[undocumented]
Inqvuist. Bertha
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon this last week, for the most part, except for the fire siren going off a couple of times here on Tuesday and Wednesday, both times for persons who were lost, or it was thought they were, until the siren went off and then both of them, each of them, come running to see what was the problem. So the searchers had nothing to do. The search was called off before they got there. Nothing to do but go sit, drink coffee for an hour in a chatterbox cafe and talk about some of the memorable searches of the past and their favorite disasters and tragedies. Including the one that comes to mind was the manhunt for Bertha Inkvest and her kidnapper, who as it turned out were getting married and were eloping, but they didn't know that. People in town didn't and made a fuss about it because she was the most beautiful woman ever to come out of Lake Wobegon in a couple of decades. And by the time she and her new husband arrived back in town a couple of hours, they found that every man in town who owned a shotgun or could get his hands on one had come to the town hall and they were swarming there and getting worked up into a froth and a frenzy. It was lucky they arrived when they did, Bertha and her husband. Men might have gone off half-cocked and shot each other, wiped out half the town. But even so, they hauled this young man out of the car and they tied him up and bound him and gagged him and were starting to assign guard duty before Bertha could explain what happened, that they had gotten married. And even so, they didn't really believe her. He didn't look like a husband lying there in the dirt all trussed up like a steer and with a wad of cotton in his mouth. But they let him go. Though some people still have questions about that marriage, feeling that maybe she was hypnotized by him or was drugged. And ever so often you'll hear somebody say, I was talking to Bertha today and I thought she was trying to tell me something. Well, probably she was, but politeness got the best of her. One of these boys who got lost here this last week, the shoemaker boy, has now been lost three times in the last year. And it just seems a plain fact to everybody that he's a perfectly normal boy with a couple of very jumpy parents. Myrtle has always been high strung. And it takes practically nothing to set her off and to heist her up out of her chair and she'll yell, Frank! And then that makes Frank jump. And he hollers and that makes Myrtle more nervous and she gets going. And pretty soon they're both of them off on a dead run without any idea of which direction or how far or what to look for when they get there. In a real crisis, they're as steady as a rock. But in a false alarm, they become crazed. Because of course with a false alarm, you've got nothing to go on. You don't know how bad it might be. You don't know where they might be or where to start looking or what you can do. You're helpless. It's a trait common to parents, though not to that degree, in Lake Wobegon. And I just wonder if it may not be one reason why of the 17 June graduates at Lake Wobegon High School, only five of them are left in town. It must be hard to stay in a place where people are so worked up and concerned and worried about you. Especially if some of the things they are worried about are things that you are earnestly hoping for. So they have pretty much taken off the class of 1980. As I say, five of them left, two of them. Well, let me see now. That would leave 12. Twelve of them, I think most all of them come down here to the Twin Cities. And there are two who are definitely going to college and a couple who are going to work for a couple years and thensee. And the rest of them have seen already and are going to go work, period. I worry about them, though there's nothing I can do about it. They're not likely to turn up at this show. Too much like home in a lot of ways. They're off over in Minneapolis and I think about them and hope that they've found something. I'd rather not know just what they found, but I hope it's something. Probably some of them have found that what we refer to as the minimum wage isn't necessarily. And that a diploma from Lake Wobegon High School does not open the doors that you thought it would when you were listening to the principal talk at commencement. Spend three years conjugating Latin verbs and declining nouns under Miss Clater in the Latin class. Come down here and conjugate cars into a parking lot and work as a waitress and decline propositions. I imagine they have found that they can stay out as late as they want to and nobody will give them any trouble. I imagine some of them have found they can get as drunk as they like and throw the dirty socks onto the bed and let the burger cartons pile up on the kitchen counter and nobody will tell them different. Nobody will make them go to work in the morning and nobody will make them come to supper at night, which if they haven't gone to work in the morning, there may not be any of anyway. I worry about them though. As we come here towards the end of July, I imagine that the first hard wave of homesickness is starting to strike them as they realize that this adventure is not just for a summer, that nobody has any plans for them in the fall. This is it now. There's nobody as they walk around town here looking up at these tall buildings. There's nobody up there on the 30th floor who is thinking, well now, Judy's doing real good at that waitress job but you know it really is below her ability. We ought to find her something in management. Nobody's thinking that. She's on her own. I'd like to do a song for them, a song that is sung every summer in August at the picnic for Lake Wobegon residents who now live in the Twin Cities. The picnic of the exiles, which is held out at Lake Phelan here on a Sunday in August. It's called the Song of the Exiles. What key do I do this in, Butch? Skies were blue, my eyes were too when I lived in Lake Wobegon long ago and now I know joy was mine in my prairie home. Wheat fields in the month of May, wheat beside the long driveway. Now I buy a box of biscuits to remind me of my Wobegon days. Give me the chorus here, would you? Wobegon, I remember oh so well how peacefully among the woods and fields you lie. My Wobegon, I close my eyes and I can see you just as clearly as in days gone by. Oh little town, I love the sound of water sprinklers in the evening. The siren tuned at 12 o'clock noon or 12.04 if Bud is late. And when you walk down Oak and Main, everybody knows your name. They ask you how you are, you say not bad. All right, I guess aboutthe same. Wobegon, I remember oh so well how peacefully among the woods and fields you lie. Peacefully among the woods and fields you lie. My war will be gone. I close my eyes and I can see you just as clearly as in days gone by. Then one fall I climbed the wall. Life was calling me to wander. The future knocks and I pack a box and mother washed and darned my socks. Then she started in to cry. It's only for a year, says I. Ain't been back but twice since 58. I wish I knew the reason why. War be gone. I remember oh so well how peacefully among the woods and fields you lie. Don't worry about tempo now. My war will be gone. I close my eyes and I can see you just as clearly as in days gone by. Thank you.
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Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl