Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, John Angus Foster, Prudence Johnson, Kathy Mueller, Peter Ostroushko, Helen Schneyer, Sven Bertil Taube, Butch Thompson.
Seek and You Shall Find ( Helen Schneyer ) Miner's Song ( Helen Schneyer ) Red is the rose ( Helen Schneyer ) We Sing Hallejulah ( Greg Brown , Prudence Johnson ) St. Philip Street Breakdown (Butch Thompson Trio ) Burgandy Street Blues (Butch Thompson Trio ) Swedish Medley ( Sven Bertil Taube ) Two of Us ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Prudence Johnson ) I Saw Her Standing There ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Prudence Johnson ) Good Day Sunshine ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) Fool on the Hill ( Peter Ostroushko , Clarence Gatemouth Brown , Prudence Johnson ) Fool on the Hill ( Peter Ostroushko , Clarence Gatemouth Brown , Prudence Johnson ) She's Leaving Home ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) What a Friend We Have in Jesus ( Butch Thompson ) There is a Fountain Filled With Blood ( Helen Schneyer ) In My Life ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) Oh Darling ( Peter Ostroushko , Greg Brown , Prudence Johnson ) With a Little Help From My Friends ( Prudence Johnson , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) You Must Unload ( Helen Schneyer )
Auto Agression Institute (Emotional drivers cure, becoming one with the flow) Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Bertha's Group Cat Programs at Catcare Centers.) Bunsen, Arlene Bunsen, Clarence Bunsen, Clint Dorothy's Cafe (This portion of our show brought to you by your friends in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, the little town that time forgot, that the decades cannot improve, including Dorothy's Chatterbox Cafe, the place to go that's just like home, where the coffee pot is always on. That's why it tastes that way. Norwegian espresso, you find it only there at Dorothy's.) Eye Witness Hair (Eye Witness Hair Spray: For your personal appearance.) Powdermilk Biscuits (What it is like to be a Shy Person and the Shy Person Support Group.) Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery (Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery brings you this portion of our show as well. You know, hundreds of new food items are introduced every year in this country that nobody really needs. They're not that much different from the old ones. That's what Ralph believes. Cod liver oil, for example. Lots of new brands every year. Fancy, expensive imports. Cod liver oil and Bright new packaging, cod liver oil with prizes in the bottom of the bottles. There at the Pretty Good Grocery, it's Norsk Delight, the cod liver oil that has served so many generations of Lake Wobegonians over the years. You need no other. Remember, if you don't find it at Ralph's, you can probably get along without it.) Sidetrack Tap (Also brought to you by the Sidetrack Tap, the dim little place there on Main Street where Wally and Evelyn wait to welcome you. The sidetrack will be closed on Monday. Monday is Wally's birthday. And so all of the patrons, all the old guys from the sidetrack are getting together to go up to his house and surprise him with a big birthday party. Forty guys have signed up so far. If you'd like to join them, they'll be meeting at the fire station about six o'clock on Monday evening. It's a dollar for the keg and a dollar for the gift. They'd like to get him a real nice one, so join us and let's surprise Wally there at home with all of his favorite old patrons from the sidetracked town. Boy, will he be happy.) The Farm: Public Radio Drama (The long struggle for their way of life by PHC Cast) The Robert Street Bridge (Prudence Johnson (Bridge over Troubled Waters) Serving the people of St. Paul for generations.) Wild Bill Brown's Calendars (Peter Ostoushko on location...)
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It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, my hometown. All the Christmas decorations came down here this last week, some of them kind of hard, I thought. Some of those big heavy three-quarter inch plywood ones we made in shop class years ago. I won't say that Bud dropped them, but he let them down pretty fast so that they bounced. But they didn't break, and they'll be back. He'll be back next year. He didn't want to spend a whole lot of time out there getting them down because it did turn kind of cold early in the week. Got down about 15 below zero up in Lake Wobegon. That was the temperature. The wind chill was colder, of course, but they don't use the wind chill up in Lake Wobegon. Don't need to know about that. Temperature is about enough. to know for all normal purposes, really. It's like going to a dance, you know, and a girl says she doesn't want to dance with you. You don't really need to know why. That's enough. Such thing as having too much information It was cold early in the week, which kind of put a crimp in what little bit of New Year's Eve celebration people were planning, which wasn't a whole lot. But some people thought, as Monday went along, maybe they would stay up and do something. But found out, don't you know, that if you spend a good part of the day outdoors when it's real cold, and then you come indoors and sit down by a stove and have a little shot of peppermint schnapps, that it's bedtime for you. Right in there somewhere, whether you have guests coming or not. There were some people did turn out the lights and lie on the floor on New Year's Eve up there. Thank goodness their guests did not have far to come. They were going to have New Year's Eve up at the Inkvests up at Hjalmer and Virginia's because their youngest daughter, Corinne, was in town with her new baby, her first. It's a little girl, about three and a half. Yeah, four. No, three. Well, three and a half weeks old. Hjalmer had... Well, I want to be exact. Yomer had never laid eyes on this child before and had invited a bunch of people over for New Year's Eve. Corinne got up there with Eddie and the little girl in the afternoon. They unwrapped the baby for Hjalmer and Hjalmer felt like going making himself a drink right then. This was an ugly baby. I mean, some of them look a little red and squashed, but this was an ugly baby. It's perfectly normal, perfectly cheerful little kid, but it was ugly. It looked like Charles Bronson, as a matter of fact. It looked like somebody had cut out the baby face and pasted Charles Bronson right in there, except when they put its little cap on it, then it looked like Yasser Arafat. You don't really know what to say to your own child. In a case like that, she brings home a real ugly baby. It does kind of make you think, you know, and wonder where it came from. His own children, Hjalmar's own kids, were all very good-looking, which left Eddie's family to think about it. Evidently, there were some chromosomes lurking in the woodwork that suddenly jumped out in this kid. because it looked bad. It looked like the bough had broken and the baby had fallen right on the cradle. So they canceled that reception. Well, Hjalmer didn't feel well. That's what they told people. Clarence and Arlene Bunsen were in kind of a festive mood on New Year's Eve day because he'd been sick since Christmas, really, down with the flu. And whenever he is sick, he doesn't shave. So he was feeling better on Monday and shaved, and that made Arlene feel better. And so they thought they might... have a little something for New Year's Eve, they called up Clint and Irene Bunsen, Clarence's brother, Arlene's sister, who live across the street, and said, let's get together for New Year's Eve. And Clint said, well, why don't you come over here? We've got the new antenna. And Clarence said, well, if we're not too tired, maybe we will. And Clint said, yeah, he said, about 10 o'clock you look across and see if our lights are still on, you come over. Well, Clint was up until after 10 o'clock, but he looked out the window and saw that Clarence and Arlene's lights were out, and so he was fading. So he turned out their lights, not knowing that Clarence and Arlene had turned out their lights because they were coming over to Clint and Irene's, and in fact were at that moment right at the back door and about to open it. And they were hurt. They got the message. They felt bad. Clarence had saved up a couple of new jokes to tell Clint, who actually is about the only person Clarence knows well enough to be able to tell that kind of joke. And they both, Arlene and Clarence, had drunk about four cups of coffee in order to stay awake. And now we're figuring that maybe one would have been enough. Because they were wired, they went back home across the street and crawled into bed and lay there for a couple of hours watching the insides of their eyelids until finally Clarence started in deep breathing. and started to grunt a little bit and said some stuff in his sleep. He said, he said, Teresa, and Arlene waited for the rest. And that kind of brought her around and she got up and went downstairs about 12 o'clock and started ironing in the kitchen. pillowcases and sheets mainly. Arlene's mother always used to say that if she didn't iron her pillowcases and her sheets, she was unable to sleep at night for worry that she would die in her sleep and the undertaker would come and find her in wrinkled bedclothes. But usually, ironing one pillowcase and one sheet is about enough to put Arlene's lights out and put her right to sleep, but not New Year's Eve, because this was some coffee. This was not your Folger crystals. This was Christmas gift coffee from Barbara Ann. It was some kind of Mexican coffee come in beans in a bag. and you dump only just a few beans out into a mixing bowl, and you whip it with a beater to break them up a little bit, you know, and you pour hot boiling water over it, but it is prescription coffee. She was wide awake, and it was 12 and 12.30, and going on one o'clock, she turned on her radio. and it might have been a coffee or it might have been something else, but her favorite station was not there on the dial, the one you'd turn to and expect to get Guy Lombardo and the sweetest music this side of heaven. There was another station there that was playing music that sounded like a major industrial accident. It sounded like... machines coming apart at high speeds and parts flying off and if people danced to it you'd hate to be there to see it, you know. I wonder what they would do. She found two stations like that and she found a couple spots of static. And then she found this other station where a guy was talking. And he was saying that it was time for America to wake up. Well, she was awake. She listened to him. He said it was time for America to wake up and to get down to business and get this country turned around the right way. And it was time for the poor people in this country to realize that there is no free lunch. anymore, and that if they had faith as to the size of a mustard seed that God would bless them too and make them to prosper like the rest of us so that they would be able to pull their own weight. She couldn't believe this. It was like she was in some other country, like a tornado had picked her up out of Lake Wobegon and dropped her someplace she didn't know where. The radio does this sometimes in very cold weather up here. Strange signals bounce for thousands of miles and come that we never hear at any other time of year. She was amazed. She went upstairs, turned off the lights, turned off the iron, went upstairs, crawled into bed. Clarence was thrashing around. She lay awake. She started to think about the iron and even though she knew she had turned it off, she thought about it, got up, went down to the kitchen, and yep, it was on. Incredible. She turned it off. She went back up to bed. She lay down in bed. She lay there awake. She started thinking about the front door, whether she had locked it or not. Finally got up, went downstairs to check, then remembered when she got down there, they never lock their front door. Don't have any key to it. Well, that was all she wrote that night for Arlene. Clarence found her in the morning sitting there at the breakfast table drinking coffee. Looked like death warmed over. Clarence said, good morning. Arlene said, please don't talk to me for a while. I'm all right, but don't talk to me for a while. You know, being married for a long time gives a guy discipline in a situation like that. Because what you're inclined to say is, is something wrong? But he didn't say that. Other guys might have said, maybe we ought to talk about this, honey. He didn't say that. He just sat and had some coffee and cleared his throat very softly. I think she was the only person to see the new year come in. Not that it was exciting or entertaining for her, but I think she was the only one. The Kruegers up on the hill used to do New Year's Eve until about three years ago when the mister served up for their guests a fruit punch called the Hurricane, which he read about in a magazine article in which he served in glasses the size of kerosene lamp chimneys. and which the first one tasted so good and went down so easily he kind of lost track of how many ounces of rum he had put in the first one, which was four actually, and so mixed up a second round. And they sat and drank and the party was going well until one by one they noticed that they couldn't lift their chins off their chests. and that the missus had gone out to get hors d'oeuvres maybe half an hour ago, maybe 45 minutes ago, and had not returned. And the mister was in the dining room chipping golf balls up into a punch ball. So the guests did not at least have to excuse themselves to anyone but just made their way out the door and thank goodness only had to walk home. They didn't run. They kind of leaned home. lean towards home and were very glad when home finally slowly came towards them. And when their beds reached up and grabbed hold of them and pulled them down. And that was the Kruger's last New Year's Eve party. The Krebs box used to stay up until New Year's Eve, but they didn't this year because this is the first year that Carl has been heating entirely with wood, and the house is so well insulated that on Saturday and Sunday night he had crawled into bed, and just as he was starting to feel drowsy, he thought, carbon monoxide. It's a thought that will wake you up in a moment. So he had to sit up in bed and run through in his mind the ventilation system in the house. And then lay down and was about to drift off again and thought, carbon monoxide. And had to think about it and go down and track it down again to make sure. that they wouldn't all die and satisfied himself. But you know logic is not the route to sleep. Ignorance, yeah, really, logic is not. Logic can lead you in all sorts of strange directions when you lie down at night as Father Emil has been finding out now for the past few weeks. He's been having a hard time getting to sleep upstairs in his study lying on his daybed. with the Christmas angel hanging from the ceiling right overhead. A Czech angel, Czechoslovakian angel, I think, because it's so bright and it's so festive looking, painted pink and blue and gold and silver. But as he lies there looking up at it, in the dark the day comes back to him and things that have happened all day and it all becomes very clear to him what he should have done, what he could have said and he wakes up and can't go to sleep until Sister Arvan came over very late on Christmas Eve having seen that his light was still on. She brought him a gift. She said, I'm sorry to come so late, but I saw your light was on. She said, I don't know what people think, my coming over here at this hour. Father Emil said, well, they probably think that the tunnel caved in. She brought him a gift. And it was a book. It was an adventure, mystery. called The Man in the Back Pew in the Father Mike Peterson P.I. series, The Adventures of the Priest Private Eye. And he got a little ways and right at the point where Father Mike P.I. turns to his sidekick altar boy Timmy and says, Timmy, let's run through those clues once again. Somehow I can't get that hanky out of my mind. Father Emil just tipped over and fell asleep. Next night, tried it again. Went back five pages to the place where the long black limousine pulls away from the curb in front of the rectory at midnight. Read those five pages up to where Father Mike says, Timmy, let's run through those clues once again. I can't get that hanky out of my mind. And once again, Father Mike had his man, Father Emil. Lights out. a great device. My own scheme for going to sleep these days has not been working so well for me. Usually it does. But I imagine walking along the beach in Northern California with the surf coming in and a beautiful woman walking beside me who turns to me and says, your work is just incredible. I can't tell you how much I admire it. And I usually go right out at that point. But lately, the last few days, I have been turning to her and saying, well like what particularly? I mean name one thing that you especially like. But that's all she'll say. It kind of has bothered me and kept me awake, the idea that she would like stuff I've done but couldn't name anything. Anyway, Arlene was feeling better early in the afternoon on New Year's Day, well enough to speak in simple declarative sentences anyway, and to say, I feel a little better, not much. And Clarence got ready to go over to Clint's who has the new antenna to watch football games. He said to Arlene before he left, you know, he said, at our age it's probably not a good idea to stay up, to try to stay up longer than our bedtime because you never know, we might be more successful than we'd intended to be. We ought to stick to 10 o'clock from now on. He went across to watch football and she lay down in bed and she went to sleep and she slept. and had a marvelous dream which when she woke up that night she was surprised that she remembered almost all of. It was a dream that took place in church. And the women at church in this dream who had been taking care of the crib room and the nursery for so many years had decided that it was Pastor Inkvist's turn to do this on Sunday morning. So he wasn't there. He was downstairs in the nursery, and all the deacons were downstairs in the nursery taking care of little children and singing lullabies to them in their deep Norwegian deacon voices. And everyone else was sitting in church, not knowing what to do. All sitting very quietly, just looking straight ahead. Very quiet. Time passed. They could hear traffic far off. Downstairs they could hear the deacons singing to the babies, singing, get along little babies, get along home, whoopee-tie-yi-yo, whoopee-tie-yi-yo. Sitting there in church, when suddenly all of them turned and looked at Arlene, the way people will do in a dream sometimes, all turn and look at you. And since it is a dream, it is not frightening. She stood up. Thou looked at her, and she walked down front as if in a dream, which in fact she was, and stood in front and looked all of them in the faces, all of the Lutherans of Lake Wobegon. and walked up to a person in the front row and just lay her hand on that person and stood there. Just lay her hand on that person. And then she moved along to the next person and just lay her hands on them and stood And as she went along laying hands on people, the people she had laid hands on turned and laid hands on other people. And so it passed. People were simply laying hands on each other in church, which when she woke up and thought about it seemed, for Norwegian Lutherans, unlikely. These are people with very sensitive skin so that they'd be willing to press palms together with you provided you come at them from the front and they see you coming and they've got advance notice. And sometimes ladies will kind of brush cheeks with each other. But these people are sensitive to touch and you tap them on the shoulder sometimes they're apt to levitate on you. In the dream, she was going around and just laying her hand on their forehands, which they do not do as a rule, but she did it in the church in the dream. And it seemed like such a wonderful dream, such a fabulous dream. Not saying anything, not singing anything, nobody talking, just people laying hands on each other. Clarence was asleep beside her. He started to turn over. And he said, He said, She put her hand right on his forehead. He said, And then he fell asleep. And so when she put her head down, did she. 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.
1985.01.05 Indianapolis Star
Archival contributors: Frank Berto, Ken Kuhl/Michael Owen