Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, John Hartford, Garrison Keillor, Howard Mohr, Ostroushko All Star Minnesota Irish Band, Peter Ostroushko. Jean Redpath,
People With Bad Luck ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) Julia Belle Swain ( John Hartford ) Old Fashioned Washing Machine ( John Hartford ) I Would Not Be Here ( John Hartford ) Hey! ( Greg Brown , Garrison Keillor , Jean Redpath ) Mighty Like A Rose ( Greg Brown , Butch Thompson Trio ) Nashville Blues ( Greg Brown , John Hartford , Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson Trio ) Crawdad Hole ( Greg Brown , John Hartford , Garrison Keillor , Peter Ostroushko ) Dixie Land One Step (Butch Thompson Trio ) It's Nearly Over Now ( Jean Redpath , Peter Ostroushko ) Poem by Robert Lewis Stevenson ( Jean Redpath ) The Land Where We Will Never Grow Old ( Jean Redpath , Butch Thompson Trio , Peter Ostroushko ) How Great Thou Art ( Jean Redpath , Ostroushko All Star Minnesota Irish Band , Greg Brown , John Hartford ) Blessed Be The Tie That Binds ( Garrison Keillor ) The Roving of Her Eyes ( Jean Redpath , Peter Ostroushko , Greg Brown ) Onions ( Greg Brown , Butch Thompson Trio )
Bertha's Kitty Boutique Lake Wobegon Merchants Powdermilk Biscuits (Saturday nights in the entertainment business.) Uncle John's Linament Oil (John Hartford)
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Well it's been a quite week in Lake Wobegon. Despite all that's going on in the world, despite Halloween on Monday. Of course, what goes on in the world doesn't necessarily always register up in Lake Wobegon. Sometimes they mistake some of those distant rumblings that they hear. Think about the invasion of Grenada. They first heard about in the sidetrack tap Mr. Berge and Wally. They said they're listening to the radio, but the radio announcer mispronounced it, so they thought he said, Canada. Mr. Berge said, Canada. Well, well, he said, I suppose. Wally said, that doesn't make any sense to me. He said, I haven't been up to Canada. He said, it's a lot like here. Up there, why in the world would they be invading Canada? Well, Mr. Berge had to stop and think about that. He believes, though, that when the shooting starts, that the debate ends. Wally said, why would they invade Canada? Mr. Berge said, it was the element of surprise, Wally. That was the element of surprise. So that seemed to satisfy them. Well, Halloween was Monday, but it's not as active the holiday. It has used to be when I was your age up there, believe me. It's toned down considerably since then. It used to be a day for practical jokes of any and all sorts. Halloween was. It was a day for all sorts of jokers who had active imaginations and time on their hands. Day for them to shine. And they certainly did. I remember the surprise when I was a boy walking out on a porch one time around Halloween and there were a bunch of grown men out there, some relatives of mine, old guys, guys in suits sitting out there. And they were giggling. Growing men giggling over jokes they had played 20, 25 years before, still getting the biggest kick out of it. Guys who, in their dealings with me, you know, were exemplars of wisdom and maturity. Here they were gasping and wheezing together, remembering the look on that guy's face when it came home and found the tea model for it up on top of the chicken house. The look on that guy's face when he bit into that sandwich. The look on that guy's face when he opened his bedroom door and there was the pig in the bedroom. Low on it. What a story. Years later reminiscing about it, all the elaborate plans that they made. And then doing the deed. And then boys lying in the weeds waiting for the victim to come and shushing each other. Quiet. Here he comes. Don't let him hear you. What if he doesn't? No, he will. He will. Don't worry. He will. Andy always did. Opened the door of the granary. There are a few hundred pounds of oats came out at him. Whatever it was. And then the fear and the trembling for days after until the joke blew over. And then years of reminiscence. In fact, that seemed to be almost the point of it at the very beginning was the story telling possibilities. Wrestling that pig upstairs into somebody's house. Boys saying, boy, they're not going to believe us when we tell them about this. Boy, we're going to be talking about this for years to come. And they certainly did. As far as Halloween goes, I came along towards the end of the privy tipping era. And came along in the middle of the age of car explosives, which was Carl Krepsbox doing mainly. He saw an ad in the back of a men's magazine advertising a novelty catalog, sent for it, and found there something I imagine he'd been waiting for all his life. Bombs. Attach them to the ignition. The guy goes in, turns the key, and there's a long whistle, and then the bang, or they're just the bang. They're two types. Carl got both of them. And for about the first five or six times that he pulled that one, it was pretty effective. The guy got in his car, turned the key. Bomb went off. Guy jumped. Hit his head on the ceiling. Jumped out of the car, ran around. Everybody laughed. Problem was that Carl got a deal in those car bombs. And the joke ran out before he'd used up his supply, which is often the case with jokes. I think one of the best Halloween jokes that I can remember was the one that they pulled on the armor incubist, who was then, as he is now the president of the first incubist state bank. And as a banker, the armor tended to be a little tight and cautious and conservative so that if you ever went talk to him and seemed to be about to ask for something, you could see Yawmer forming the words in his mouth. It's, no, I don't think we can take that on there, Johnny. I don't know, and that doesn't seem practical to me. I don't think that's a good idea at all. There were times I hear when his wife Virginia suggests they go up to bed, ten o'clock. No, I don't think that's a very good idea at all. He was always ready to say no, even before I heard what it was. Well, the joke was that they took a lamb to his house, a little black-faced lamb. They didn't put it in his bedroom. They took it up there in the afternoon. They gave it to his children. He had four children, quite small at that time. So the one Yamer came home from work, walked up the walk. There they all were on the steps, five little faces, four of his own, one little black-faced lamb sitting there. And all the faces turned up toward him. Daddy, oh, daddy, please, daddy. And the kids already knowing what the armor was going to say, no, daddy, don't make us take him back, please, daddy. That was the practical joke. Believe me, that sheep changed Yawmer's life in all sorts of ways. The 12 years that it lived with them. Built a shed for sheep out back, but she liked to be in the house. She liked to follow Yjalmer around, follow him down to work, like take a run at Yjalmer so often, you know, for the fun of it. Yjalmer's saying, no, I don't think that's a good idea. Didn't have much weight with that sheep. That sheep was pretty independent, that whole family. And for a couple of weeks after the gift of the lamb, I'd say Yjalmer was one of the friendliest people in that town. He was always glad to talk to people, especially people who he thought might have information. He'd say, oh, yeah, that lamb's doing fine, Mary. I'm having a good time. I just wish I knew who brought it so I could thank him. But he never found out, despite all the cups of coffee that he bought for people. For a few weeks, anyway. Well, that was kind of a pleasant joke, but unfortunately, the field of practical jokes attracts a lot of people who don't know what the point is. And Yjalmer was one thing. I mean, he was the president of the bank and all. But a lot of people find it easy to play jokes on the simple and the helpless and to get a kick out of that. And there's not much pleasant in that, of course.I think of a boy I went to grade school with his name was Donnie Hart. The hearts lived in Lake Wobegon for only about four years. They were kind of a secretive family they kept to themselves, at least that was how we saw it. So we mainly just knew their boy who was a large boy. He was much bigger than the rest of us in the grade school. He was, I suppose, about five and a half feet tall. He was rather heavy. He had a thatch of black hair. And he spent all four years in the fifth grade. He was held back in the grades, as they said, because as we said at the time, he was slow. He was slow. And there was something different about him too. He had pleasant face. He had a sweet smile. But he had fear in his eyes. And for good reason. Because since he was slow, he was an easy victim for jokes of the simplest kind. He believed anything that you told him. And so if you said Donnie, your mother's calling you, he'd go home. And he'd do it again and again and again. Boys found out that even though he was large, he would not hit back if he were hit. And so if boys were in the mood to hit somebody, why he was the target. For some reason, he and I hung around together. I think at first because I was told to be nice to him, because he was slow. And then because I enjoyed his company, I enjoyed his company partly because he would do what I told him to do. And if I said that he had to be a cowboy, so I could be an Indian, then he'd be a cowboy. Or he had to be the bad guy, then he'd do that. Though he didn't make a very good bad guy, he was too sweet. We hung around together for several years in grade school. And the more I hung around with him, the more, even though I didn't mean to, enjoyed his company. Because unlike other children, he was not competitive. And when you were with him, he simply enjoyed your company and never was interested in having any sort of advantage. He was a sweet person, had a sweet disposition. And I missed him when they left town. And then I didn't think about him anymore. Until I saw him again, which was about 20 years later, here in St. Paul, where I was living. And had to go downtown one day for an appointment, I forget what. But I remember that I put on my suit, so it must have been important. Got in the car, drove to the bank, cashed a check. And when I got out of the bank, the car would not start. The starter had been grinding for a long time, and it just refused to turn over. Which suddenly surprised me, but it didn't put me in a very good frame of mind either. So I crossed the street. I was at University in Raymond in St. Paul. I crossed over University to catch the eastbound bus to downtown St. Paul. And stood there in the doorway of an abandoned building, which might have been the old bank on the corner. There was a sign in the window that said, for rent, commercial space will renovate. Stood in the doorway and waited for the bus. It was a cold day, and it was raining. And I noticed coming up the street, a group of people, who I knew even at a distance, were grown people and were retarded. Which I could tell by the way that they walked, a kind of a loose gate and some of them shuffling. And also by the fact that they didn't move stiffly as we do. They made sudden movements toward each other. They looked like kids, except they were grown up. Retarded people. And they were headed for the bus stop. Now, I've always felt uneasy around retarded people, which I'm sure is normal for those of us who aren't around them very often. And which I'm sure has to do with the fact that we feel that intelligence is the fundamental part of being human. That our minds, what we think and what we imagine, that's us, our minds. At least that's what we think. And so when we see these injured people, we feel pity for them and we feel uneasy around them. And so as they moved into my doorway, I moved out and stood a little ways away until the bus came. And we lined up at the door and then I saw him. He was there. He was one of them. It was Donnie Hart, looking much the same as when we went to school together. Which amazed me to see him after all these years, but amazed me even more because I had never known that he was retarded. That he was so different from us, you see. I never realized that when we were kids. I said hello to him. I don't think he knew who I was. We talked a little bit and then we got on the bus. And then an amazing thing happened that I've never been able to describe to people. As the bus rumbled along, all of us towards the back, standing, holding onto the bar. The combination of meeting my old friend. And the fact that they acted like children. They were teasing each other. One man was pulling a woman's pigtails. She reached around, swatted them. And the way they talked and everything. And also the smell of wet clothing. And the fact that we were all on a bus. Suddenly I found that we were all children and all on a school bus together. That it was not them, those people and me. But it was just us. We were just us. We were just all people together. It was an amazing ecstatic feeling if that ever comes to you. I remember him we used to sing when I was young about heaven called, there will be no distinction there. But I never really felt it until I saw him on that bus. And I'm not sure what the ending of this story is. I suppose it doesn't end. It just happens now and then, or we hope for it too. But what a sweet relief to give up some of those distinctions that don't make a lot of sense to us. I got off the bus. I walked. And I thought about the bus ever so often. And imagine that it was still riding through the streets of St. Paul. And that if you saw it, you could get on it and feel that way again.
How Much do I owe? Greg Brown and Howard Mohr. Sponsored by Home Defense Hardware. "Hey"!! Plate Poaching in the 1980s- Jean Redpath, Butch Thompson, Garrison, Greg Brown,
1983.10.30 Louisville Courier