Darnell Adams, Tony Barrand, Philip Brunelle, Pat Donohue, Garrison Keillor, Karen Morrow, Fred Newman, Maggie Purse,
Star-Spangled Banner ( Pat Donohue ) 1812 Overture ( Philip Brunelle ) Sixteen tons ( Philip Brunelle ) American salute ( Philip Brunelle ) Stars and Stripes Forever ( Philip Brunelle ) Singing in the Rain ( Karen Morrow ) Shine ( Karen Morrow ) It had to be you ( Karen Morrow ) New world coming ( Karen Morrow ) Car trip from Aida ( Garrison Keillor , Karen Morrow ) Lida Rose ( Garrison Keillor , Karen Morrow ) Goodnight my someone ( Garrison Keillor , Karen Morrow ) I'm Henry the 8th ( Maggie Purse ) Don't have any more, Mrs. Moore ( Maggie Purse ) Hold your hand out naughty boy ( Maggie Purse , Tony Barrand ) My old gal ( Maggie Purse , Tony Barrand )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Bird Dog Turkey Wieners Home Haircut Helmet North Dakota Pole Vault Hospitality Industry Phone Washer Powdermilk Biscuits Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery
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Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown, except for Monday night there was lightning struck, a bolt of lightning struck at the Tallerud farm, not down at Darrell and Marilyn's house, the little house, but up at the big house where Darrell's dad and mother live. It was about 6.30. On Monday night, a bolt of lightning. Clouds were kind of dark and swirling around in the sky, but it wasn't really storming that anyone could see. Daryl and his dad were out walking across the cornrows and talking, and suddenly there was a burst of light and a slap and a slam, and then they heard a sizzle like bacon on a stove. And they turned and ran. Daryl ran ahead of his dad up through the yard and up into the house. And there she was in the kitchen. Ruby was on the floor. She was sitting on the floor. And she was looking at the radio, which was melting there on the counter where she was making supper. Daryl said, are you all right? She said, I don't know. She said, can we still go to Seattle? So they helped her up. She was all right, but it had hit very close. It had hit a crabapple tree, a flowering crabapple, about 30 feet away from the kitchen window, and the electricity come in, I guess, on the power line. The tree was half split. The big limb of the tree was split all the way down to the trunk. Probably would never bear apples again, or if it did, who knows what kind. It reminded a lot of people in town, this lightning bolt, of Benny Barnes, who people have not thought of for a long time, but who was struck by lightning himself personally six times in his life. He was a Norwegian bachelor farmer.
He was kind of a heavyset guy and didn't move too fast, I guess, was part of his problem. Six times a man, he was hit by lightning in his lifetime. After the first three, he got so he was kind of nervous, you know, in lightning storms. He'd get in his car and drive towards wherever he'd see clear sky. And the fourth one caught him. It just came out of nowhere. Just one cloud in the sky. Zap, bam. Had scars down his legs, burn marks on him. Head was ringing for, I think, most of his life. Fifth one, I don't know where that one got him, but by the time he'd been hit five times, he kind of stopped running. He figured if it was going to get him, it would get him. The sixth one, I think, got him sitting in an aluminum lawn chair out in the lawn. And after that, he kind of gave up hope. Whenever a storm would come up, Benny would go out and stand out in the middle of a field holding about a 30-foot length of steel pipe straight up in the air. Just stand there and hold it. And it killed him eventually. Not lightning, but he caught cold in the rain and got pneumonia and died. But he was in his early 70s, so he had a normal lifespan, even if he didn't have a normal life. Anyway, this bolt of lightning hit up at the Toleroos, and Darrell was thinking about it heading home.
He kind of wished it had hit his dad. or at least come close enough to his dad to make his dad think that God was talking to him. Because his father has been driving Darrell and Marilyn and Ruby about two-thirds of the way crazy the last few weeks. His father has a flaw in his character that has made Darrell angry most of his life. And it is just this, that his father does not like to ever agree to do something in advance and sign on to a plan. and say, next Thursday we'll do that. I'll be there and I'll do it. It just makes him feel boxed in or trapped or something. And he'll sort of agree to things in advance, but the closer they get, the more he edges away from it. And it just makes people furious in that family. They've been planning this trip to Seattle now since way last before Thanksgiving. Bought the tickets, and she's had the suitcase two-thirds of the way packed for the last two weeks. But the closer they get to it, the old man says, well, I don't know. Well, I don't know. I just might be too busy. I don't know how I can go away, leave the corn like this, go off to Seattle.
And people just want to shoot him. Just want to shoot the old guy. comes up to a few days before they're supposed to take off for Seattle and says, well, you know, he says, the Grand Canyon is a place I've always wanted to see. Ruby sits there at the table with her head in her hands, and that man will say, well, you know, going to Seattle was your idea. It never was my idea. For months she's been planning this. He's been that way all of his life. When those kids were little, he'd say, he'd say, don't count on it. I'm not promising anything, but next week maybe we might go up to your Uncle Carl's and go swimming. And they'd come closer to the day, and they'd come to the day itself, those kids not daring to look forward to it for fear that their father would change his mind. And the day of, he'd say, well, if we get the work done this morning, why, we might go up to Carl's and go swimming. Kids get their suits out, stand by the car, hot summer day. He'd look down at them and say, well, I don't know. I don't know, I really ought to work on that drain pipe, you know, I really shouldn't go.
He'd get in the car, he'd put the key in the ignition. And he'd hesitate. He'd say, well, I don't know. Turn on the car, start her up, head down the driveway, stop at the end of the driveway before pulling onto the gravel road and say, Well, kids all draw breath, and then they go. Even today, he will not tell his grandkids, of course I'll be at your birthday party on Sunday. He won't do it. He'll say, well, we'll see. We'll see how she goes. I might be there. I'll try to be there. Ruby come down to Marilyn and Daryl's house on Monday, and she was just crying because of the way he was backing out of this trip to Seattle. Sat there and talked, and Daryl and Marilyn got angrier and angrier. And Ruby said, well, now you've got to understand, Dad. And Marilyn said, I do not have to understand him. He's crazy.
You don't just have a screw loose, the whole top has come off. She's reading a book called Beyond Niceness, which is aimed at Lutherans. This guy has the idea that Lutherans have eaten too much cream sauce in their lives, and it's kind of clogged up the anger arteries. You need to step out sometimes and be sharp. You can still be a Christian and get angry at people. She said, I do not have to understand him. Time for him to start understanding us. She's always been angry at him, at her father-in-law. And so is Darrell for a long time, because not only will old man Tolerud refuse to commit himself to going to Seattle or going to a grandchild's birthday party more than about 10 minutes in advance, he also refuses to sign any sort of will or any sort of legal agreement that would give Darrell and Marilyn some considerable share of the farm that they have been working on now for the last 20 years. Won't do it.
So that if he died, if he died tomorrow, Daryl and Marilyn, who have been helping him on that farm all these years, would have no more share of it than the other kids. No more share than if Daryl had gone off and sold insurance like his brother Don did. Nothing. It makes Daryl so angry sometimes. He screams at his dad. Not real close to him, but... when he's out in the field on a tractor, you know. Motor's running and he's heading away from the house. Yells at him, why can't you treat me like a son? Once, before he went down to his house, he left a rake on his dad's yard with the tines up, hoping the old man would step on it, conk himself in the head. Once Daryl saw a skunk trotting along the road up by the barn, and he lured that skunk up into the tractor shed with cat food.
He made a little trail of cat food and led that skunk in there and put the cat food in under the Alice Chalmers, hoping that the old man go in, open the door in the morning, start the thing up, and get a snootful. get shot with some skunk juice and people would not be happy to see him for about the next six months. That ought to show him. And then the skunk started following Daryl around because he was the one who was feeding him the tuna salad and so then he gave up on that. He got some satisfaction once When his parents celebrated their 50th anniversary in the Lutheran church basement, and there was a buffet dinner, and he watched his old man loading up on the hot dish and the salads and the rolls, and then walked back to his seat, balancing the paper plate in one hand, holding the coffee cup in another, as the paper plate started to crumple on him. It was one of those thin paper plates for church suppers to... keep you from taking more than your share. It started to crumble, and the old man looking for his chair halfway across the room tried to get this balance, the coffee cup and the plate, and he put his hand under the paper plate, but he forgot that those meatballs that he took had been in a chafing dish with a candle underneath them. They were hot. And he was dancing over towards his chair, and then the gravy melted through the paper plate.
And he sort of did a few steps of the tango to one side, looking for a place to drop his load, and he dropped it down the front of him, the full length. Meatballs and gravy. It was small consolation, but it was some. So it was Tuesday when Darrell decided he'd go up and talk to him and have it out with him once and for all. He wouldn't be put off any longer on this will. He drove up to the house in the pickup on Tuesday right after lunch and rehearsed his speech as he drove up there. I think it's time you start treating me like I was your son. You can't treat us like we're just some kind of employees. I'm your son. And got up there and found they were gone. There was a note on the door. It said, went into St. Cloud for window shades. Fix the basement window. It's broken.
Be back in a couple hours. He ripped the paper off and threw it down. How can he treat me like this? I'm his son. I'm his partner. Why does he keep putting me off like this? And then he thought it suddenly occurred to him. His mother had told him on Monday, she said, if anything happens to us on the trip to Seattle, I want you to look in my dresser drawer. There's a letter there I've been meaning to give you for years. He wasn't their son. He was adopted. It was up in her dresser drawer. That was why his dad treated him like this. Wouldn't sign over part of the farm to him. He was adopted. He'd worked for 20 years for nothing. He went in, he went up the stairs... to look. Walked into his parents' bedroom, the forbidden chamber. Never allowed in there as a kid. He felt nervous even walking in. Thick purple carpet they put in just a couple years ago. walked in, walked over to her dresser, reached for the drawer, heard something move behind him, and he turned. It was the cat on the bed. As he turned, he knocked a bottle and tried to catch it, but it fell and broke in the purple carpet. Perfume. Perfume. The smell rose up from the carpet. He couldn't believe his mother would ever use stuff like this. It smelled like it was made from old fruit salads. It was disgusting. The cat was sitting there against a pillow on the double bed looking at him, looking at him with a moral expression.
The cat seemed to be saying, you should not be in here and you know it. Shame on you. He said, ha! The cat got down slowly from the bed, the old cat, and walked towards the door and looked back over its shoulder and said, I'm going to tell. And left. He opened the drawer and dug down into it, down under the socks and his mother's underwear. And there was a book down there. He looked at it. It was Sexual Aspects of Christian Marriage by the Reverend E.M. Mintner. But he'd seen that when he was 12 years old. It was not a... Very interesting book, even to him at that time. Dug down deeper and there were envelopes, old envelopes, bound up in a rubber band. And he took the band off, trying not to break it, but it was old and dry and it snapped. They were income tax returns. Going back years, his hand trembled as he looked at them. If there was ever a secret in his family that was deeper and darker than sex itself, it was how much money do we earn? Never talked about. Ever, never, ever talked about money. No. They would rather have discussed sexual intercourse at Easter dinner than ever answer that question. How much money do we make?
He opened the envelope and there was a tax return. His father had earned money. $12,326.57 last year. He looked through others. Some years he didn't earn any money farming. Some years he earned less than nothing. He looked through them all, going way back to when he was a little boy. see how much money they had, and it never was much. And it brought back memories of his mother, how she had canned tomatoes all those years, so many quarts of tomatoes, how she had darned socks and patched their clothes and tried to make the money last, and how when she gave the kids their allowance at the end of a week, she counted the coins out twice to make sure she wasn't overpaying them. never had enough money he felt sad looking at these tax returns thinking about his father I don't want to be like that he said I was brought up to be a stoic he thought and to endure pain and adversity and hardship but I'm lucky lucky I'm in love with my wife. I have wonderful children. I'm a happy man. What do you do if you were brought up to be a stoic? But life is not painful. It's wonderful. What do you do then? I'm not going to fight over this, he thought. I'm not going to fight over this. I'm a lucky man. I'm a lucky man. The cat brushed against his leg. He felt sorry for having kicked it out. He scratched its head and then noticed that its head didn't feel like it ought to and looked down and saw the white stripe. The skunk edged away from him. It smelled the perfume that had spilled on the rug, and it raised its tail, sensing an adversary there in the carpet. But he said, easy, easy. It's all right.
And he opened a window so the skunk could get out by a chair and out the window and he could run along the roof and he'd find a tree and go down. And he was just going to ease him out, ease him out. When he heard the footsteps on the stairs and he turned and he said, no, Buster, no. No. And the dog came into the room, barking. And the skunk turned, and he raised his tail, and Daryl went out the door, but not nearly soon enough. had to go down and get the shotgun. And he aimed the shotgun right down about the middle of the bed, and he shot him through the mattress. The feathers came up, skunk dropped down dead, got him up on his shovel, took him out and buried him, took off all of his own clothes and buried them. And that was when the folks came up the driveway.
They didn't get too close. They could sort of tell what the story was. He had to call to them a few yards away. Skunk got up in your bedroom, he said. Ah. Where is he now, his dad said. Buried him. Ah. They left for Seattle. That afternoon... They didn't take much with them by way of clothes or anything. We can get it on the way, they said. They said, you just go in and get our tickets for us, if you'd be so kind, and we'll see you in a few weeks. Life is good. Life is good. I'm sure he still believes that. Life is better if you don't get too close to Darrell, but life is good. those of you who were brought up to be Stoics and to endure hardship, don't discard the habit too quickly. It might come in handy someday. That's the news from Lake Wolbegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Vaudeville and band songs from the old World Theater. 100th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty
1986.06.22 Star Tribune / rebroadcast on July 2, 1988
Archival contributors: Frank Berto