Greg Brown, Duluth Accordianaires, Iowa Choir, Prudence Johnson, Garrison Keillor, Vern Sutton. The Wallets, Butch Thompson,
Who Woulda Thunk It ( Greg Brown ) Stars and Stripes Forever (Duluth Accordianaires ) Accordian man polka (Duluth Accordianaires ) Melody of love (Duluth Accordianaires ) Jalisco (Duluth Accordianaires ) Mississippi serenade ( Prudence Johnson ) People hide love ( Greg Brown ) Of time and space ( Garrison Keillor ) Greg don't go to the coast ( Garrison Keillor ) Four wet pigs ( Vern Sutton ) I don't wanna have a nice day (The Wallets ) Slow food (The Wallets ) Train Carrying Jimmy Rogers Home ( Butch Thompson ) Early (Iowa Choir ) Iowa Waltz (Iowa Choir ) Just a bum ( Greg Brown ) One More Goodnight Kiss ( Greg Brown )
Belcher Seed Company Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Cat annuities ) Fearmonger's Shop Feed and Seed Lake Wobegon Chamber of Commerce Mackeral Bob Albums Minnesota Language Systems; (How to say goodbye) National Interstate Road System Peterson, Ritche Powdermilk Biscuits
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Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. Most of them are well up there, kids included, although just barely. It is March, it is Lent, and we're in Minnesota, and if you need anything else to make you miserable, I'm a stronger person than I am. It was cloudy most of the week up there, as per usual, in most of the month of March. Cloudy up there, and it was kind of chilly. There was a cold wind blowing in off the lake, picking up dust and sand off of Main Street and blowing it right into your face as you walked around town this last week. Cold, so you walked around wearing about 30 pounds of clothes made out of the hair from elderly sheep. who never bathed from the smell of it hauling this clothing around on your back walking around town looking at mucky brown yards the hair of the grass all matted down kind of that greasy grass look in the yards ugliest yards you'd ever want to see anywhere with litter and garbage strewn in them and old souvenirs of dogs walking around and the wind in your face feeling cold and miserable and then the wind blows a little sand right directly into your eyeballs. And it doesn't take a lot of sand in your eyes to kind of bring life to a halt for you. You stop right there with just a few grains and suddenly you have to find your mother or your sister or your teacher or sister Arvon or someone to get the moat out of your eye. But there you are, cold and miserable and then your eyes start to tear up and you start to weep so that you can't see where you are. miserable and cold and weeping, standing in the middle of March. And that is the point where a lot of people think Albuquerque. That's where we think about Albuquerque. Albuquerque. Why didn't we think about Albuquerque before? Why didn't my parents think about Albuquerque before I was born? Then I would already be there. I would be a native Albuquerquean or Albuquerquer, whatever they call them down there, Albuquerquites. I'd be there already down there where you never get old because it never gets cold. You're always young because you lie out in the sun because the sky is never murky in Albuquerque, to quote that old song that I made up. Albuquerque on the desert, oh my gosh, and the sun always shining. I wonder if people in Albuquerque ever think longingly about Minnesota and wish that they lived up here. Probably not a lot of them, but some of them, I would think, would from time to time wish that they were here. Probably the atheists in Albuquerque, they like it all right down there. But the people who believe in God and who sometimes talk to God and who maybe have asked God, what is your country? God. And God has said, well, I really hate to single out one part of the country over another because, you know, there are good people who live everywhere, and that's the important thing. But I guess if I had to pick out just one place based on what I know, which is everything, I'd say Minnesota. Those Albuquerqueans, I imagine they probably want to live up here in the worst way. And March is a month when you can really do that, too. I love it here. I love it here. I've been tried. I've been tested. But I do love it here, and I love my little town where I'm from. I don't know exactly why all the time, and I certainly don't say that it's any more wonderful than the town where you live. I never said that, I don't think, and I certainly would never have you believe that. So if it's not more wonderful than the town where you live, well, why am I on the radio talking about my town? How come you're not here talking about your town? Well, because you're smarter than I am, I suppose. I suppose. The fact that people stand under bright lights, you know, doesn't mean they're any smarter. Otherwise, the chicks who come out of the incubators would be some kind of higher form of life. What I learned about bright lights, I learned from working at the parking lot at night. That is, when you are in the bright lights, look out. Step to the side, they're coming straight at you. But I love the little town where I'm from, maybe because they're able to look March in the face and deny, deny that it really is March, deny that it really, that it really exists. I admire that quality in people. The way that Bud, this last week, on the very day that they were forecasting a heavy snow, one of two this last week, Bud took the blade off the snowplow so that it's not a snowplow any longer. It's just a truck. He took the blade off. He was tired of that thing banging around on the front of it when he drove around town. And he said, well, I suppose that means it's going to snow now. But he said, I don't care. If it does snow, it'll just have to melt. I'm through thinking about it. Which is my attitude exactly. I'm going to wear my spring jacket starting on Monday. And if there is more winter to come, well, winter is just going to have to worry about itself. I refuse to admit that there's going to be any more. I'm going to wear my T-shirt. I'm going to wear my sneakers to work, and I'll go through the drifts if necessary, and I'll swear that there aren't any. A person has to be able to do this, to deny reality, to look reality right in the face and say, you don't exist, you are not so, and my saying you're not makes it not so, O-U-T spells out. I believe in that, and so do the people from back where I'm from. I think back to when Ruthie had a baby out of wedlock, or not really out of wedlock, but not far enough into wedlock. Six and a half months into wedlock. When Ruthie had a baby, all those people in the weeks right before the wedding who said, no, I don't think she's getting heavier. She's always been big boned, you know, on her mother's side. As if we had bones in our bellies. She's always been big boned. And when that baby came along, six and a half months later, people who fussed over that baby and who said, I can't believe it's as big as it is, which was amazing. It was at eight pounds and seven ounces. It was one of the biggest babies ever born two and a half months premature in America. in obstetrical history. I like that quality in people, that they can look right straight at something and deny that it's true. up at the feed and seed. On the very day that they were forecasting snow, Harold was putting out the big wooden bins to put the packets of seed in this last week, denying that it would ever snow again. Put out those old wooden bins and put the seed packets in them. They're all, they've all arrived now from the Belcher Seed Company down in Coyote, South Dakota. They came in a good week ago. Some of them in the plain yellow envelopes, the big corn and the bean packets, but a lot of them now in the packets with the colored pictures on them. kind of an innovation for Harold at the Feed and Seed. But the salesman talked him into it from Belcher and also talked him into putting up green and yellow crepe paper on the ceiling in big loops and colored signs from the ceiling that say, Festival of Gardens and Top Quality and Best Value. The salesman Rich Peterson from Belcher said to Harold, said, you've got to build excitement. You've got to build excitement in people for your passerby, your walk-in traffic. He said, you've got to create a visual appeal, a strong visual appeal for these people so that the moment they walk in the door, bam, they think seeds. They think I need seeds. Rich said to Harold, he said, you know, that one-third of all seed purchases are impulse purchases. You got to build that. You got to build that. Build your business up a little bit. Rich was trying to talk Harold into buying some of the new seeds, the ones that come in the colorful packets with the scratch and sniff pictures on the outside. They were real popular in a lot of test markets last season. I don't know, it's a funny thing though with the feed and seed. You know, if you weren't thinking seed when you walked into the feed and seed, you probably wouldn't be walking in because seeds is about all they sell. at the feed and seed other than feeds, of course. So unless you were just coming in to hang around with Harold and talk about the basketball tournament or, of course, if you were coming in for feeds, then seeds would be the reason that you had walked in off the street, visual appeal or no visual appeal. It really is the prospect of spring. that creates visual appeal for people. And if that does not appeal to you, then probably Cray Paper is not going to do a lot for you. But Rich is quite a guy. He's a great salesman. And he really believes that this is the year that seed sales take off. This is going to be it this year. Tomato seed sales are going to triple this year. Carrots are going to be up. Cucumbers be up. Beans be up. Whole beans be way up this year. Everything's going to be up. Squash, that'll be down a little bit, but it'll be up. Sort of. Pumpkins too. It's going to be a great year for seeds. That's what Rich really believes. Rich Peterson sells seeds on the road for the Belcher Seed Company. He's one of their best guys anywhere. 25 years old, been doing it for three years. Spells his first name R-I-T-C-H-E. His name is Richard, but he spells his name R-I-T-C-H-E because, you know, it gets people's attention. It gets their notice. People remember that. Name recognition, important in sales. So people say, oh, yes, Rich. He's doing real well. He lives out in Marshall, Minnesota. With his wife, they're going to buy a townhouse overlooking the prairie, looking out across soybean fields. In July, they're going to buy a townhouse. Cindy is expecting a baby this summer. And at the age of 25, he really believes that for the seed business and for him in his own life, things are really starting to just turn around. Just about to go. Just about to really take off. He thinks about it as he drives on his route. He's out on the road for Belcher six days a week now, driving in that old Rambler, crisscrossing from town to town, driving across the country. And when he sees that next town coming up, his next call, and sees that town and those grain elevators a long way off, he thinks, all right, now let's go. Come on. Let's sell. Go. Come on, big team. Let's do it. Sales. S-A-L-E-S. Sales. Boom. driving along in that old Rambler. His old Rambler's been driving these many years with old coffee cups strewn, stuffed under the front seat and on the floor, old burger pods scattered around, old seed packets driving along, rich the seed salesman going from town to town to town to town. And those old floorboards of that Rambler have now been mulched with dirt from a hundred towns in Minnesota and South Dakota. Dirt laying there underneath the ripped carpets on the floor of the Rambler, down there on the floorboards. rich soil. And all the seed that he's spilled over the years of selling it has fallen down there in the dirt. And now as the weather gets warm and the car warms up, those seeds are starting to put down roots there in his rambler. 200,000 miles on that car and it's starting to grow things inside it. Someday it'll go off to a junkyard and then everything that's been deposited in it over the years will start to sprout and pumpkins will come up out of the floor. And there'll be corn stalks sticking out the windows of that car. There'll be watermelon vines creeping out back through the trunk and up from under the hood and out through the grill. It'll be luxurious with all the plants that he's sold. Over the years, flowers growing up out of the seats and the most luxuriant plants will be growing out of the front seat right where he sat all those years. It happens to every seed salesman's car. They go into a junkyard and they become pots for plants. Beautiful. You can see them a long way off. And those plants continue to reproduce for decades and sometimes even centuries. It's all coming. It's all coming. Let's go. Oh, let's do it. Mm. Spring. Mm. Give me an S. Give me a P. Give me an R. Give me an I. Give me an N. Give me a K. What does it spell? Spring. It's spring. It's coming. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. For all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Greg Brown is going on a tour. Long discussion of Greg Brown's music.