Steve Barnett, Butch Thompson Trio, Willie Humphrey, Prudence Johnson, Garrison Keillor, Peter Ostroushko, Vern Sutton.
Sugar king ( Steve Barnett ) Struttin with some BBQ ( Steve Barnett ) Oklahoma ( Steve Barnett ) The Chrysanthemum ( Steve Barnett ) You are ( Vern Sutton ) Liza Jane ( Peter Ostroushko ) Smoke gets in your eyes ( Prudence Johnson ) I hear music ( Prudence Johnson ) Bob and Karen ( Garrison Keillor ) Someday sweetheart ( Willie Humphrey , Butch Thompson Trio ) Sweet Substitute ( Willie Humphrey , Butch Thompson Trio )
Art's Bait and Night of Rest Motel Barnett Custom-Made Car Horns Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Sidetrack Tap
Well, it has been quite a week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. Not quiet at all this week. It was spring. This last week was actually it, not days that make you think that spring will come soon, but the thing itself and it was Thursday. That was spring. Right, wasn't it? It was warm, it was just gorgeous.
You walked out your door in the morning and that was spring and then it got up almost into the 80s, I think, on Friday and that was almost summer actually. So there we were.
The Norwegian bachelor farmers up to home are a little bit slow to realize that it is spring and still turn out in their winter formal best, you know. Still come to town in the heavy coats and scarves that come into the Sidetrack Tap on Thursday. And Mr. Pouche was there, and Mr. Rippy and Mr. Jensen and Mr. Rustad all in their heavy coats and sweating like blazes.
Sweat running out of their hair, which was plastered to their heads- their wispy white hair- and running down the furrows upon their foreheads for- that they keep for irrigation up there, you know- and down into their eyes. And they said to Wally to set up a round of beer, they said, “boy, it's a hot one out there. It's like July out there. “
He said, “well, sit down and take off your coats. Make yourselves to home” and they said, don't mind if we do. And then they felt a little bit better, but they put their coats back on when they left because it is April, it's not May. Up at the school, the windows were wide open for really the first time this year, which is the real sign of Spring I think, in that town. More than birds I think- what birds arrive. What kinds of birds. That really doesn't mean a lot. Because birds don't know why they fly north, they don't really know what's going on. They don't know anything about the weather. It's kind of a casual thing on their part. I think you would know that if you were able to talk to robins.
They'd say “I don't know. Just a feeling we're talking about it. We're down in Missouri and we're talking about, we're talking to our friends, the Whites- Phoebe and Bob White, and we were saying, well, maybe we'll head north and...”
But they said, “well, I think we're heading north and we said, well, well, maybe we will or maybe we'll wait for the Martins to go north.”
They said, “well, the Martins. They're not going up to Minnesota, they're going to Wisconsin”, so we said, “well, alright, well then maybe we go to Minnesota.”
I mean, it's a very casual thing with birds, and it doesn't mean a lot when they come, they're here. That's fine, but I think it's windows opening in school that really is the first sign that Spring is here.
These are the big windows. Those immense high windows in a high-ceilinged classroom, the kind that have 2 shades for each window, the one that you pull and it goes up and the one that you pull, and it comes down. And you can open the windows from the bottom, or you can open them from the top using a long window hook. And they've been open a little bit for ventilation from the top before, but it's really only when spring arrives that they are thrown open- wide open- from the bottom. And they make an immense hole in the side of the classroom, they turn a classroom into a porch. And the spring air flows in saving the lives of the children who have been in this room under a heavy load of books being pressed like leaves- like dry leaves between the pages of a book. In that dry winter air heated by radiators so that their brains have actually shrunk to about the size of Brussel sprouts. So that they don't know the answers to a lot of simple questions. And when you ask them if they know the answer, they shake their heads and you hear this little knocking from inside and just at the last moment as they are about to expire, the windows are thrown open and the air comes over them in the spring air, and the color comes back to their cheeks, and their brains expand to fill their heads. And they're all right.
Never comes too soon. Always just at the critical time in the lives of a child. These are big windows that I'm talking about.
Aunt Mary Thorvaldsen was walking downtown on Thursday. She walked past the school and the windows were thrown wide open and she heard the voices of children come out and she thought for a moment that it was a long time ago, maybe 1953 and she thought “I shouldn't be outside here. I should be inside working. I should be in school with my class.”
And then remembered that she is 79 years old and she retired from teaching in 1972 or vice versa. She's 72 and retired in 79. I don't I don't remember which.
Her brother in law Senator K Thorvaldsen is on his way up from Florida. He had offered to take her to Florida with him for the winter, but she said “my gosh no.” She said, “what would people think? A widow lady goes down to Florida with her unmarried brother-in-law. How could that be?”
“Well, I think what people would have thought was that it was awfully kind of him to have asked her to go 'cause she's not the easiest person to have around. I mean, her relations in Lake Wobegon do try and do her every favor they can and bring her things and do chores around her house and offer her rides and so on. But she is a person who if you do a favor for her and don't do it exactly right, she'll tell you. She'll tell you that. She'll say to you “I don't want those. I don't eat chocolate cherries. Take those away. You ought to know that I don't eat those.”
She'd say “wash those screens with soap. Not just with water. Now take all of those screens down and wash them with soap and do it the right way.”
You could offer her a ride. She'll criticize your driving for you. And very definitely the way that she used to teach us about grammar when she was an English teacher, and she taught us the difference between lay and lie. But lay means to put or to place- place- lay, place. I lay the book on the counter. Lie means to rest or recline- recline - Lie lie recline. I lie on my bed- I lay the book on the counter- I lie on the bed- now you say it I lie on the grass and I lay my head against the tree. I don't lie my head against the tree I lie on the grass and lay my head against the tree.
Except nobody has for a long time, but we will soon. And when we do, we will lie on the grass. We won't lay on the grass, we'll lie on it. We may lay our head against the tree, or we may lay it in someone's lap. We'll just see how that works out and what the what the situation is there.
She was on her way down to Ralphs Grocery walking downtown on Thursday. Aunt Mary Thorvaldsen went down, bought a few things and brought them to the counter. Six of them, Ralph added them up the cash register. He said “it's $9.84, Mary.”
She looked at him and she looked down at 6 things, $9.84. That couldn't be. He said, “yeah, I said here you got you got $1.19 and you got $1.59. You got $2.79 twice you got $1.25 and you got $0.13. That's $9.84.
Well, she could see them. The price tags- the numbers stamped on the cans, but $9.84. If you're born in 1906- six things at a grocery store don't cost $9.84. Two jars of Taster’s Choice and a can of tuna and a can of pears and some marigold seeds. That's not $9.84. He counted the items on the counter 123456. He counted the items on the sales slip 12345 six, $9.84. She got out at 10, but she still couldn't believe it, $9.84.
Well Ralph has been part of this little play before, he knows what his part is. He waited a moment. And then he said, “Oh my gosh”, he said he mis-stamped that can of pears there. “That shouldn't be $1.59. That's $1.49. That's $9.74.
Well Alright, she said. At least it wasn't as bad as it had been before. It made her feel better. Catch somebody in a mistake. Made her day. $9.74 well, alright. He gave her a quarter and a penny back. Well alright she put it in her purse OK she walked home.
She's only gone South- Aunt Mary Thorvaldsen once since she retired. She went down to visit her sister Myra, who lives in a retirement village outside of Houston, TX, she went down, visited her about a year ago, two years ago. Though they never got along- Mary and Myra- going way back to when they were little children. They never got along and never have gotten along.
Only get in touch once a year at Christmas, send each other a Christmas card. But they're getting old I guess. Makes them feel like maybe they ought to try to be close now. So, two years ago, Myra put a little note at the bottom of her Christmas card and said if you feel up to traveling you might consider spending the winter here in Houston. And Mary thought, well, alright, I'll go down, do that.
And it wasn't bad. She was there for two months, it wasn't bad. They were nice to each other, you know? Didn't really like each other, but I mean they were nice to each other and tried to be polite and were polite. And put out of their minds all of the things that they had been angry at each other about all their lives.
Especially for Mary's part, the fact that Myra had gone to their mother when their mother was very ill and had gotten from their mother some things from her house that her mother had promised Mary several times were going to be hers, and Myra knew this perfectly well she knew that that stuff was Mary stuff and yet she went into that house, and she talked that poor, confused woman out of some of these things. And it's not that they're so valuable. It was the principle of the thing- going in and stealing stuff from your own flesh and blood, taking stuff that is your inheritance, and she went down to Houston to Myra's apartment and she had the stuff sitting right out there. No sense of shame even. It was just sitting right there and Mary walks in the door and takes off her coat and they embraced and Myra said, “well come on in and sit down” and pointed her towards the hand carved rocking chair that their mother had promised Mary three times would be hers and there it is sitting there, and Myra offers it to her to sit in. She could have just slapped Myra silly.
But she didn't. She meant to, but she wasn't gonna. She wasn't going to give her the satisfaction. Well, they got along pretty well by reading books. You sat in a room, read books. It's not a bad way to avoid hitting each other. Mary sat there for two months and she read Shakespeare, which she'd always meant to read ever since she retired from teaching English. Because, you know, 42 years she taught at that school, and she taught the sonnets every spring but she taught the same 3 plays- she taught Julius Caesar to the 10th grade- she taught Romeo and Juliet to the 11th- and Macbeth to the 12th. In the same classroom year after year, same plays, same town. And after a while they started to seem like the same children. And the thing is that she never really liked Shakespeare that much. Maybe she had a long time age when she was a girl and she belonged to the Philolection Women Literary Society when she was very young and every spring they would put on a May festival and dress up in Greek tunics and recite Shakespeare at the festival which was dedicated to the worship of art. Which to a Lutheran girl sounded kind of racy. So she liked Shakespeare back when there was something kind of slightly sinful about it, but teaching Shakespeare was just a real hard job year after year, and every year she told the students that “we study Shakespeare because he was a great man, because he raised our language to a glorious height, which speaks to the nobility that lies. That lies doesn't lay, it lies inside. Inside of each one of us,” and she felt that was true, but she didn't really care much for his plays.
She tried to read Titus Andronicus in Houston, a place she had never read before, and it turned out to be just a bunch of big long speeches and people whacking each other around as she gave up on it and she just lost track of where she was in it. And so she picked up her copy of the Sonnets that she carries in her purse, and she read them instead. Which she knows so well. Has read so often. That she no longer even reads them anymore. Her eyes pass over them. But what she hears are not the sonnets of Shakespeare, but the voices of children over her years of teaching English as they stood in her classroom year after year and stood in front of their classmates and recited Shakespeare's glorious language which calls to the nobility that lies within each of us. Those beautiful poems in which he praised love and youth and beauty. But youth and beauty fade. He praised love, especially for thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings that then I scorn to change my lot with kings.
He loved spring. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Her eyes cruise over the sonnets, and it all comes back to her. The voices of these children, and she forgets. What year it is. It’s all one year and it's all one April. And students are declaiming in shaky voices. These glorious poems about beauty. Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in the calls back the lovely April of her prime.
With great lines to say that we are our parents mirror their glass and they see themselves in us, but that's a clunky way of putting it. That's nowhere near as beautiful as thou art thy mother's glass, and she in the calls back the lovely April of her prime.
Lovely children reciting and reading in unison as the windows were thrown open and as Spring floated across the desks in a room that had lately smelled of chalkdust and wetwall- children proclaiming their love for each other in the glorious words of Shakespeare, every spring for we, which now behold, these present days have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.
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.
GK is the new President and Owner of CBS Television. Themes from old CBS TV shows. People are asking for jobs. Willie Humphrey tells the story of Preservation Hall. It's time to clean up LW.
Rebroadcast March 29, 1986
Archival contributors: Frank Berto