Chet Atkins, Philip Brunelle, Butch Thompson Trio, Johnny Gimble, Prudence Johnson, Garrison Keillor, Tom Keith, Fred Newman, Peter Ostroushko, Jean Redpath, Dan Rowles.
Sleeper (Butch Thompson Trio ) Take Your Burden to The Lord ( Garrison Keillor ) Sonny don't go ( Garrison Keillor ) Tuna casserole ( Garrison Keillor ) Vincent ( Chet Atkins ) Cat, you better come home ( Garrison Keillor ) Tell Me Why ( Garrison Keillor ) A Fool Such As I ( Garrison Keillor ) Riding down the canyon ( Johnny Gimble ) Old gray bonnet ( Johnny Gimble ) One more spring in Minnesota ( Peter Ostroushko ) Lang the fiddle played ( Jean Redpath ) Annie Laurie ( Jean Redpath )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Cavalier Air Strikes Chatterbox Cafe Chicken Feather Siding Elbow Gel Plastic Explosive Fearmonger's Shop Gremwald Menthol Lite Beer Mercury Torch Toaster Pentagon Surplus Hardware Powdermilk Biscuits Prairie Dog Granola Bars Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery Raw Bits Scotty's Cough Syrup for Dogs Sidetrack Tap Worst Case Scenario
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Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown. It's quiet because spring has come and spring is awesome and magnificent and everybody's quiet in the face of it. It's just almost too much for us. When everything turns green and there's so much life in the air, thinking about an afternoon like Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon, Wednesday afternoon, after that tremendous rain that we had in the morning, walking outside in town, and the moisture in the air and the smell of grass coming up from beneath your feet, almost too much, almost like being a fish and breathing through gills to smell it. makes you feel like you're 17 again, and I couldn't take that.
Birds arriving in town by the busload in Lake Wobegon come back from their winter vacations wherever they went, and the Norwegian bachelor farmers Hung out their sheets. This last week, finally washing their sheets. After those long winter months, now it's finally safe to do it. Walk around town now that the screens are on the windows. Hear all sorts of things coming out of houses that you weren't meant to listen to. Husbands and wives discussing things with each other. Listen to piano lessons that... tune that kids have been working on every spring, the one that goes da-da-da-da-da-da-dum, da-dum, dum-dum, dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee, da-dum, da-da-dee. smell floor wax coming out of houses, smell hamburgers and onions cooking, walk around town admiring the lawn ornaments and the yard work, admiring the flowers and eavesdropping on conversations. hearing voices come out of the high school, smell the macaroni hot dish that is cooking in the cafeteria, and upstairs Miss Melrose's English class reciting the words from Chaucer that everyone in my town has memorized. For generations, one that Aprila with her surest sota, the draught of March, hath pierced to the rota, and bothered every vine in sweet liqueur, of which veritu engendered is the flower. Ones of fierce ache with his sway to breath.
Inspired hath in every holt and heath the tender crops. And the young son hath in the ram his half course run. And small of foulness. Mocking melody that slape in all the neck with open ear. of small and foul, making melodia in my hometown. In Minnesota, although those lines were written 600 years ago, it still describes spring. The sweet breath of the wind and the tender crops and the small fowler that sleep in all the nicked. I don't know if they sleep with open ear or not. My ear are closed during the nicked. I hope yours too. I went up there on Sunday, this last Sunday, on a pilgrimage of my own.
Went up to visit my family and was surprised to find that they weren't home. I hadn't called ahead, but somehow I always had the feeling they were up there waiting for me to come, and so was dismaying. Walked in. Door was unlocked, of course. Walked in the kitchen. Called, nobody was there. Felt bad. Felt worse when it looked as if they'd left in a hurry out the back door. There was a dish on the table with cookie crumbs on it. My mother would never leave that there unless she was running. And so I, well, I felt bad.
I've always been a little sensitive about whether or not people really liked me or if there was something else involved if they did it for a reason. I've worried about it since I was a kid. I saw my mother once give money to my best friend, Lance. She gave him three dollars. She was buying salve from him. He was selling salve door to door. But a lot of kids sold salve. Why did she have to buy so much? Suddenly I understood why he chose me to be on his softball team. Well, they weren't home. So I drove into town where there was a traffic rush on Sunday morning, people leaving church.
It was Confirmation Sunday at Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church. There were 13 young people who were 14 years old who had gone through confirmation class and who stood up at the altar rail on Sunday morning and were admitted into the circle of believers. 14 of them, including the Tolerud's third oldest girl, Lois, was there, I discovered afterward. Stood up there in the front of the church, these young people. and were asked by Pastor Inkvist some of the deepest questions about the faith, questions that have troubled theologians for centuries. And these young people answered them readily from memory. Stood there, including Lois, took their first communion and went outside afterward and stood under the trees. and asked each other, were you scared? Were you nervous? Said, no, not as much as I thought I would be. I wasn't very nervous at all. And all went home with all their relatives who'd gathered for this great event. and sat around and had chuck roast and potatoes and gravy and string beans and jello with Miracle Whip.
And some of them, some of them, the kids, had their first real cup of coffee, which they found to be bitter and oily and to make them dizzy and nauseous. But they are now Lutherans, and coffee is... Coffee is an article of the faith. They drank coffee by the gallon up at the Tolerud's house where all the relatives had come to celebrate Lois' coming into the church. They drank it by the gallon because it had been, you see, a two-hour service at the church. They don't hold back for this. There was the regular service plus the bonus.
And in the Lutheran church, there aren't the opportunities for movement, you know, up and down in the pews and calisthenics that you find in other competing faiths. So people were stiff and lame when they got out of church and sleepy and irritable. And all the Talarudes especially crammed into that little house out on the farm. They drank coffee, coffee by the gallon as they sat there. The Talarudes are all so agreeable, you see, all such quiet, agreeable people that they tend to make each other a little drowsy. and so drink more coffee perhaps than other people do. It is their substitute for a good argument.
But if Lois had spoken up, they wouldn't have had to drink so much. She sat there, tall, shy, 14-year-old girl, wanting to tell them that she wasn't sure that she believed in God that she had lost her faith, she thought, she wasn't sure, might have lost her faith on Friday night or sometime Saturday morning. She's a tall girl, tall girl. She's grown about four inches this last year, which has worn her out. So she is even quieter than she used to be. Tall, shy girl with beautiful complexion, which she keeps beautiful and pale by blushing often. which is good for the circulation and which makes boys admire her more, which makes her blush more. And she has become beautiful this last year. sitting across from her in geometry class ever since September, has been a boy who has looked every school afternoon as if he was just about to speak to her. And finally, on Friday, sent her a 23-page letter written in a small ballpoint hand telling her how much she means to him, how important she is in his life, that he believes that God has written their names together in some kind of date book that God keeps in heaven. And that if they do not go on in life as a couple, that somehow nature itself will start to crumble and the moon and stars will fall. at a great inconvenience to the rest of us. But she wasn't thinking about him, about boys. It wasn't what made her blush, Lois, as she sat with her family around the table, eating chuck roast and potatoes and gravy, string beans, jello with Miracle Whip. She was thinking that she ought to say to them that she'd lost her faith. She thought then they wouldn't have needed so much coffee. She thought she should say it, especially when her mother brought in her cake, her confirmation cake, a white angel food cake with Lois' confirmation verse written in blue frosting on the top of it. Be not conformed to this world, but rather be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds, that ye may know what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God. It's a big cake. She used the extra fine nozzle on the frosting gun. Lois felt so ashamed.
She wasn't sure if there was a God because on Friday night she'd been home babysitting. Her folks, Daryl and Marilyn, had gone into town to have supper with Lois's prayer parents, who are a couple. There's a couple appointed by Pastor Inkvist out of the congregation for each child who's to be confirmed. And your prayer parents, they pray for you for three weeks before you're confirmed. And when Lois found out that her prayer parents were Val Tollefson and his wife Ruth, people whom she had never liked. She felt her faith start to slip a little bit.
And then watching television and thinking about it, watching a show on television in which men in white suits beat people senseless with clubs and shot them with machine guns and threw their bodies out of helicopters, which for television is fairly innocuous stuff. But in Lake Wobegon, where the picture is so fuzzy during the warm months, it was like radio and somehow was more horrible and seemed more real for the picture being not there, just listening to it. It seemed to her listening to this show at home late at night, hearing twigs crack in the backyard. that the world is not under the sway of love but is controlled by dark, evil forces, that the world is under the control of a dark force that is constantly looking for us, constantly seeking us out and calling our name and calling us towards the dark edge. She thought of this and remembered how as she sat in the house with her younger brothers and sisters and tried to pray, to ask God to please say that he knew her, that this prayer seemed to echo in her head as if it didn't go anyplace and was only imaginations. So when she saw her confirmation cake and the verse, she felt ashamed and excused herself from the table before dishes and put on her blue jacket and walked out across the corn stubble through the windbreak. out past the woodpile, out across the field towards a farther line of trees and towards the ravine where she'd spent so many hours as a child.
Lois walked out on this brilliant sunny day and when she came up towards where the gravel road meets the county road. She saw a car, a white car, and a man in a brown raincoat standing beside it, and felt that maybe this was the sign, maybe this was the parable of the Good Samaritan. This man was there, put there by God for her to go and testify to him, and in this way her faith would be restored. And she walked towards him down the gravel and saw as she got closer, the man stepped towards her and from the smile on his face and the look of his hand as he reached out towards her,
She knew that he was put there by an evil force and that she had come the wrong way. That this was evil roaming the world and looking for whomever it may devour. And turned, she turned and tried to run and tripped and fell. And said, please, please, she said. which surprised me because I hadn't seen her for a long time, but we had been close once. I'd been a friend of the family, enough of a friend so that I was her godfather at her baptism. I know I wasn't the first choice, I know I was kind of a joke candidate.
I know that Daryl had wanted his brother Wally. And Marilyn had nominated me to show Daryl what a bad choice Wally would be. And Daryl said, well, all right, if you want him, go ahead. And there they were stuck with me. I knew this at this child's baptism 14 years ago. There she was on the gravel. I said, Lois, Lois, I said. don't you remember me? I said, it's me, your godfather. I said, some places I'm almost famous. I'm surprised you didn't see who I was. How are you? I said, I helped her up. I brushed the gravel off her jeans. She said, I haven't seen you for five years. Why not? I said I've been busy I'm sorry I should have been there so we walked down the road down towards the ravine we walked along and talked about her loss of faith and other things I reminded her of her baptism what it was like I said do you ever Did you ever meet my Aunt Lois?
She was the one who you were named after. Well, Lois didn't know that. My Aunt Lois, you see, was Marilyn Tallerud's Sunday school teacher, so named the daughter after. My Aunt Lois was my youngest aunt, and she was single when I was a little boy, so she had a lot of time to spend with me. Her favorite nephew was what she told me. She said, I love you more than all the rest, but don't tell the others. Because she was such a young aunt, she was more like a sister. And we used to go on the bus, my aunt and I, when I was a boy, down to Minneapolis to visit her aunt, my great-aunt, who actually wasn't that great, but it was a nice trip and fun because my aunt Lois was young and she was like me. She loved to pretend and pretend we were somebody else, pretend we were somebody, pretend this was our bus. It was a private bus and we'd go any place we wanted to.
Our favorite game to play was pretending that we didn't know each other. Pretend that we were strangers. I'd get up out of my seat as the bus headed towards Minneapolis. Get out of my seat and walk back up the aisle and turn around and come back to my seat and say, is this seat taken? May I sit here? And she'd say, sure, go ahead. I sat down. I'd say, it sure is a pleasant day today, isn't it? Which we didn't do in our family. We didn't talk to strangers. But you see, we were strangers, so we could be whoever we wanted to and do as we wish. So we talked to each other. Yes, she said, it's a pleasant day. She said, are you going to Minneapolis then? I said, well, I'm going to Minneapolis, but then I'm going on to New York City, where I am starring in a Broadway play. And then in a couple of months, I expect to go back to my home in Paris, France, where I have an apartment on the Champs Elysis. I've come out to Minnesota only for the funeral of my aunt, an aunt who has died. She was fairly young. Well, that's a terrible thing. That's a terrible thing, she said. You must feel very bad.
You must miss this aunt terribly. You must have been very close to her. I said, no, I wasn't particularly. But she was sort of family, I said. You see, I was adopted. I was an adopted child. My real parents were Broadway actors. And they sent me out here to live on the farm because they thought I would get more to eat. But... People out here don't really understand people like me and I can't say I really miss her all that much, which made her feel terrible. And she turned her face toward the window and she looked out the window as the bus rolled along until minutes passed and I couldn't stand it any longer. I turned to her and I said, talk to me. And she said, I don't need to talk to you. I said, talk to me.
She said, if you bother me, I'll talk to the driver and have him throw you off the bus. She said, I don't know you. I said, you know me. Say that you know me. She said, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never laid eyes on you before. I don't know you from a bale of hay. I said, you know me. Say that you know me. Until finally I couldn't stand it any longer. And I began to cry. And then she put her hand on my shoulder. And then I could be who I was again. That was another Lois years ago. So I walked along with Lois Tolerud. She said, why were you parked on the road, standing there on the road? I said, well, when I come to Lake Wobegon, I always like to come out here to these woods here because when I was a boy, We used to camp out here. The Boy Scouts camped out here when Einar Tingvolt was our scoutmaster. And he used to get so mad at us because we wouldn't learn semaphore signals. When we were out here camping, he'd get so mad at us that he would sometimes throw things out into the woods. And when we were here one night, he grabbed the eggs that we were going to have for breakfast in the morning, and he threw them one at a time out over that line of birch trees. And each egg he threw harder and higher. And when he got done with all 12 of them, he reached for anything else he could find and grabbed his binoculars. And he couldn't stop himself. He was so furious at us. He threw them.
As he threw them, he tried to draw them back. He tried to reach for the strap as it went out over the birch trees. And we looked for those binoculars. all that evening and the next morning, and we never found him. And I've always felt that if I come out here and stand here, that someday, just by luck, I'd see a reflection of glass, and I'd find Einar's binoculars. And it's been 30 years, but they were good binoculars. And I could take them to him, and he would forgive me, but I've never found them. She said, that's a lie, isn't it? I said, yes, it is.
The fact was I was there because I'd had way too much coffee to drink. And I know people who live out there along that road pretty well, but not that well, to drive up to the house. So I was awfully glad when she invited me to come to the Tolerud's house and have a piece of her confirmation cake. We walked in the door and there they were all sitting there around the table. Not too glad to see me, but glad enough. They said, would you like some coffee? I said, in just a moment. I would, yes. I said, is it still back there off the kitchen? They said, yes, go ahead. And then later I sat down for cake. I got a little piece of it that said con but for on it. Con but for. My little piece of the confirmation verse. Be not conformed to this world. but rather be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds.
Well, I'm transformed by this world, the one that I look at. It's so beautiful. I believe that it has the power to make us brave and to make us good. This world and each other and the people in it. It has the power to give us faith. The sweet breath of the wind and the tender crops and the small, foulest mech and maladie that's sleeping all the nicked with open ear. 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.
How the World Theater was rebuilt. Radio Bunkhouse: Cowboys discuss diets and weight loss.
Fort Lauderdale News Apr 20 1986 Kansas City Star Apr 30 1986 Star Tribune Apr 27 1986 Winona Daily News Apr 27 1986
Grand Re-Opening of World Theater - TV Broadcast. Photo by Donna Terek. / re-broadcast on July 15, 1989.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto / musicbrainz / Aaron Westendorp/Ken Kuhl