousin. And she didn't get invited. She was so angry. Both of them were. Paul never did any business with Mr. Inqvist after that the rest of his life, which wasn't easy because Mr. Inkvist owned the bank. And Florence never spoke to her cousin again in her life, which wasn't easy either because they were in the same church. And that was when Mrs. Ringness kind of began her career of dominating the ladies' circle at the church and bossing every dinner and ruling the women's circle with an iron hand. and so sharp-tongued and so domineering that younger women literally could not butter bread or boil water in her presence. She was so superior that she made other people absolutely incompetent. And it was as a result of that. Well, then they got the other piece of news. The day before the king was to come, he was sick and he couldn't come. He was in Minneapolis. He'd been in America for seven days. He had attended 12 lutefisk dinners. And he was laid up in his suite at the Nicollet Hotel with physicians from the Mayo Clinic. Because this was three years after President Warren Gamaliel Harding had died from eating something on a tour out west. And the governor was horrified at the thought of the King of Norway perishing in Minnesota of lutefisk. So they give him tea and toast and they put him to bed. And in his place they sent out a Norwegian count, Count Carl. And then, of course, Mr. Inkvist decided, well, Count Carl, he wasn't tired. He didn't have much of a schedule, so they have a big thing. They have a big dinner and do the concert and all the rest of it. But that didn't change a single thing. People still were hurt and humiliated and bore this grudge. And Count Carl came on May the 14th. He'd come at 2.30. A big bear of a man. He had huge black eyebrows, deep rumbling voice, hard to understand him. And they sat down at the Sons of Canute temple and they had dinner. He was a good eater. He ate everything put in front of him. And the Lake Wolbegan Norwegian Children's Choir got up and sang their six Norwegian songs and with the very first note, Count Carl's chin dropped on his chest. And he slept like a baby through the whole thing. And then the applause at the end woke him up, and he smiled, and he jumped to his feet, and he bowed, and he delivered about a five-minute speech in Norwegian, which not that many people understood, and got in his car and drove away. And if he noticed what wonderful yards there were in Lake Wobegon, he didn't say anything about it. But people did not forgive Mr. Inqvist. People were still humiliated. And the bad feelings from that one event have only recently died out, almost. And only because all of those people almost have died. There was a little act, what makes me think of this. There was a little act of forgiveness that took place at Lake Wobegon Lutheran this last week on Tuesday down the basement in the furnace room. Luther Ringness, the oldest boy of Paul in Florence, came up from the cities and he and Pastor David Inkvest, who is the grand-nephew, the great-nephew of the Inkvest who invited the king and didn't invite the Ringnesses, The two of them, David and Luther, went down the basement to dedicate the furnace, the new furnace, which Luther had donated to the church, which he donated way last summer, and it's been in and operating since last fall. But he came on Tuesday because he had only recently decided to name it after his parents. So they went downstairs and they drilled four little holes in the furnace. Right on the front, right above the window that looks in at the pilot light. And they put on a little brass plaque that said the Paul and Florence Ringness Memorial Furnace. And Luther had him a bottle of brandy. And he poured a little slug of it into two Dixie cups and he smashed the rest of it against the front of the furnace. And David said, well, all right. He said, I think you christened it. I think that puts that to rest. And he said, tell me, said Luther, he said, you want an announcement in the church bulletin? Luther said, I don't know. He said, what do you think? What do you think people would think if we said this? David said, I don't know, they probably think it was funny naming a furnace after your parents. Not many people would do it. He said, why did you do it, by the way? Luther said, well, he said, I think that my mother and father were the proudest people that I've ever known in my life. My father drove 50 miles to deposit money in a bank. My mother would not allow anyone, even relatives, in the house except on Sunday when it was clean. If they came at any other day of the week, she would stand and talk to them on the steps. But they couldn't come in her house unless it was clean. She was so proud. He said, you know, if my parents could pick out their own memorial, I imagine they'd probably like a bell or maybe a carillon in the steeple. But he said, I used to think when I was a kid, he said, I used to think that if pride was kindling, our family could heat the church for a century. So here we are. David said, here's to your good health and may ghosts rest in peace. And they tossed it back and they put the Dixie cups on the floor and stomped on them with their feet and turned out the lights. And they went upstairs, went out to have some lunch. Just a little brass plate. Paul and Florence ringed this memorial furnace. Not an ease at the window, and inside, little flame of the pilot light flickering back in there. It's been a good furnace. Put it in in the fall. Haven't had a bit of trouble with it. It's been running absolutely quiet. You go in there on a cold winter morning, early on Sunday, turn the thermostat up. She'd go from 50 to 70 in about an hour flat. It's a good furnace. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. Where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking. And all the children are above average.
The car went through the ice on Tuesday, April 10, ending the S of K contest. Department of Folk Songs: Midnight blues, Let your hair down, Life's railway to heaven, Mozart's in the closet, Fa la la.
Citizens Voice Apr 13 1984
1984.04.08 Star Tribune / rebroadcast on April 22, 1989.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl/Michael Owen