Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Sharon Isbin, Kate MacKenzie, Garrison Keillor, Kate MacKenzie, Taj Mahal. Peter Ostroushko, Stoney Lonesome,
Spanish Dance No. 5 ( Sharon Isbin ) Road to The Sun ( Sharon Isbin ) Listen to The Train ( Garrison Keillor , Kate MacKenzie ) All the Greg Browns are Gone Away ( Garrison Keillor , Kate MacKenzie ) Cold Rain and Snow (Stoney Lonesome ) Sweet Blue-Eyed Darling (Stoney Lonesome ) Fishing Blues ( Taj Mahal ) Dust My Broom ( Taj Mahal ) Baby, You're My Destiny ( Taj Mahal ) Statesboro Blues ( Taj Mahal ) Old Puff ( Garrison Keillor ) Frost on the Pumpkin (Butch Thompson Trio ) Sugar in the Gourd (Stoney Lonesome ) I'm Sorry I Made You Cry (Butch Thompson Trio ) Estrada La Sol ( Sharon Isbin ) Barios Paraguayan Waltz ( Sharon Isbin ) My Destiny ( Taj Mahal )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Varieties of cats... From the songs of the cat songbook: Old Puff!) Chatterbox Cafe (Just like home, including those real mashed potatoes (3 scoops) made with lots of butter!) Donna's Beauty Salon (Since 1957! "Please use the side door.") First Companion State Bank of St Paul (First Companion Heart Of Darkness Banking) Gospel Birds Herald Star (Printing service, no job is too small! Stop by and see all of the premade signs, including "No Trespassing", "You Are Being Watched." More) Krebsbach, Carl Krebsbach, Lyle Powdermilk Biscuits (Dreary day in St. Paul / Why Los Angles is the entertainment capital / Land of 10,000 lakes. St. Paul is not the entertainment capital of the world because the weather is poor. Shy people are more than 97% water. ) Public Service Announcement (Don't forget to declare Halloween candy to IRS)
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, back in my hometown, quiet as these things go. Carl Krebsbach's brother-in-law Lyle bought himself a new car though on Monday. People were talking about that for a few days. He did not buy it in town. went into St. Cloud to buy it there in Lake Wobegon. People say, you want to go buy a car in St. Cloud? That's fine. Then you'll be able to drive your children to school in St. Cloud too. But it was a car of a sort that is not sold in Lake Wobegon. It was a little red foreign car with a sunroof, which people there have never felt much call for. They... go driving like to have a solid roof over your head but Lyle saw this car in a picture in a magazine advertised such a beautiful photograph too on one of those dazzling bright days and I think it was on the coast of California a photograph of this car on a road high above the ocean and the photograph was shot down through the open sunroof and sitting at the wheel was a beautiful young woman who was dressed in a swimming suit, which was barely large enough to be called a garment. Well, his poor old heart beat a little faster, and he just had to have it. And I tell you, people were not all that pleased about it either. And when on Tuesday morning he went out and could not start it, There were a lot of people just sitting down to breakfast up and down McKinley Street who kind of turned and smiled to each other, including the person who had put a potato up the tailpipe. I don't know. Lyle has lived there for 12 years, but he's still considered a newcomer. by most people and I guess he must be a newcomer if he doesn't know that it's a rule there that you take care of your own before you go looking to strangers in the purchase of automobiles or in other forms of romance. A grown man who develops a crush on the picture of a girl in a magazine is not operating with his clutch fully engaged, as we say. There was a Sunday not so long ago, Lyle was in church and got into line going up the aisle to receive communion up front. And while he was in line, his eye fell on a handsome young woman in line ahead of him. And by the time he got to the front, his heart was in no condition to partake. And he was in a condition that made him embarrassed to turn around and come back to his seat. and so backed up out of communion line and sat in a pew in front and leaned forward in a prayerful position, which was more for camouflage than anything else, until the crisis had passed. Poor foolish man. 44 years old, more foolish now than when he was young and foolish. But it must be hard on him, I suppose, to have lived there for 12 years and to be a stranger. Still a stranger in town. And now driving around town in a little red car with a sunroof that was not meant for a 44-year-old high school science teacher with a wife and four children. Carl took him aside the other day and he said, Lyle, he says, it's none of my business. But he said, please don't go get a permanent and don't grow a mustache. Just don't do it. Well, Lyle had never considered it before he mentioned it. And now I guess he is thinking about it. What he needs to do is to lose some weight. Poor man is carrying about 40 pounds more than he was designed for. So that that little car lists to the left as he drives down the street. I just keep thinking that though he's only lived there 12 years, you know, maybe he needs friendship and affection would straighten Lyle out a little bit. which there is a lot of in Lake Wobegon, but it is old friendship and it's old affection and you have to have lived there a long time in order to recognize it because it's mostly unspoken and might not appear as affection to anyone other than somebody who knows that it is. I was in the sidetrack tap one night this last winter. I was playing pinball. It was that old baseball machine which I've always liked. The old kind that doesn't beep, you know, it dings and it keeps score in the hundreds and the thousands and not in the hundreds of thousands. Kind of my speed and I was standing there and doing pretty well at it and making it ring pretty well and getting it up to 9,000 and was on my bonus ball when suddenly a hole opened up out of nowhere and just ate this thing. And I looked at it, and then I felt a hand on my shoulder, on my right shoulder, and I turned to my left, and there was Karl Krebsbach, who had been standing beside me, and who put his arm around me. And I tell you, it may not sound like much, but I just about burst into tears and sat down. Because I've known him, you see, all my life, and I know that he does not go around doing that. It was an amazing thing. I felt so grateful to him for it. Lyle goes into the sidetrack tap, and he's still treated like a stranger. Wally looks up, and he says, what do you want? He doesn't ask anybody else that. He knows what they want. After all these years, he knows exactly what they want and goes and gets it. What can I do for you, he says to Lyle, as if he'd never seen the man before in his life. And this last week it was even worse. Because Wally was sore, he had just gotten his issue of the Tavern Owners Monthly, the Tom Tom magazine, which comes every month, and this was the October issue. which was a little bit late because Mr. Bowser at the post office has a sore wrist, but it was there. And he read an article about a man who had walked into a tavern months ago down in southern Minnesota someplace and had a couple of beers and then got into his car and drove off and ran into a tree and sued the tavern for $4,000, $2,000 for $4,000, $2,000 for damages and $2,000 for anguish and collected. Wally couldn't believe it. All afternoon he was walking around holding this magazine out to people saying, look at this. Do you believe this? Whatever happened to people paying for their mistakes and accepting responsibility? What sort of person would do this? And then Lyle walked in the door. And Wally looked at him and he thought, yep, that's the guy who'll do it to me. Then he didn't ask Lyle, what do you want? He said, one, that's all, one. Lyle said, what's the matter? What did I do? It's not what you've done, it's what you would do. You don't look good to me, he said. One. That's it. Well, the high point of the week was not Lyle's buying a new car, but was the show that was put on Wednesday night up at Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church by Ernie and Irma Lundeen and their performing gospel birds. It was Wednesday night. This is something that the deacons discussed early this last summer and voted on to put on occasional programs in the church on Wednesday nights because attendance at Wednesday night prayer meeting and Bible reading has sometimes been pretty slight. It has not been drawing well. And there have been more than one occasions when five or six people show up at 7.30 and sit and wait until 7.45, and then if Pastor Inqvist is not one of them, they just look at each other. And they think, well, what do we do? What's supposed to happen? And maybe say a silent prayer and just sit and read for about 45 minutes and then go home. So they're trying to attract more people up to church on Wednesday nights and the deacons, Val Tollefson was the one who really was behind this and who got it through the deacons and who called a Christian booking agency and lined up the programs for the upcoming year. There is a Brother Phlegm Koster, the world's tallest evangelist, who is coming, I think, in November. And there are the Singing Whipples, who, between the six of them, play 37 musical instruments, coming this winter. In February, there will be the regional playoffs of the Scripture Drill Competition. And sometime next spring, the Reverend Duke Peterson, who was a former runner-up Mr. Minnesota and a champion weightlifter, whose use of powerful body-building drugs reduced him to the level of a wild animal and brought him to the very verge of death by building up the muscles in his neck to where he could not breathe. And he was actually dead in a hospital for six and one half minutes and then was revived and went into the ministry. He's coming in the spring. But the program on Wednesday was Ernie and Irma Lundeen and their performing gospel birds, which, to hear the Lutherans talk on Sunday morning after service, nobody really was intending to go and see. They were a very dignified bunch, the Lutherans. Some of them asked Pastor Inkvist about it, and he said, it wasn't my idea. He said, ask Val Tollefson about it. This is his idea, not mine. But as Wednesday approached, more and more people were talking as if they might go up to church and see it if they had time. And then Wednesday night came around, and Wednesday night being what it is in Lake Wobegon, everybody had plenty of time. And at 7.30 everybody was in their seats. The place was packed, except for Pastor Inqvist. He was not there. He had gone away on pressing business, I guess. Probably anywhere he could find it, if I know him. And at 7.31, the lights dimmed slightly in the sanctuary, and the door into the choir loft behind the pulpit opened, and Ernie and Irma Lundeen walked out dressed in beautiful white satin robes, both of them covered with birds." Beautiful birds. There were macaws, there were canaries, there were doves and parakeets, some parrots, a couple of crows. And it was a stunning sight. Dressed in white, they looked like fruit trees. Beautiful fruit on them. Gorgeous birds with long feathers. And all of the birds were singing at the tops of their voices. It was just stunning to see this. And they came down and stood in front of the pulpit. And then Ernie bowed his head and the birds were quiet like that. And Ernie prayed that all who were here tonight would be blessed by the message. And especially those who came to scoff and to mock. May they, Lord, be even more deeply blessed. Which made everyone feel about that tall. Well, it was about a 45-minute program with these, I would say, 40 birds is what I heard. They did acrobatic tricks. They did some on the table there in front of the pulpit, and they did some up in the air, tumbling and falling birds, and flying around the room in V formation. Four, five, six birds at a time. Four canaries came out and played several hymns on a xylophone. which was very pretty. And then Ernie talked for a while about their wayward years that they had spent, he and Irma, in the circus and in carnivals traveling across America performing under the name the Flying Lundinis and trying to attain wealth and fame through their bird act. And meanwhile, Irma was back behind him getting the birds dressed up in little costumes that she had made. And they enacted several stories from the Bible, including the story of Noah's ark, a huge ark there on the table and birds dressed up as other animals, elephants and pigs and sheep and camels walking two by two up the plank in perfect formation and descending into the ark and then the cover was closed and then from the back of the sanctuary and goodness knows how it got back there a dove flew up from the back of the sanctuary and around the room three times and landed on the roof of the ark and then the roof opened and the birds came up in a cloud straight up it was stunning And it got a huge hand. And then the birds took up the collection. People held up dollar bills. Held up dollar bills in front of them and the birds flew by and without stopping got them in their beaks and carried them back to the collection basket. It was so amazing and especially when someone held up a 50 cent piece and a parakeet came in and took it in its beak and lost altitude fast. But worked at it and got back up and carried the 50 cent piece up and dropped it in. People were just stunned. And then Irma stepped forward for her testimony. and told how growing up out in the country on a poor farm, she'd always loved birds when she was a little girl. Her family was poor. She was plain looking. She weighed too much. And she felt so miserable. She was attracted to birds, so graceful and so beautiful and so free. She just loved to sit and watch birds. And then one day, a bird came and lit on her shoulder. And she took this as a sign of God's blessing. That she was not alone. That she was being watched over. As it says in scripture, his eye is on the sparrow. He knows when a sparrow falls. So his love holds us all. And then four parakeets played that hymn on tiny silver bells. I sing because I'm happy. I sing because I'm free. For his eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me. It was lovely. Two-part harmony. So sweet. Ringing out in the church. Then Irma stepped forward and said, we'd like to close the program tonight with something special. I would like each one of you here tonight to experience the same thrill that I felt when that bird landed on my shoulder. I'd like every eye closed and every head bowed. I would like every person in this room to sit and contemplate God's great love for us in our lives. And when one of our birds lands on your shoulder, I want you, if you feel that blessing in your heart, to stand up where you are. You don't need to come forward. Just stand where you are. The blessing of the birds. Well, the Lutherans of Lake Wobegon are kind of a reserved bunch. They have closed their eyes and bowed their heads in church before and have meditated in the past. But it lent a certain excitement to meditation, knowing that in a moment a bird would land on your shoulder and wondering which one it might be. So they were a little nervous and some people were peeking. But then they got down to the business of meditating and their eyes were closed and their heads were bound. And yes, as they sat and thought, thoughts did come to mind of divine providence in their lives, of a great love that seemed to abide in the world and that upheld them and supported them as if by invisible hands. Times when great powerful evils had been resisted when they had not done things that they very much wanted to do. And times when they had performed acts of kindness and love and mercy despite the embarrassment of it. And more than that, a presence of grace in the world. that lifts all of us up. And as they sat and meditated, one by one each of them felt a slight weight on the shoulder as if someone had tapped them. And then they did feel blessed and one by one stood up where they were until everyone was standing. It was a stunning moment and they all felt very touched by this and not only touched but filled by this miraculous event. The sound of wings in the room like angels moving amongst them and stirring the air. They agreed afterward. It was one of the most magnificent evenings they had ever spent in church. Even the people whom Val had signed up for the cleanup committee agreed that it was a wonderful, wonderful thing. Lyle wasn't there. I don't know if it would have done him any good. Maybe it might have, or maybe being a science teacher, he knows too much about behavioral behavior and conditioned response to be affected by this. But I wish I had been there. for the performing gospel birds. I felt kind of sad this fall. We see flocks of our birds heading south, leaving us for the winter. I feel better now, having told you the story of the performing gospel birds of the Lundines. But I know I would have told it a lot better if I had been there on Wednesday night at Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
St. Paul is not the entertainment capital of the world because the weather is poor. Shy people are more than 97% water. IRS reminds children to declare all of their Halloween candy.
1987-10-17 1988-10-17
Star Tribune Oct 29 1984
1984.10.21 Star Tribune / 1984.10.26 Star Tribune / rebroadcast on October 17, 1987
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl/Michael Owen