Carrie and Sam Mazzetta, Beth Adler Woerhle. Zlatitamburashi Balkan Dance Band,
[undocumented]
Freeport Flyers Mist County Fair Whippets
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It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. I imagine it's quiet night there tonight, people sitting out on their front porches, all up and down the street there, those little old houses and old porches screened in, porches with those dark, black screens never could see in those old screens, you could see out, but you can't see in from the street.
Used to walk down the street about this time of day and on into the evening, just walking around town, listening to people talking from their houses, hear murmurs of voices from inside the porch, about 25 feet from the sidewalk, tinkle of ice cubes in the picture is a poured nectar for each Other, people sitting in there on a summer night talking. Every so often you'd hear a loud voice that you could make out the words walking down the street and hear somebody say, Oh, he was awful mean to her. Oh, he was a rascal.
And you kind of stop and pause and wish that she'd say what he did to her that made him such a rascal. But all the best parts were whispered. Oh, she told him, if he so much as ever looked at her again, she was a gunna. Well, going to what I never did find out what she was going to do to him. I don't know why you couldn't see in I guess partly it was the ivy that was growing up on those screens. But it was something about the screens too. Couldn't see the people back in there. Just hear their voices.
I sort of thought of those little houses as little radios as I walked along, and I wished I could sit there on the walk and just enjoy the whole show. And also wish that I had a volume knob so that I could turn it up just a little bit walk through town get free entertainment, just listening to people live out their lives. Sometimes it'd be a little music come from a house piano student practicing in there.
I remember a tune I used to hear on summer nights that went, la, da, da, do, do, do, la, da, da, da. Then he usually stopped there, and then he'd go back from start again, from the beginning. Play it over and over again. I never knew if that was to a wild rose by Edward McDowell, or memories of you by Eubie Blake.
I saw it listed on piano recital programs as to a wild rose, but they never played it exactly like that or exactly the same way twice, but it was a lovely tune. You'd walk down Elm Street, and this piano tune would follow you, and it would sort of fade as you got farther away, and then you'd come to the next episode in the next house, and you'd hear a voice from up and upstairs bedroom, somebody said, Mother, Mother, I can't find it.
She'd shout out from the kitchen, yes, you can find it, just look for it. I love that line. You can find it. Just look for it. No, I can't it's not up here, not here. Well, find something else, then find something else to wear. Oh, Mother, I don't want to go to her dumb party anyway. Well, you're gonna go, so find something. I can't find anything, well, look for it. That'd go on for a while.
You'd walk a little farther along and hear some more here. Or some sort of scuffling noise from inside a house and somebody say, I can't stand it. I can't stand it anymore. You never loved me. You never loved me. I'd stop. I'd say, Yes, go on. What? What, what? Can't you stand but then they were quiet. All of a sudden, they got real quiet. I guess if somebody yelled out, I can't stand it anymore in your house, you might get real quiet too. Then I walk a little farther down.
Lord, I love to eavesdrop on people. Thing I most wanted was to be invisible so I wouldn't even exist, so I could just walk right into those front porches and just catch the whole show. I still enjoy that my favorite restaurants are the ones in which the tables are all crowded in close together. So you sit down at your table, and your back is part of somebody else's table, and there's six people sitting there behind you, and you can hear every word they say, and they seem to be some kind of a family, but you're not sure, and you try and figure out the relationships without looking at them.
Who's the mom and the dad, and which ones are the kids and which ones are the in laws listen as they talk to each other. That's that's radio entertainment. That's radio, dinner theater. I don't apologize for eavesdropping on people when eavesdrop up in Lake Wobegon or, I think any other place, you find out a lot about people when they don't know that you're listening, and you find out that a lot of things we consider odd in people are not that there's no such thing as normal, that we're all odd in our own strange ways, we're all odd.
It's reassuring to know that, especially if you are the sort of odd person who likes to go around listening to people, you also find out in Lake Wobegon that the women are strong the men, I think, though I couldn't see him in there, sounded good looking, and the children, for sure, the children are all above average. That's the news from Lake Wobegon.
Orlando Sentinel Aug 9 1981
1981.08.15 Wisconsin State JOurnal
Archival contributors: Frank Berto