Beausoleil, Stevie Beck, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, EmmyLou Harris, Garrison Keillor, Dave Moore, Peter Ostroushko. Butch Thompson,
Roses in the Snow ( EmmyLou Harris ) Angels Rejoiced ( EmmyLou Harris ) My Songbird ( EmmyLou Harris ) Even Cowgirls Get The Blues ( EmmyLou Harris ) Always Lift Him Up ( Greg Brown , Dave Moore , Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson Trio ) Emmy Lou polka (Butch Thompson Trio ) Jig Francois (Beausoleil ) Waltz grand marche (Beausoleil ) Alors Lafayette (Beausoleil ) Madame Ettienne (Beausoleil ) Boiling crabs (Beausoleil ) Parlez nous (Beausoleil ) Daddy don't smoke ( Garrison Keillor ) Are You Tired of me My Darling ( EmmyLou Harris , Garrison Keillor ) In my Father's house ( Garrison Keillor , EmmyLou Harris ) Diamond in My Crown ( EmmyLou Harris ) Wildwood in the Pines ( EmmyLou Harris ) Smash the windows ( Peter Ostroushko , Stevie Beck ) Haste to the wedding ( Peter Ostroushko , Stevie Beck ) Young Jane ( Peter Ostroushko , Stevie Beck ) Never let him down ( Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Bunsen, Clarence Chatterbox Cafe Fearmonger's Shop Minnesota Language Systems Pastor Ingqvist Pork Brand Shoes Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Raw Bits Tollefsen, Val
Sunday morning Clarence Bunsen stepped into the shower and turned on the water-which was cold, but he's Norwegian, he knows you have to take what you get -- and stood until it got warm, and was reaching for the soap when he thought for sure he was having a heart attack. He'd read a Reader's Digest story about a man's heart attack ("My Most Unforgettable Experience") and this felt like the one in the story--chest pain like a steel band tightening. Clarence grabbed the nozzle as the rest of the story flashed before his eyes; the ride in the ambulance, the dash to the emergency room, unconsciousness as the heart team worked over him, the long slow recovery and the discovery of a new set of values. But as he imagined what was about to happen, the heart attack petered out on him. The story said it felt like an elephant stepping on you. This felt more like a big dog, and then somebody whistled and the dog left. So it wasn't a heart attack, there was no story, and Clarence felt better.
(The storyteller is disappointed, of course. A full-blown heart attack would be a reasonable test of his ability, perhaps leading to death itself, a narration of the last moments, the ascent of the soul through the clouds, an exclusive report.)
It wasn't a heart attack, but for fifteen seconds it could have been one, and in the depths of his heart he thought it was -- so in a way it was. When you believe you're dying, ten or fifteen minutes is like a lifetime, and when the false attack was over, he nonetheless felt he sort of had a new set of values. For one thing, he wasn't sure he should waste time taking a shower, life being so short, having come so close to death in the sense that when death comes it might come exactly like this. It was Sunday morning, but he wasn't sure he wanted to go to church and sit through a sermon, life being so short. If you knew you had twenty minutes left to live, why, then, church would be the place you'd head first; you'd turn yourself in, no more fooling around, no kidding, pour the sacred oil on me, Jack, say the words, and pluck your magic twanger -- I don't have all day.
He thought instead of going to church he'd like to go for a walk (good for your heart) and worship God in the singing of the birds, the sunshine, green grass, and flowers, which, this being Minnesota, we don't have yet. He thought: Life is short, so you should do something different. He dried his old body off and put on underwear -- maybe, life being short, you ought to get new underwear, but what can an old man wear except boxer shorts? Can't go around in those bikini things you see in stores. What if a robber with a gun forced you to strip down to your underwear ("Hey you--old guy!--hear me? I said, strip"), and there you be, an old geezer in tiny purplish briefs, robber'd take one look ("Hey, man, you are ridiculous") bam, you're dead. Dead because you did something different because life is short. He stood at the dresser, shopping for socks (black, brown, gray, gray-black, Argyle). Arlene called up the stairs, "It's almost nine-thirty!"
He wanted to yell back that he was feeling delicate from what he thought at the time was a heart attack, but it was hard to yell something so vague, so he yelled, "Be there in a minute," and in not so many minutes he appeared in the kitchen in full Sunday regalia: brown suit, black shoes, white shirt, and one flash of color, the tiny red flecks on his dark tie. He appeared through the door in a cloud of bay rum, poured himself a cup of coffee, drank some, then kissed his wife (in that order -- he is Norwegian), and looked in the frying pan on the stove and saw food that whenever you read about cardiovascular disease you read about that stuff.
He put a pan of water on to boil, for oatmeal. Arlene watched, spatula in hand. "What's the matter? Breakfast is ready. I got your eggs." Hard to explain: a semi-heart-attack. A heart that wasn't attacked but heard footsteps in the weeds. Maybe it was only a twig, maybe the whole aorta about to fall off.
"I don't feel like bacon and eggs this morning."
"Well, I guess I'll have to throw them out, then."
"Yeah..."
"Are you feeling all right? Are you sick?"
He's Norwegian; he said, "No. I'm just fine." A Norwegian's dying words: "I'm just fine." On the field of battle, torn to a red pulp except for your mouth: "I'm just fine." Wreckage of a car, smashed to smithereens, a bloody hand reaches out the window and writes in the dust: "O.K."
It was warm out, and on the way to church they smelled mud, a sweet smell of rot and decay, and a whiff of exhaust as the Tolleruds cruised by with their carload of kids. Clarence used to walk to Sunday school with his four little kids. Now, having almost had a heart attack, he misses their sweaty little hands for one heartbreaking instant and misses how, before going in to worship the Lord, he ran a quick bladder check and a nose check to see where blowing was needed. The kids always cured him of the sort of morbid mood he felt this morning -- he never had these long grim thoughts about death when the kids were little, but then he was younger, of course.
Church was half full and restless. Pastor Ingqvist's Lenten sermons have gotten longer. Val Tollefson has been after him to liven up his preaching. Sunday morning before church, Val tunes in "Power for Tomorrow" on TV from the Turquoise Temple in Anaheim, and there is a gleam in Reverand La Coste's eye that Val wishes pastor Ingqvist would emulate and also use more dramatic inflection, rising, falling inflection, cry out sometimes, use long pauses to give solemnity to the sermon.
Clarence checked out of Pastor Ingqvist's sermon early. It was about the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, the ones who came late getting the same wage as those who came early and stayed all day, a parable that suggests you need not listen carefully to the whole sermon from the beginning but can come in for maybe the last sentence or two and get the whole point. Besides, the pastor's long pauses were hypnotic. Clarence's mind drifted away to other things, until suddenly he was startled by his own heavy breathing: he opened his eyes; the sermon wasn't over, it was only a long pause. The pastor's inflection suggested he was coming toward the end and the offering was next. Clarence eased his wallet out and saw he had no cash. He got out a pen and hid the checkbook in his Bible (next to Psalm 101) and quietly scratched out a check for thirty dollars, more than usual, because he had almost had a heart attack and also because his offering was personalized. He wrote surreptitiously, trying to keep his eyes up and ahead -- knowing you're not supposed to write checks in church, it isn't a grocery store.
He glanced to his right, and Mrs. Val Tollefson was glaring at him. She thought he was writing in the Bible. (In the old Norwegian synod you didn't write in a Bible, not even little comments in the margin like "Good verse" or "You can say that again," because every word in the Bible is true and you shouldn't have to add any that might not be true, not even in pencil, because it undermines the authority of the Scripture.) Meanwhile, the sermon ended and Pastor Ingqvist launched into a prayer. Clarence tried to tear the check quietly out of the checkbook. There's no worse sound in the sanctuary that a check ripping. This check wouldn't come quietly, the first half-inch rip sounded like plywood being torn from a wall, so he waited for the pastor to launch into a strong sentence of fervent prayer to cover up the check removal, but Pastor Ingqvist was pausing at odd points, so Clarence couldn't tell when it was safe or when suddenly he would be ripping in the middle of pure holy silence. Clarence folded the check back and forth until it almost fell off. Mrs. Tollefson was about to get up and snatch the Scripture out of his hands. At prayers' end, as they said the Lord's Prayer, he eased the check out ("And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen"), and when Elmer passed the basket, Clarence laid down the check folded neatly in half in the basket and bowed his head and suddenly realized he had written it for three hundred dollars.
He had written with his eyes averted and he knew he had written three-zero-zero on the short line and three-zero-zero on the long line. Could a man sneak downstairs after church and find the deacons counting the collection and say, "Fellows, there's been a mistake. I gave more than I really wanted to"? He now felt fully alive for the first time all day. He felt terrifically awake. He had given all he had in the checking account and a little more. What would they do until the end of the month to keep body and soul together? Maybe they would have to eat beans and oatmeal. What's a man gonna do? A man's gotta live.
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.
Garrison and Greg Brown haven't smoked for a month. Radio Classics Theater: Moby Dick II. Captain Ahab wins at bingo and decides to convert the Pequod into a bingo cruise ship.
1985-09-14 1988-03-05 1990-03-10
rebroadcast on March 5, 1988 and again on March 10, 1990.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto