Butch Thompson Trio, Guy Van Duser, Elizabeth Foss, Wilbur Foss, John Angus Foster, Garrison Keillor, Leroy Larson, Red Maddock, Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble, Norma Ann Foss, Peter Ostroushko. Dick Reese, Saturday Night Sidetrack Tap Band, Bill Staines, Butch Thompson, Wilbur Foss Ensemble,
I'm sorry I made you cry (Butch Thompson Trio ) Sleepy time down south (Butch Thompson Trio , Red Maddock ) Old Time Polka ( Leroy Larson , Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble ) Fiddle Waltz (Saturday Night Sidetrack Tap Band , Wilbur Foss ) Trio's Choice - Jitterbug (Butch Thompson Trio ) I'll Be All Smiles Tonight (Wilbur Foss Ensemble ) Just A Closer Walk With Thee (Wilbur Foss Ensemble , Elizabeth Foss ) Columbus Stockade Blues (Wilbur Foss Ensemble , Norma Ann Foss ) Tidiness Poem ( Garrison Keillor ) How long blues ( Butch Thompson ) St. Paul Waltz ( Leroy Larson , Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble ) Norwegian Polka ( Leroy Larson , Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble ) Walker Street ( Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson , Dick Reese , John Angus Foster ) Jolly Seven ( Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson Trio , Dick Reese , John Angus Foster ) Kiss Me Waltz ( Peter Ostroushko , Dick Reese ) Ta Ra Ra Boom De Aia! ( Butch Thompson ) Midnight in Moscow ( Leroy Larson , Butch Thompson ) Satan's Jeweled Crown ( Peter Ostroushko , Garrison Keillor ) I Saw the Light (Elizabeth Foss , Norma Ann Foss , Wilbur Foss ) Hiro Gay Schottische ( Wilbur Foss , Wilbur Foss Ensemble ) Helsa Demder Hemma ( Leroy Larson , Minnesota Scandinavian Ensemble ) Red Wing ( Peter Ostroushko )
Gruenwalt Beer (Mentholated beer that is good for your breath.) Powdermilk Biscuits (Cousin Curtis who broke a dish and left Lake Wobegon and never came back.) Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery (Home of Ralph's special homemade sausages including Swedish, Italian and one with Ralph's secret spices. A meal in every bite! Ralph also now added orange paint added to the other 6 he stocks including yellow, forest green, black, gunmetal gray, blue and Corinthian white.) Skoglund's Five and Dime (Union Suit Special Sale) Steele County Collesium (Sunday Night Old Time Punk Music! )
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Well, it has been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, Big Snow week before this last one, and then the wind blew for days, so that most of the people in town and everybody out in the country was pretty much snow bound for most of this last week. People walked where they had to go. Those who had to go someplace. The children walked to school. Of course, they always do. People walk to work, the ones who went and people walked to church. This last Sunday, for his parishioners who live out in the country and couldn't come in. Father, Emo offered confession over the phone a week ago, some of them were a little surprised by that he called them. They didn't. They didn't call him.
Of course, most of them, you know, having been snow bound for that long, really hadn't had the opportunity to do much of anything worth mentioning. But he called up Mr. Myers, and Mr. Myers said, Yes, father. He said, I do have something I'd like to get off my conscience. But he says, he says, Father, I don't want anybody else to hear this. Well, Father, Emil knew what he was talking about.
Father. Emsaid, Elizabeth, Elizabeth, if you're listening in, and I know you are now, is it a time to hang up? Well, there wasn't any sound. He said, Elizabeth, Eavesdropping is one thing but violating the privacy of the confessional is a mortal sin that could drop your soul into eternal damnation like a rock in A pond. Well, Elizabeth is a Lutheran telephone operator.
If she didn't necessarily hold with that interpretation, besides which she has heard more confessions than father emo ever will, and she figured that one more wouldn't make any difference. Well, Father Emil thought he heard a click. So he told Mr. Myers to go on. And Mr. Myers says, Well, Father, he says, I woke up here now this last Wednesday morning, and I had a big breakfast and I got my coat on, and for some reason, I decided to go out and try and start the Chevy.
I don't know why I did it, because I didn't have any place to go. But I went out, and I went out to start her and she wouldn't even turn over. So I went and I got a little pie pan full of hot coals, and I put them in there under the motor block, and then I tried it again, but there wasn't a sound. I took the battery out, however, took it into the house, put it on the charger for a while, took it back out, put it in she still wouldn't start. So I got the tractor out of the barn, and I backed it up to the garage door. I put the jumper cables from the battery onto the Chevy, and then she did turn over. So I took the tractor and put that back in the barn, and I got back in behind the wheel of the Chevy, and I went to go out of the garage, but there was some ice on the floor of the garage from the water that came out of the faucet that had been left open after I had drained the pipes and turned off the valve inside in the basement. But you see, I had turned that valve on when I was putting in the new hot water heater, so water came out on the floor. There was ice there, and when I tried to start the Chevy why she spun on the ice, I gunned it a little bit, and she dug herself right in. I couldn't even rock it well. About this time I was getting a little steamed,
I took the jack out of the trunk, I lifted up her rear end, and I shoved a big piece of plywood in there, under the rear wheels, and I dropped her down. By this time, Mamie had come out to see what it was I was yelling about, and I yelled at her, I said, get in there and and. And gun it, and I'll get back here and push and we'll get this blankety blank car to each out of this blank garage. Well, she got in there and she revved it up so loud she couldn't hear me say it, not so much.
She dropped a clutch on her the car hit the side of the door frame. She took out the corner post. The roof sagged about two feet. The piece of plywood shot out the back, caught me in the ankles. I dropped down on the floor, and while I was laying there, I heard her put the car into reverse, and that was when I used the Lord's name in vain. Well, Father Emil says, What did you say? Well, Mr. Myers told him it wasn't just one thing. It was kind of a long string of things, kind of a long rope where a lot of things nodded in there. The last thing you'd ever imagine Mr. Myers would ever say, but I guess it Still waters run deep.
He was forgiven for it, and Father emo told him to say, 10 our fathers and 10 Hail Marys, and to spend one day after that, in silent contemplation, Father Emil also told him put a little sand on the ice in the garage. Well, the problem was trying to go when he didn't have any place to go to and no reason to go. I mean, his driveway was all drifted in. There wasn't any place he could take that Chevy. But he was like a lot of men in town, when they woke up and looked out and saw that they were snowed in, they just got into a fit, and they went out try and start their cars, even though there was no place to take them, went out shovel their driveways, even though the wind was blowing the snow right back into it. And they'd walk down to the chatterbox cafe, there'd be 2030, men talking about how their car had started, how quickly it had started, how it didn't start, what they might do to get it started.
They had no place to go, but they had to get started. They were like birds, you know, who fly into the house and then try so hard to get out to beat their wings against the glass. There was no place to go. There was one emergency, however, and as usual, it happened during the thick of the storm, and it happened in the middle of the night. Mrs. Tolute, Alice tolarude woke up about two three in the morning with a sharp pain in her side, and nothing she could do made it feel any better. She started to think appendicitis, and then thinking about appendicitis made her think maybe she's going to have a baby.
Now she knew that she wasn't going to have a baby, and yet, she had heard a lot of stories about other women who had known they were not going to have babies, but who had pains in their side and went down and had babies, and it didn't feel exactly like she was going to have a baby. But you know, you wake up in the middle of the night with a pain, and you're half asleep and you're isolated out there in the country, and your imagination goes to work. So she woke up Duane. Well, when Duane heard baby, I'll tell you, he hit the floor running.
He called up bud on the phone, hollered at him to get out there with a plow. Duane got his clothes on, went out to the garage, went out to start the car. About half an hour later, Bud come tearing into the yard out of a blinding Blizzard, and Duane was out there warming up the car, and somewhere about 40 miles away, some poor doctor's wife was making coffee. And all during that half hour, the pain in her side had gotten better and better, until finally it was gone.
She didn't know how to break the news to Duane, but she did. He was relieved, but he didn't know how to tell bud. But as it turned out, Bud was just glad to get in there. He didn't care if he'd come for nothing, and the doctor was calm about it. When they called him back, he said it had happened before, not to worry about it. Eventually, they all got calm down. Bud spent the night on their couch. Dwayne and Alice turned in, and the upshot of the story was that they decided maybe they would like to have a baby.
And that's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.
Persuasians reschedueled due to winter storm. The News of Marshall Dodge death at 45 years of age. Famous for his Bert & I Maine dialect stories. Died in a bike accident. How much he loved to watch all the performers in any show he was in.
1982.01.30 Berkshire Eagle / 1982.01.29 Lexington Herald / Audio of the News available as a digital download.
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl