Mollie Atwood, Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Michael Doucet, Garrison Keillor, Mark and Ann Savoy, George Mushamp, Ostroushko All Star Minnesota Irish Band. Peter Ostroushko, Butch Thompson,
Cajun Waltz (Mark and Ann Savoy , Michael Doucet ) Cajun Jig (Mark and Ann Savoy , Michael Doucet ) It's You (Butch Thompson Trio ) Irish jig medley (Ostroushko All Star Minnesota Irish Band ) McIntyre's Horn Pipe (Ostroushko All Star Minnesota Irish Band ) Only A Look (clarinet) ( Butch Thompson ) God will take care of you (clarinet) ( Butch Thompson ) London ( Greg Brown ) Cajun Evangelist Special (Mark and Ann Savoy , Michael Doucet , Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson Trio ) Walk Across Texas ( Greg Brown ) Bessie Jones Instrumental (Butch Thompson Trio , Peter Ostroushko ) Things are Coming My Way ( Garrison Keillor ) Ostroushko Original Compositions (Ostroushko All Star Minnesota Irish Band ) Socks ( Butch Thompson ) Dept. of Folk Song: Just Like My Old Man, Honest Man, The Thin Man, I Had A Hat, Pine Trees - Pine Trees ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson Trio ) Wood Star (Mark and Ann Savoy , Michael Doucet ) Zydeco Chair (Mark and Ann Savoy , Michael Doucet )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Presentation of a Fable About Imaginary Animals. Molly Atwood and George Muschamp ) Bertha's Kitty Boutique (30-day Guaranteed Cat Program) Bigger Hammer Hardware (The Talking Toolbox) Lake Wobegon Merchants (Evelyn says of some of her customers: "Too soon old and too late shmart'!) Pearl, A Radio Show (The story of Pearl who had an electrician look at a problem in her house by the time he got there it was okay but he still had to charge her an hour for the house call so she asked him to sit down and talk to her for a while to make it worth while.) Powdermilk Biscuits (Warning about taking the Air Conditioners out of the windows.)
This transcription may have been auto-created from the audio. Can you help improve the text? Email us!
Well, it's been a quiet week in Lake Wobagon, Minnesota, my hometown. I guess I have not been up there this week, but I do have my sources, you know, and I hear things. Yesterday was the blessing of the animals at the feast day of St. Francis observed at our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Church. And like Wobagon, and though I was not there, I heard that there was a good turnout some horses, quite a few cows, a number of pigs, some sheep chickens, other birds, even a few fish, a lot of dogs, some with people, others kind of there on their own, freelancing, and a cat or two and gerbils, and whatnot, all out there on the lawn in front of our Lady, Most of them were on leashes or ropes or chains with human beings holding on to the other end, of course, imagining that they were in charge, but not really. I guess that's one of the messages of the feast day of St. Francis. It's a day that, too, a lot of the Protestant folks in Lake Wobagon is one more of those ridiculous extravaganzas, one of those carnivals that they associate with Catholics. But the Protestant folks who think that have never been close enough to see it, you see, and know what is going on. That is an opinion that they have reached at some distance from the ceremony, probably about the length of a football field, or the distance from here to the back wall of the theater, which is quite a distance at which to make up your minds about somebody. I don't think I would sit on judgment on any of you in the back row at this far remove. But the Protestants made up their minds about that a long time ago at a distance, because, of course, they wouldn't want to get close enough to hear what was going on for fear that those of us here might think that they were part of them, you see, which is an old problem in the field of scholarship and journalism, how to get close enough to something to know what is going on without your people thinking that you've gone over to the other side and converted. So for the benefit of those people who have never attended the blessing of the animals, and only seen it at a distance, I will tell you what the blessing is and satisfy your curiosity. And the blessing is O God, by whom, by whose word all things are made holy, bless these animals which you have created and grant that whoever, giving thanks to you, who uses them in accordance with your will, may receive by faith health of body and of soul. Amen. That's all it is. You can imagine, though, that listening to this blessing while keeping control of an animal would make you think differently about them, maybe in some small way, just a blessing, very short, and that is pretty much the whole ceremony right there. It was amazing things that I was brought up to think about Catholics by looking at them at a far remove and imagining all sorts of things and believing everything that I was ever told. I was told more than once as a child that Catholics came around and stole Protestant pets and shipped them to the overseas missions where they were traded to the natives in exchange for converts. Doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about it, does it? Why pets? Why would they take pets? Why not cash? You know, just steal cash and make a cash purchase of converts, but no, it was pets. Shiploads of cats leaving America going overseas. And I imagine there are still some of my old friends in Lake Wobegon who may believe that. And when a cat or dog runs off, they think, yep, they got them again. They got them. Boy, they'll take them when you're not watching. They can when you're not watching. You may wonder how I knew what the blessing of the animals was. Well, I called up and I got it over the phone. There's one way of finding out things that you don't dare stand close enough to get yourself. They ought to have a blessing of the telephone someday, you know. Without it, some people would be absolutely in the dark and not know a lot of things you would rather they knew the truth about than all of the things that people can imagine when they don't think that anybody's looking. Telephone, a great, a great invention. There were deer around town. They did not attend that ceremony, but they came in pretty close. Basically as it gets on towards deer hunting season, the deer stay at some remove about the length of a football field from people, but there were a couple of them seen in town this last week. And out at the Tala root farm, Darrell was out cleaning out the corn crib when he heard steps right behind him and he thought it was his boy, Eric, and he said, well, don't just stand there. Give me a hand or something. And turned around, there was a deer. Who came right up to him and started pushing him around with its head and heart pushing and he had to hold on to the antlers and try and force it down and kind of dance around a little bit because those things are sharp, you know. And yelled for help and Eric came running and he grabbed hold of this deer and he yelled for his dad and the old man came out and finally, when the old man came out they managed to hold it until the deer decided to go back and they let him do it. But it was frightening to think of deer just coming out of the woods and pushing you around. You live in the country, you'd rather not think about that possibility, wouldn't you? Or the possibility of going into woods and maybe whole crowds, gangs of deer. Just come up to you and start shoving you around. Send, get out of here. Come on, get out of here. You don't belong in here. What are you doing in here? And you'd say, oh, I'm just deer hunting and maybe. It was a frightening thing for a deer to come in like that, not that they were talking about that a whole lot in town they were talking about. Oh, the election, I guess, down at the sidetrack tap. Mr. Berge's name is the only name down on the ballot for mayor of Lake Wabagun. So they were talking about that. He's not going to win, of course. Clint Bunsen is going to be re-elected by right-in votes, same as he has been now for the last 16 years. He resigns every two years and then they yank him out of resignation and vote him into office as mayor. Mr. Berge, well, how can I put this in a nice way? I think that Mr. Berge might do well running for a senator or for a higher office, you know, but you wouldn't want him for lower office. Because people say in the US Senate, I mean, they kind of govern at a distance, you know. So you know, they need to pay as much attention to them, but somebody in a lower office like mayor, his name is in the phone book and people call him up regularly and expect straight answers to questions, you see. Say if you were taking a shower on a Saturday night and the water pressure dropped to zero just when you were all soaked up and you waited for a couple of minutes and it didn't come back, you'd go downstairs and call up Clint Bunsen and you would expect him to tell you in a few phrases either what he knew about what was wrong or how soon he would find out, you see. He wouldn't be making a speech about this, you know, or in Clint's case talking about previous administrations because in Clint's case, those were his. This is something they expect from somebody in lower office, is the straight scoop. One of the things, you know, that surprised me about higher office was back when I read the transcripts of the Watergate tapes and it wasn't those little felonies, you know, that they were working out there in the Oval Office that shocked me. It was how dumb they talked. All kind of ungrammatical and looping around and sentences didn't quite make sense and they were kind of dragging on and talking about this, that and the other thing and it was kind of like they were almost like they were on drugs or something. I'm not going to get into that. People in Lake Wobegon are talking about that election too but most of them have been what they are since long before they were born. Norwegian Lutherans are Republicans and if you're not, why I guess you just leave town and the sooner the better. All those Norwegian Lutherans are Republicans and all the German Catholics are Democrats. Though for people who made up their minds about things even before they existed, they certainly talk about the election with a lot of passion but I'm not going to talk about that because I would get into trouble and I'm in enough trouble right now up there because the bond issue that they issued to make repairs on the big crack at the high school is not selling very well. Back last spring they issued $50,000 in tax-free municipal bonds on Lake Wobegon of which about 40,000 remained to be sold which they're blaming me for. They think on account of my standing up here and telling stories about them that when people around the country read about tax-free municipal being issued by Lake Wobegon, people say, oh yeah sure right, tell me more. I think the bonds have not sold well to repair the school because the company that is selling them is a company called Rev-Bow Tax Free Municipal Inc which has a letterhead that looks as if it's mimeographed and the address is 10,021 and 1 half access road interstate for Nectarine, Florida and the name of the president of the company is rubber stamped on the upper right hand corner and you hold this prospectus in your hands and read it and when you put it down your fingertips are all black. That's why these bonds are not selling. There's a lot of things in the world that are more insubstantial than fiction and that company is one of them. The crack is about 24 feet long in the ceiling of the high school it's up on the second floor it extends from right above the second floor landing across into the library where it ends up over in the reference section about due north of an old globe donated by the class of 38 about due north of Persia and it's a huge crack that has been getting bigger and bigger and at some points is wide enough so that you can put your whole fest into it in the ceiling of the high school. Bud has been up to look at it got up on a step ladder put his fist in it she said oh it's nothing to worry about but he didn't stay around school very long. He's not the one who really has to worry about it it's the children who go to that high school and the sophomores especially three more years they're not running up those stairs up to the second floor anymore they're tiptoeing into the library looking at that huge crack in the ceiling and wondering when someone is going to do something about it. It's a scary time in your life right about that time I think when you're 15 16 years old that you realize that your elders don't know everything that you thought that they knew. It's a scary time because you know in little kid civics the civics little kids believe in they are the I believed in when I was a little kid I believed that old guys in suits ran the world and look at pictures of men in newspaper wearing magazines and they were all lined up for their picture outside a room or a building where they had just held a meeting and I thought well they took care of things in there and they worked out everything but then you see an old guy up on a step ladder looking at a crack and say it's nothing to worry about and there's an odd sound in his voice as if he's trying to convince himself and there's a kind of a vacant look in his eye as if he's not thinking about this quite as hard as you wish that he would and you go home and you mention it to your parents this crack in the ceiling of the high school and they say oh bud looked at bud looked at that and you say well what are you going to do about it and say well what can I do about bud looked at it bud said there's nothing to worry about it's superficial it's not structural and it's not going to fall down before next summer when they'll get up there and you know take it apart and see what needs to be done and you think if they think something needs to be done why don't they look at it like tonight why wait until next summer why not look at it tonight you folks say don't be silly don't worry about it it's not a worry about don't be silly I'm in that school every day what do you mean don't be silly well just don't worry about it just don't slam the library door there ought to be a blessing of the teenagers I think Father Emil to hold one and he could say just about the same blessing, blessing is not a prayer you know it's doesn't ask for anything it it just says how things are it's the purpose of blessing people is to make them realize that they have been already he could hold a blessing of the teenagers and say oh god by whose word all things are made holy bless these children whom you have put here and uphold the roof of your lovely world and grant that whoever giving thanks to you and living according to your will may receive by faith strength of body and of mind that's the news from Lake Wobegon Minnesota where all the women are strong and all the men are good looking all the children are above average
Garrison discusses the great Lousiana musicians who have been on the show recently including D.L. Minnard (last week), Willie and Percy Humphrey, BeauSoleil, and tonight Mark and Ann and Savoy. Rare discussion with Bill Evans who says it is dangerous outside, but also inside your house! New organ in the Orpheum Theater. Butch will play later in the show. Garrison announces a tribute to 3 participants who were on A PHC that died in the last month, Earnest Tubb, Bessie Jones, and Tich Richardson (Boys of the Lough).
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl