Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Charlie and Ann Heymann, Clairseach, Bill Evans, Garrison Keillor, Lieberman Fogel & Bey, Tom Lieberman, Kate MacKenzie, Red Maddock, John Niemann. Peter Ostroushko, Stoney Lonesome, Butch Thompson, Ed Trickett,
Driving Home Through The Storm ( Greg Brown , Stoney Lonesome ) Big Sandy ( Peter Ostroushko , John Niemann , Stoney Lonesome ) Papa Won't You Make Her A Brand New Pair of RedDancing Shoes ( Peter Ostroushko , John Niemann , Stoney Lonesome ) McDonald's March (Clairseach , Charlie and Ann Heymann ) An Irish Courting Song (Clairseach , Charlie and Ann Heymann ) I Gotta Go Back to Old Mendota ( Tom Lieberman , Bill Evans , Peter Ostroushko , Butch Thompson ) Brand New Angel with an Old Violin ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) Bertha's Theme Song ( Garrison Keillor ) Paddy's Not At Work Today ( Ed Trickett ) Lover's Return (Kate Wolfe) ( Ed Trickett , Stoney Lonesome ) Julian of Norwich ( Ed Trickett , Kate MacKenzie ) Everybody loves my baby (Butch Thompson Trio , Peter Ostroushko , Tom Lieberman ) Mairzy Doats ( Red Maddock ) McTavish is Dead ( Peter Ostroushko , Clairseach ) Future Farmers of America ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Lieberman Fogel & Bey ) Beans In My Ears ( Kate MacKenzie , Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) Polar Bears and Crocodiles ( Ed Trickett , Stoney Lonesome ) The North Wind Shall Blow ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko , Tom Lieberman ) Green Leaf ( Greg Brown , Clairseach , Charlie and Ann Heymann )
Ahua Hot Sauce (Hot Compresses) Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Cat Stress Ankle Weights) Bertha's Kitty Boutique (Missing socks that the cat keeps hiding ) Guy's Custom Body Shoppe (Body Decals to spff up your body.) Lake Wobegon Merchants (Ralph's limited selection) New Vision (Imprinted contact lenses) Powdermilk Biscuits (Old Noontime Radio Show.) St. Paul Block & Tackle (Christmas Ideas for Minnesota shoppers)
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Well, it's been a quiet week, and like Wobegon, my hometown, you had a lot more snow here this last week, which on top of the snow that got the week before, made for a lot of snow in the month of November, maybe a record, who knows. You old Sherwin Williams can, up by the town garage, was filled though, even before this last snow came along, so it's hard to say exactly how much fell there. There's no paint can that somebody left out by the door of the municipal garage, I think about ten years ago, and it became permanently attached to the asphalt here. The paint can was a dent in the side of it where Bud tried to kick it loose, then he just painted the word precipitation across the front of it. And so that's what it is, their gauge up there. It's the only one he's got anyway. The label came off long time ago. The one with the, I think sure when Williams is one with the picture of the world on the front, and can of red paint spilling onto the top of it. That peeled off long ago, but Bud still refers to it. And when he says, I checked my gauge today and snow was up to the top of the world, that means that you got a lot of snow if you weren't aware of it, which most people are. So winters come on kind of hard and fast. Up there as it has most of Minnesota and around, which is fine with the younger ones of course, and not very good at all for the old ones. All the snow and now this cold weather has meant that they are weeks, they had a schedule. The kids are in building the sled run, which is, ever since I can remember, it's always been up on the hill, up behind the school, though I haven't worked on it for years, not since I was, I think in about eighth or ninth grade, which is about the time you get too old for that sort of thing. They build at the same every year, the sled run, and kids get out a couple wheelbarrows and they haul in snow to build up high embankments at each of the four turns on the sled run. And they build them especially high because you know once they pour water on the track, you reach amazing rates of speed on that thing. I haven't gone down it for about five or six years, but it's terrifying. Flop down on your belly on the sled up at the top of the hill and push off with your feet. And it's about straight down for about 20 feet, which gives you a little momentum, and then you hit the first turn which throws you to the left, and you're right into the second turn which throws you to the right, and then you see the tree. You head out of you, which it looks like you're going to crash into, but you only will if you drag your feet on the ground. If you let go, centrifugal force will carry you right around that tree. And then you go over the little jump, which used to be a fairly big jump. In my day, a lot of lunches were lost there, so they cut that down a little bit. Then you go into the big curve at the end, the fourth turn, where you go real high on the embankment. You come around at a terrific rate of speed, and then you bring you down under the swings on the swingset. And right past the school and you're close to a stop and get off your sled and walk back up and face death all over again. Last time I did it was about five years ago, and I did it, it was almost dark. And I got up at the end of it, I could barely walk. It was more terrifying to me than it ever had been when I was a kid. And then once you know I got home and I looked down and I had about half worn off the toes of both boots. Which is the time to retire, when you had the brakes on the hallway and you didn't even notice it. It was time to give up that sort of thing. For the old people in Lake Wobgan, of course, even a flat piece of ground with ice on it can be terrifying and something of an adventure to make your way just a few blocks down to the store or down to church. Kids don't understand that, but when you reach middle age where I am, you start to get inklings of it. Every so often, just every so often once in a great while, I am grateful for there being a handrail. Some are handrail to hang on to the light. Try not to look as if I'm hanging on to it, I try and make it look as if I'm sort of examining the texture of the wood as I go along. Little change that comes over people that slowly, gradually, you almost don't notice it at first. And then you notice that whereas when you used to walk through town, through the streets, you used to walking on ice, take two or three steps and then slide to see how far you could slide. And then you find out how far you could slide and from then on you just take steps, kind of small steps. Do you see some of those old people walking around in town when it's as icy as it's been and climbing over little hummocks who track down snow at the curb and just almost hold your breath to watch them walk? People in their 70s and 80s, afraid for them every time. And then to see Mr. Anderson at his age and in his condition out shoveling his walk this last Monday, it was heroic about it was the sort of heroism that's meant to be stopped by somebody. His neighbor Carl Krebsbach put his park on right away, ran out. He said, you let me do this. Mr. Anderson, he said, Mr. Anderson said, no Carl, it's all right, it's not much, I can do it, but it took him so long to say that. Between wheezes that Carl just started in, Mr. Anderson went back inside, just stuck his head out once in a while, poked his head out and said, don't shovel across the walk like that Carl, do you going to cut up the grass, you want to shovel it the long way? Then he poked his head out again, he said, you be sure and get the walk on the side now too. Then Carl got done with the walk on the side, he brought him out of the broom, he said, here you might as well get this clean on the steps there. Pride talking, but it's all right. Nobody said the good works were supposed to be shoddy, you know. Can do them well. Just because it's charity doesn't mean you shouldn't try hard. Reminds me of the Norwegian bachelor farmers when the Lutheran women take him out there, thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in the pie plates. And the bachelor farmers say thank you, they sort of say thank you, they say, well thank you I guess. And then they say, I hope you put some salt on the turkey this year boy, last year couldn't even taste it hardly. Hope it's not broccoli again this year, think you could put some sweet potatoes in here. It's pride talking, but they're entitled to it. I was talking to Senator K Torvaldsen, this last week's sweet old man, sitting up in Chatterbox Cafe, drinking coffee, he's got a lot of pride too. Of course, if your mother had given you the name of Senator you'd have to have some pride otherwise you'd have to change it I guess. But he's all torn up about whether he ought to go down in Florida for Christmas, leave right away, go down, he's got his daughter lives down there somewhere I forget where. And he's always in the past gone down in January to see her, which makes sense because in January he doesn't have a lot to do or February or March for that matter, it's really not until April that he gets busy. He's never gone down in December before and this cold weather coming on so early has kind of made him think about it yet. He doesn't quite want to do it because to go down to Florida in December would be an admission of old age, which to him at the age of 81 he's not quite ready to make that yet. It'd be like he was compromising his standards in a way, I think, to leave in December and not to stay for Christmas as he always has done. He was saying to me, he said, Johnny, he said, I just don't know, I don't know if I can get away, I don't know what to do, if I should go down there or not. He calls a lot of guys Johnny. These days my name isn't Johnny, I think he's forgotten exactly who we are but he still wants to be on a first name basis with us. He says, I don't know Johnny, he says, I don't know, I said, you know I don't mean to toot my horn Johnny. He said, but over the years he said, I come to be kind of inevitable in this town in Christmas, which I think he meant by inevitable he meant necessary or important but I accept inevitable because there is something inevitable about Senator K. Torvaldson. He is a sweet good man, a beneficent man, a man who's in his goodness is undeterrible and unavoidable. In fact, beneficent is a word he likes to use a lot, more than once you come across somebody of a morning and say, my you look beneficent today. And even if you know that you look like death on toast, you start to feel beneficent, you start to feel better, which is one of the good works that Senator does in town. He pays people richly undeserved compliments, wildly inaccurate compliments, beneficent. I love to hear him say beneficent and some of the other words that he uses like robust and salubrious. My it's a salubrious day, I'll say. Any day when the stars have not fallen the night before as a salubrious day at him or salutary, I was used to wonder where Senator Torvaldson was picking up all these words that he'll pop on you. Until a few years ago, I heard him tell someone that he had seen a whole flock of Amy on his bird feeder. And then I knew he gets him out of the crossword puzzle. Amy has a three-letter A and I, he has a three-letter word for blackbird, and the only place he'd find it is in the crossword. Amy, I think maybe he said a gaggle of Amy or troop group assemblage. Deer season, it brings out all those crossword puzzle terms for deer. You know, if you ever see deer as a clue in a crossword puzzle, Senator Torvaldson knows all of them, like hind and heart. One is a male and one is a female or raha. You ever hear anybody say raha before? Listen to him sometime. He land. Wauquidi. All those crossword puzzle words or ruminant. I see you got your ruminant this year Carl. Big I have a good word for Senator Torvaldson, ruminant you know. We were sitting there ruminating. And he said, I don't know Johnny. He said, if I get away he said, you know, I said, I got 81 kids on my list for oranges this Christmas. And I remember that all the years that I was a kid, it was always Senator Torvaldson who gave every kid an orange, actually gave it to your parents. Those big, huge, sweet oranges that went in the toes of Christmas stockings. And all of the years that I had a stocking, the first thing I did when I got up on Christmas morning, about 4.30 or 5 was to dump out all the other stuff and look at it and then go into the kitchen and get a knife with my Christmas orange. And peel off, carve out the navel at the top and start to peel it and smell that first burst of fragrance of fresh orange, which on a cold winter morning, really comes a patchy. And as you unwrapped it to get a little orange juice under your fingernails and they burned just a little bit. Somebody told me when I was very little that the peel of the orange would kill you. I think it was my sister and I think she was sitting on me at the time and she had a little piece of orange peel. And I think it was the time that I stuffed some pillows into her bed so she would think there was a body in there and a dead body. I remember I used a lot of ketchup on it. I believed it for a while. I believed that the peel of the orange would kill you. You would just drop in your tracks if you ate one. Somehow it made sense to me that something as delicious as an orange would be surrounded by something deadly. Because I was a fundamentalist kid and we believed that if there was something that you really liked a lot, especially a fruit of some kind, does look around you'd find the snake, you know, is somewhere. And then I ate a piece of orange peel and I think it was my sister who made me eat it. I think it was the time that I put sugar in the sugar bowl. And I've been putting salt in there for so long that she naturally reached for the salt shaker and dumped a bunch on her post-tosties. And she made me eat the orange peel. And I ate it and I thought about school as I ate it. I thought of my mother writing a letter to my teacher and saying, Dear Mrs. Shaver, please excuse my son from school yesterday as he was dead. And then I didn't die and it turned out to be a joke. Not one that I enjoyed especially, but a joke. It was Mrs. Shafaer who used an orange to show us how the solar system worked in school. I think it was about the second grade. She started on a table and the orange of course was the sun. And then she had the beans around it on the table, which were the planets. And she moved them with her fingers around the sun in orbit. And it made perfect sense to me all of a sudden, our whole solar system. Except for the table, I didn't understand that. As she moved the little bean that was earth around the orange, I remember thinking that if it's true that the earth revolves sooner or later, we're going to scrape up against the table and we'll all be wiped out. So this was a fruit of some mystery that I've peeled on Christmas morning. And it was so sweet and so good, I would set out the sections side by side of the table and enjoy them one by one. And try not to eat them too fast, but to make it last as long as possible. Because an orange in winter can lift a person right up out of where you are, can change a whole day of fresh orange, so sweet in the morning, can change a whole day, and can drop you into that picture that came every year on the Christmas card from grandma and grandpa and some of the old relatives standing in the picture on the front steps of their little Pasadena Hacienda, and bright sunshine smiling at us back in Minnesota. Their little house in paradise, which they said though we never saw it on the picture, had an orange tree in the backyard, which would be heaven to get up in the morning in your pajamas on Christmas day and walk out across the grass and reach up. And pick your own orange and another one and another one, as many as you wanted. When I finished my Christmas orange, then I had to go find my sister and negotiate for hers. I was willing to pay a lot for it and she knew that, and always started the bidding high. And one year I think the price of her orange was my doing everything that she said for the rest of my life. I was willing to lie for that orange. I knew it at the time. I hope that he goes. I hope he goes to Florida. Senator Torvaldson. The rest of us can take up some of the slack. We can receive that crate of oranges that comes up to him every year from his daughter in Florida, which when it arrives at the post office, everybody knows there's oranges. They breathe when they are carried into warm air. We can perform his beneficence of oranges this year because someone as good as Senator Torvaldson as beneficent as he is, should not be shut up during the winter, but should be free to walk or amble, promenade. Take a constitutional stroll, amble, traips, maybe, stock, be parapatetic. Someone as beneficent as he should parapatate through those fragrant orchards or groves, woods, leafy-dells, glades of Florida. The sunshine state, the 27th state admitted to the Union, its capital is Tallahassee and its state flower is the orange blossom. That's the news from Lake Wobegon, Minnesota. where all the women are strong, the men are good looking and all the children are above average.
Discussion with Ann Heyman about the ancient clairsearch harp. She will be giving lessons.
1983.11.27 Star Tribune / 1983.11.27 Star Tribune / 1983.12.03 Berkshire Eagle / 1983.12.03 Pittsburgh Post: "Studs Terkel, Roy Blount, Tom Lieberman"
Archival contributors: Ken Kuhl