Greg Brown, Butch Thompson Trio, Patrick Couton, D.L. Minnard, Georges Fischer, Garrison Keillor, Louisiana Aces, Tim O'Brien. Peter Ostroushko, Jean Redpath,
12 Gates ( Tim O'Brien ) Fiddle Duet ( Peter Ostroushko , Tim O'Brien ) The Bachelor's Life (D.L. Minnard , Louisiana Aces ) I can't forget you (D.L. Minnard , Louisiana Aces ) The Backdoor (D.L. Minnard , Louisiana Aces ) Peanut Butter ( Peter Ostroushko , Tim O'Brien , Garrison Keillor ) My Sweet Lorraine ( Patrick Couton , Georges Fischer ) When Midnight Comes ( Jean Redpath ) Fill Up Your Cup with Brandy & Wine ( Jean Redpath ) Lake Wobegon Merchants Song ( Peter Ostroushko , Garrison Keillor ) Take My Hand, Precious Lord ( Garrison Keillor ) It Dont Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing (Butch Thompson Trio ) Who Do You Think You're Fooling? ( Greg Brown ) French Love Song -Water & Milk ( Georges Fischer , Patrick Couton ) Dept. of Folk Song- 3 Little Pigs, Eenie Meenie Minee Mo, Ring around the Rosie, Happy Birthday, You Belong in A Zoo, Deck the Halls w/ Gasoline ( Greg Brown , Peter Ostroushko ) Jambalaya (D.L. Minnard , Louisiana Aces )
Butch Thompson Candidate For Something (Campaign on hold) Conservational French (A public service of A Prairie Home Companion.) Fruit Farm Micro Chips (The Golden Delicious) Midwestern Potato Producers Association Minneapolis (A story of power, evil, and conniving on PBS!)
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 Wobegon, Minnesota. My hometown, I guess, I assume. I don't really know. I haven't been in touch with them. Been in Europe for three weeks. I do know that today is the first day of duck hunting, hoping like Wobegon. So I imagine there was a big to do about that, and all the sons of Knut were out at the Peterson Memorial Blind before sunrise this morning. And probably home by now, all those old Knuts. Sitting on heating pads. Kind of recovering from a hard morning squinting up at the sky. Poor old things. Probably don't have a whole lot to show for it, either. If last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, or any indication, there are not a lot of ducks who use that flyway. And anymore you go about two miles to the west of there, and it's like rush hour. But over like Wobegon, you just very seldom see any come on the first day of duck hunting. The day before, yes, you do, quite a few. Kind of a last-minute rush to get through, not that they have a lot to worry about. But I don't know why. Aren't many ducks. It may be those clouds of blue cigar smoke coming up from the weeds that tip them off. I don't know. Even if they did get one, no, it wouldn't do them a lot of good. They don't have a good dog. Anymore, since Rusty went bad. He was a good dog. He was a great dog. He did tend to panic a little bit when he got out over his head. But had to be rescued a few times. Once by one of the Knuts who was riding in the giant decoy out there, it was awkward. He was good, and then he went out one year to retrieve a duck floating out there. And I think he bit into it just a little deeper than he usually had so that he got a taste of it. And it just changed that dog's life to realize that he had been going out for food all these years for men who were feeding him Purina. And he took that duck in his teeth, and he went over the hill with it. Returned eventually, but he was never much good after that. And the dog was kind of broken in spirit in a way, knowing that the Knuts didn't trust him. Anymore, poor Rusty. And it was about that time that he developed a taste for coffee, laced with brandy, which they have a good supply of in the duck blind. And the poor dog just went on that downward path, which is a sad thing to see. A golden retriever on a toot out there. Staggering around 10 o'clock in the morning. Go off in the bushes, pass out. They're not pleasant. Satter in a way to see a dog do it and see a man do it, you know because man is a fallen creature to begin with. But dogs are innocent and have beauty to them. and their only fault is that they trust us too much. And he took a taste, and that was it. And went off and just lay in the grass like a common drunk that dog did. He became one of about three dogs who now hang out around the door of the sidetrack tap in the evening, waiting for somebody to come out so they can go in. About seven, eight o'clock in the evening, you'll see him there. And they go in. And that's the time of the evening one. There's a lot of spillage at the sidetrack. And when a lot of guys will put a drink down and forget where they put it, then the dogs get it. Especially the peppermint schnapps, which is their favorite, and which is a favorite there at the sidetrack. And it's a sad thing to see in the evening and the next day too. Dogs lying under the porch with terrible headaches, groaning. It's sad. A lot of sad things, and like Wobegon, little things mainly. I think it was some of that sadness in daily life, and like Wobegon that drove my old high school classmate Wendell away from home, and led him to leave. I think of him because I saw him in Europe. When I was there, he was living over there. His different Wendell was from the rest of us in the class. He was not very bright, but then we weren't either. But the different thing about Wendell was that he was so sensitive and he had such a tender heart, and he was filled with pity for people, animals, birds, for example, robins and bluebirds who get caught in those late April blizzards in Minnesota. He'd go around with wheat and cracked corn, calling to them around town. He felt a lot of pity for people. Oftentimes more pity than was indicated or required, you know ? The sort of person I mean? The person who has a tremendous imagination for how other people must be suffering what miserable lives they must have and how much they hurt inside. And if you look as if you're having fun, well that only shows that you're suffering worse to be able to keep it inside that way. And there were class dances at high school where you'd be dancing and Wendell would tap you on the shoulder and you'd turn thinking he was going to cut in on you. But no, there were tears in his pale blue eyes and his pale face says he'd look up at you with his lips trembling and say, I want to talk to you. And it was hard to get rid of him. He left home, he moved to the cities where his pity for people got worse and more to be stow it on. Down the street, see some poor old drunk in the street and Wendell would imagine that this man had once been a great half-back and a war hero and then the horror of war had snapped something in his heart and the man had taken this downward path. He looked at everyone who was miserable and unhappy and made up stories about them. Every back lady he saw he imagined had been a screen star at one time. Well he went to Divinity School for some reason, I don't know why. Because you know theology is a cutthroat line of work. It's very competitive. It's rough and a person as sensitive as Wendell was, isn't really cut out for him. So he decided not to become a theologian or a minister. He decided that he would become a Lutheran missionary and that he would go overseas and help the suffering and the poor. And Lutheran missions board for some reason sent him to Venice. Now as you can imagine a Lutheran missionary in Venice would have his work cut out for him. There's not much to begin with there as far as Lutheranism on which to build, you see. Not enough Lutherans in Venice to sing four-part harmony. And if you were Lutheran and you lived in Venice, Italy and you died there you would have to hire Paul Bearers for yourself or get up and walk one or the other. But he went, he was determined to follow the call, arrived at the Santa Lucia Railroad Station, walked out the front door, and saw the grand canal, a gondolier was on him like a bad suit in a minute and soon he was forking over 60,000 lira to ride in a gondola which was very tippy. And he did not like Venice from the beginning. There was something just kind of ostentatious about it. First of all the idea of a city built on islands with canals instead of streets, why? What's the reason for it other than to just show that it could be done? And the architecture kind of shows off. He went down to the cathedral and walked into San Marco and could not believe what he saw inside a church, an immense church and it was packed with Americans who were taking pictures using flash bulbs. And there were tour groups all up and down the sanctuary and in the nave with tour guides talking in loud voices in different languages and the cathedral packed with ornate sculpture and art and precious things most of which were stolen. Including the body of the apostle Saint Mark stolen and put under the main altar and just to the side of the main altar a man sitting at a cash register selling tickets for tourists to go back behind the altar and look at this huge obscene slab of gold and precious gems. Wonder was disgusted. It made him long for those simple white-frame Lutheran churches sitting out on the prairie that he remembered from his youth. But he was there as a missionary so he decided to do his best. Started to learn Italian and he opened up a mission, a soup kitchen, and a cream of mushroom. Didn't get many takers other than people from Iowa who were homesick. And there he was in business and about the time that he was starting to learn Italian well enough so that he could think about maybe saying what he was thinking. He got a letter from the Lutheran Missions board saying it was a big mistake. They didn't mean Venice. They meant Vienna. And I thought he'd like it in Vienna better anyway because there are more Protestants up there. There are, I don't know, some Baptists or some few of them somewhere living somewhere in Vienna he probably find them. Well, when he got that letter it kind of broke his missionary spirit. He got on the train and he followed the call up to Vienna. But the urge to missionary was not very strong in Wendell. And the first words that he learned in German in Vienna was an apology.And Schuligensy, Merbita, please excuse me. Ichfer Stanekt.Ichsprech, nichser quittuich. Ich bin ein Americaner. 'm sorry. I don't speak very good German. I don't understand. I'm an American. And got an apartment and spent most of his days frankly sitting around at a little cafe on the Ringstrasse in the inner city in the inner style. Using one of his other German phrases, walking into a tobacco store and saying habenzi un Americanusch eitung. Do you have an American newspaper? Let me say, how? Harold Tribune. Dankerschär. Spansig Schulling. Okay, sure. Vietasen, vietasen. Sit down, read the paper. Sat there in Vienna. It's kind of sobering to read an Americanusch eitung over in Europe. Even for me, and I only bought one every day to see how the Minnesota twins were doing. I didn't read a lot more, but Wendell read the front page. So bring to read an American newspaper when you get outside of our country and you realize what a frightening country we are. In many ways, odd, you should have to go so far to find that out. But you realize, sitting over there, what terrible power the United States has over the lives of so many people in the world that we know nothing about and sometimes seem determined not to know anything. It's awesome. I didn't think about this all the time over there. I had a real good time, but it did occur to me once or twice. I had a great time. The pleasantest places in Europe are off the beaten track, but they're not that far off the beaten track. You can find them easily. You just take a left where the guidebook says to go straight and you'll find them. They're in every city. They're all over. They are those little parks. Those little squares in Austria, Platts, in Italy, Campo, a little square where old people sit during the day to take the sun on the benches under the trees and watch little kids tearing around just like at home where there are very few of us in the square. A lot of them and it's them that we go there to see. Teenagers sit in Whisperer and giggle in foreign languages. People walk through, people come through on their way home from work, people stop and buy newspapers, little cafe in the square where you can sit and drink cafe, watch people, listen to people and couples walk through who are oblivious to everything and children. The most wonderful thing is children. Children tearing around playing. The little boy comes careening towards you on roller skates and 10 feet in front of you falls down and gets up laughing and looks at you and opens his mouth and out of this little boy's mouth comes a stream of foreign words, amazing child. A stream of sentences as he tells you about what has just happened to him with a big smile on his face. He does not know that you are an American, you see. Most people can somehow just by a glance tell, but children don't know about nationality. To him, you're just an adult like other adults and he's right. He's right about that. Even though we live thousands of miles away, we have a responsibility, an adult responsibility to that child and to millions of others around the world, the same as if we were their aunt or their uncle. Just adults and we have to be adults. We have to be a grown up country. You can't be an adolescent country. Not anymore if we ever could be. I don't think about this all the time, but it occurred to me once you're classed. I did visit Wendell and the Lutheran missionary effort in Vienna is moving very slowly. He is slowly learning German and buying some Deutschet's, I don't know ever so often, and learning to make a different kind of soup, something with pork and onions in it, I hope. And mainly though just sitting and watching and listening to people over there, which is a great pleasure. He wrote a letter to Father Emel back home when De did. He asked Father, he said, Father, if you were, say, a Lutheran missionary in a Catholic country, what would you do? Father Emil sent him back a long letter which said in essence, enjoy yourself and said, that's what he's doing. But our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility this coming weekend, the feast day of St. Francis, the blessing of the animals. And I hope that some of you can show up for it. All dogs must be on leashes, and I know of some dogs, and like Wobegon, who definitely ought to be there for that one, they ask that you please not bring cats who are not used to leashes they have had experience in the past. There will be one cat at the blessing of the animals on the feast day of St. Francis, and that cat will serve as a representative for all the others. That's the news from like Wobegon, Minnesota, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
Garrison goes on an "overseas" vacation. The Whippets are protesting the second game of the double header.
1985-09-28 1987-09-26
1984.09.28 Star Tribune