Scott Alarik, Butch Thompson Trio, Hot Rize. JP Newsome's Folk Ensemble, JP Nystrom's Swedish Lapland Band, Garrison Keillor, Memphis Slim,
Sleeper (Butch Thompson Trio ) Biscuit song (Butch Thompson Trio ) Jazz-em blues (Butch Thompson Trio ) Somebody stole my gal (Butch Thompson Trio ) Boogin and bluesin (Memphis Slim ) Ninety-Nine Years and One Dark Day (Hot Rize ) Can't You Hear Jerusalem Moan (Hot Rize ) Swedish polka (JP Newsome's Folk Ensemble ) Chicago (JP Newsome's Folk Ensemble ) Finnish polka (JP Newsome's Folk Ensemble ) Grandmother's cat ( Garrison Keillor ) Relationships ( Garrison Keillor ) Minnesota's got to me ( Scott Alarik ) First time ( Scott Alarik )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Chatterbox Cafe Father Emil Glen Crest Chewing Gum Krebsbach, Becky Lifeline Toupee Powdermilk Biscuits Sidetrack Tap St. Paul Dog Rentals Tollefsen, Johnny
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Well, it's been a quiet week in my hometown, Lake walk gone, Minnesota. It's been mostly quiet, and it was a little bit exciting on Tuesday, though, it was the first day of women's aerobic dance class at Our Lady of Perpetual responsibility church down in the basement. It was Becky Krebs box idea. She's home for the summer from college, and she had just les. Lost her job last week at scogland Five and Dime. Miss scoglin said she was smarting off all the time.
Becky told her mom she's just offering suggestions. But anyway, she got fired and left her high and dry. She needs a couple 100 more bucks so she can go back to college in the Fall study and get the sort of job where, if you make suggestions, they have to listen to, you know. So she was doing her exercises last week, and she just suddenly thought, she thought that's it. She talked to sister Irvin up at the church last Sunday. Little bulletin, tiny notice appeared in the church bulletin. Our lady said, get slim with Becky Krebs Bucha the aerobic dance way. It's fun.
And so there on Tuesday afternoon, about 15 women showed up, some of them in their gym suits, but most of them their gym suits didn't fit anymore, so they wore pant suits instead. About 12 different shades of pastel there in the basement, all working out is at one o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, chosen because Father, Emo usually takes his nap then and he wasn't aware of what was going on. I say, usually takes his nap. He did not get to sleep on Tuesday because he heard music coming from the church that he didn't think sounded like music usually comes from a church.
So he walked across from the rectory and walked in the front of the church and down the stairs, and the music got louder and louder till he almost didn't want to know what it was. Thought maybe the archbishop had sold off some of the parishes, multi parish deal with a national nightclub chain because the music that came bouncing up from the basement was going Chico, chico. And there was a guy's voice singing, baby, I need you, Father. Email. Never heard that in that area before he poked his head around the corner into the dining room and jerked it back so fast almost sprained his neck.
There were 15 women with their backs to him, bulky, ladies jumping up and down, waving their arms and shaking themselves. I house. He went back out the way he'd come in, walked across the yard, over towards the nunnery, calling sister harvon. She came out, she said, now. She said, Don't you upset yourself. She sat him down. She fussed over him. She fixed him a little pot of tea. He said, What? Don't even tell me? He said, I don't even want to know. He said, But in clothes so tight? She said, Well, that's why they have to exercise. He said, couldn't they get some different kind of music, at least so they did Thursday for the second session. Ladies were working out. There were 20 of them now, most of them in pant suits, working out to an album of Sister beneatha Johnson in the Second Coming gospel quartet, which sister Irvin had bought through the mail, thinking that sister beneath was maybe of a different order, but she's of an entirely different order. Works from the same text, you know, but she gets down on it differently.
I so there were 20 women jumping up and down and shaking themselves to the promise of redemption. Never thought I'd see that link WOBEGON, but as Becky said, it's fun. She said, I can see how it might be. There's another college student home for the summer. Though he hadn't been doing much dancing lately. That's the toll of some boy. I think we mentioned him before. Johnny Tollefson just finished up his first year at St Cloud State University. Did well, got a poem published in the literary magazine cumulus, and he's back home and sort of spent the summer resting up from the exertion of it.
He's a writer, and it's not easy being a writer living in a house with people who do not share your self. Sensibility, your keen sense of the beauty and tragedy and grandeur of life. Don't you know it's hard to be a writer living in a house with your parents and to try and write about the beauty and the grandeur and the tragedy and still have to keep your room neat and come to meals on time, and sit up there in your room trying to struggle with the inexpressible beauty in Granger and voice come drifting up the stairs telling you to go out and mow the lawn because the grass is getting too long.
Well, of course, it's getting long. That's part of the beauty and the grandeur of life. Let it get long, but they don't understand that there. They don't understand his work either, as he calls the stuff that he's written his work. The poem he had published in cumulus was a poem called Death dad, and somehow they got their hands on a copy of it. His mother did anyway, called him a few days later, back in April, she said, how can you write like this? Johnny, we didn't bring you up like this. It's so cynical. He said, it's only a poem mother. She said, your father is just heartbroken. He tried to explain that the dad in the title was only symbolic, was only a metaphor, but he had put that dad in the same blue bathrobe with the white piping that his dad wears. His mother said, You explain it to your father when you get home.
Well, he'd been reading Whitman Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and under the influence of Whitman Tollefson, boy has found that he can fill whole legal pads with writing. Getting up early in the morning, just rolls off him, gets up in the morning, has a cup of coffee, reads some Whitman to sort of prime the pump, and writes until he just overwhelmed by what he's done. Lot of writers quit, you know, they quit writing after a few hours of staring at a blank piece of paper, but the toll of some boy only quits when he's overwhelmed by how much he's put down and how much there is left, and he just starts to tremble and he has to go out and hold corn to settle himself down. That's exciting being a writer that age, he's also learned from Whitman that he doesn't have all the experiences he probably should have in order to be a writer. His only experience is growing up in Lake Wobegon. That's of no use to him, so he made a list the other day of the life experiences he ought to have. I won't tell you what was number one, but number two was poverty, and number three was experiencing true despair.
And that was why he went down to the side track tap on Wednesday. No, it's not a great place for despair, but it's convenient. And his mother had always warned him against going in there, which, of course, was the sort of recommendation. Ever since he was a little kid. She told him that it was an evil place. The side tracked tap, and she quoted Scripture, that verse that says Men love darkness rather than light, because their works are evil.
They could say it's dim in there, all right. But he'd gone in once when he was 12 years old to get a glass of water, and while he gave it to him, his mother found out about it. She decided maybe scripture wasn't quite enough. She said, You go in and drink out of a glass in the side track tap. You're asking for diseases. I'd rather not even talk about it's a filthy place. She said, Well, he could see that when he was a kid, kids have a very acute sense of smell, you know, almost like animals. And when he'd walk by the side. Track, even when the door was closed, that aroma of stale beer and cigarette smoke that emanates from it almost sickened him when he was a kid, and one day, the door opened and it almost bowled him over, the smell of it and out. Arnie Bjornson staggered out of the side track that day, and the boy was frightened by how terrible he looked and how bad he smelled. He smelled like
Billy toll road, who was a kid in seventh grade then, who had a bet going with a friend of his, which of them could go the longer without ever taking their gym clothes home to be washed. The bet went on into eighth grade. Billy was the winner. Arnie smelled a lot like that. I remember when I was 12 years old, I used to think of the patrons of the side track as crude and filthy and degenerate and old too, and no, they're mostly my age. Anyway, went in there on Wednesday. He took his legal pad with him to record impressions. You see, it's a writer. Walked in through the front door. Mr. Bergy turned and said, well, Johnny said, what you doing there? Mr. Bergy always sits on that stool by the door. He's kind of the greeter. I said, Let me buy you a beer, Johnny.
He said, no better yet. He said, I get you a beer and a bump. He said, Wally here, bring, bring my friend here, a beer and a bump here. Well, Johnny was kind of thinking about having a vodka sour, but he was going to have what the other guy said. So Wally brought him down shot glass, no ice, whiskey, beer behind it. Johnny sat down on the stool. He picked up the shot glass, and he threw it back part way anyway, till he coughed whiskey. Didn't know which way to go, but he got it down, and he started to feel it burn back there, and tears came to his eyes. He turned away so Mr. Bergy wouldn't see him.
Then he reached for the beer. Had some of that never liked beer tasted like he was drinking something that died a long time ago, but he drank that Mr. Bergy said, here, bring me. Bring my friend here, another one there, another beer in the bump. I brought him another one. He decided he didn't want to finish it. Otherwise it wouldn't have been any use bring that legal pad down with him to record impressions.
Could get the same impressions at home to hitting yourself over the head with him. He said, Well, he said, I gotta go, John. He said he'd been there about 15 minutes, not much of an experience. He headed for the front door, and he opened it, and the hard sunlight hit him in the eyes blinded him so he didn't see that little step that's there that's so easy to overlook. And also, you know, the stools in the side track, they tend to cut off the circulation in your legs, so your legs go to sleep. And the boy staggered forward and he fell forward towards the gutter. And as he fell, he could see in one clear instant, his Aunt Flo and Uncle bud standing right there, about five feet away.
He tried to stand up as he was falling, but it just meant that he fell headlong down into the pavement like a fell like a tree, and then he got up too soon. So the blood all drained out of his head, and he was woozy, and he staggered up. They were standing there in their best clothes, and they had their Bibles in their hands. They were on their way to Wednesday night prayer meeting and Bible reading, and they stood and they looked at him and tried to think of something to say. I. So many things a person could say in a situation like that. She said, Oh, Johnny. Oh, Johnny. He said, I tripped and fell. She said, You sure did, Johnny. She said, your mother. Think of your poor mother how she's suffering. Bud said, why don't you come with us to church? Johnny said, I don't feel very well uncle bud. Uncle bud, could see it didn't look kind of white around the gills. Thought, man, well maybe it's not a good idea to come to church tonight. Well, come next Sunday, he said.
And they walked off. Flo turned around. She said, You all right now? He said, Yeah. And he was all right. He walked home, and he started to think, this might make a good story. He changed some of the details. You know, he would have gone into the bar to get drunk, to erase a deep personal sorrow the character in his story would a deep sorrow in his life, a wound, a wound of love, be a good title for it. A wound of love be the title of this story, and he come out the front door, and two Lutherans be standing there, Fran and Bob, and they would get on him real hard, and the story would go on to show their hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the entire town.
Seemed like a good idea. Well, he thought about it all the way home, and then he went to bed instead, which probably was a better idea. Woke up the next morning, got himself a cup of coffee, sat down at his desk, ripped off the first two pages of the legal pad, which were all dirty and scratched. There was a clean page, beautiful thing, lovely thing, clean piece of paper. He took his pencil and he wrote the sun at the top, T, H, E, S, O, N, capital letters, all underlined and leaned down until his face just about a foot from the paper and holding the pencil pinched hard in his right hand, chewing on his tongue, which was sticking out the corner of his mouth.
He sat and he wrote and he wrote all morning. That's the news from Lake Wobegon in Minnesota, where the woman is strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
Radio programs for shy people sponsored by Powdermilk. How to start a national craze. Buy Carl W. Pearce's book, "Gators."
1987-07-25 1990-07-21 1990-08-21
Des Moines Register Jul 31 1983
rebroadcast on July 25, 1987 and July 21, 1990.
Archival contributors: Frank Berto